Recently I've really been thinking about just how much I do around the house. As a single parent there isn't any other grown-up to help lighten the load. I know many couples face the question of how to split the chores up but I don't have that privilege. I'm it!!
And for those of you who think I should just put my children to work....trust me I've already thought of that. However my oldest has Autism. I know most kids can help out much earlier than Drew. It's not as simple as just telling him to take out the garbage for me. Not so long ago he even asked me where we keep the plates. We've lived here for 7 and a half years and the plates are in the same place on the shelf that they have been since day one. Camryn has been assessed for Autism twice. The first time I didn't have confidence that the person who assessed her had enough experience to determine if she did or not. The second one sat on the fence about diagnosing her until an old preschool teacher said things like "oh sure she played pretend with dolls all the time".....which for the record she never did. That kid could care less about dolls. Anyway so as of now she doesn't have Autism but nobody can quite decide what she has. "Is it Autism and we missed it?", "Is it Obsessive Compulsive Disorder?", "Is it Anxiety plus a hidden learning disability?". The list goes on and on. The fact is that she's not entirely typical either.
So for some time now I struggled with knowing which chores and at what age will they be able to start really helping. And by really helping I mean not the chores where I have to go back afterwards to redo it kind. Rather the ones where it will legitimately lighten my share of the work.
There are no manuals that I can consult. Other parents of typically developing children have a puke load of books....yes a puke load.....that they can go to for an opinion. There is no manual for Autism. The reason for this is because no two children with Autism are impacted exactly the same way. They may share common characteristics but one might be like Bill Gates and the next like Rain Man. So for parents like me who are raising a child on the Spectrum we are often guessing at just how much our child can do or help out with these kinds of things.
And it's not as easy as finding a chore you think they can do. Oh no, it's not as simple as that....it never is. To assign chores is actually a lot of work for me. There is a considerable period of time I spend teaching Drew the chore. For those of you who might be thinking oh sure I had to spend one or two sessions teaching my child a chore before they could do it try four, five, or six sessions some times. It's not that Andrew isn't bright because he is. He's scored at the 96th percentile for IQ. It's the common sense stuff he struggles with.
Don't get me wrong the kids do help out. They are expected to take their dishes to the kitchen counter, throw their dirty clothes in the hamper.....and our newest project is putting away the clean clothes. I do a ton of laundry and so we have lots of chance to practice this one. Camryn is quite speedy and even has time to reorganize her closet in the process (a favourite past time of hers). Whereas Drew takes forever to do it. The other day I had given them each a small load of clothes to put away. After 10 minutes I came upstairs and found Camryn playing but Drew still working away. He was getting frustrated because the hangers kept falling out of the closet. I couldn't quite understand how this was happening so I asked him to show me what he was doing. I stood there dumb-founded because he was not taking the hanger off the bar but instead was trying to hang the shirt up by placing it on the hanger (while it was still on the bar).
I guess our next lesson will be taking a hanger out from the closet and hanging up the shirt before placing it back in the closet. Is this more of a man thing or an Autism thing? Maybe it's "Mautism"?
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