PARENTAL ADVICE
With three autistic children, then two other children and the
mom with panic attack anxiety disorder, our house had plenty
of meltdowns and panic attacks, which again, due to the kids’
limited vocabulary at the time, were lumped together
and called ‘freaking out.’
where many a camp nurse was amused by my
explanation upon dropping the bottle labeled
“Weird Powder” off in her bag of other meds.
original, then the Lost Fairy would leave it be-
side the bed while they were sleeping.
This worked wonders, though a couple of times
the Lost Fairy brought new one back, then a
month later the original was found, but I was
able to explain she must have gotten lost, as
she was of course known to do, and mistakenly
had given us some other little kid’s item back.
In the cases where I could not find it, and it
was irreplaceable, whenever the child recalled
and asked about it again, I’d simply say that we
hadn’t forgotten about it yet for her to bring it
back to us. That fairy has lots of stuff from our
household to this day.
2.
Weird Powder
My two daughters with autism both struggled
with picking and scratching their skin keeping
wounds open for months at a time, and leaving
scars even when they would let one heal. My
youngest even picked out her finger and toe
nails regularly. After several different coping
and distraction techniques (rubbing instead of
scratching, keeping them covered with bandag-
es, wearing a rubber band on the wrist to pop
instead) failed, I came up with “Weird Powder.” I
called it that because my youngest, when asked
why she picked a nail off or a wound open, would
say only that it had been weird. One night when
she was having a terrible meltdown and was
claiming to be “weird all over,” I conjured up the
magical “Weird Powder” and sprinkled it all over
her. This was just the common brand of body
powder in the golden plastic bottle that is med-
icated and tingles. The tingling is how you know
it is working its magic. This worked unbeliev-
ably well. The weird powder had to go with her
on sleepovers, vacations, and to summer camp,
3.
House Rule Number One
I wanted to call this the House Prime Directive,
but that was bit hard to explain to the kids in
their limited vocabulary, as they were all so lit-
tle then and not well versed on science fiction,
so House Rule Number One it became. The rule
was only one person at a time could be freaking
out.
With three autistic children, then two other chil-
dren and the mom with panic attack anxiety
disorder, our house had plenty of meltdowns
and panic attacks, which again, due to the kids’
limited vocabulary at the time, were lumped
together and called “freaking out.” Admittedly,
this life hack didn’t work as well and as often as
the Lost Fairy and Weird Powder. Nonetheless,
it was helpful, in some cases where one person
was already freaking out, and someone else was
showing signs of starting to, but I could catch
it quick enough, I could remind them of House
Rule Number One, and they would calm down
and “wait their turn.”
Also interestingly, when this did work, often
times, when the first person was done freaking
out, the one who had stopped because it wasn’t
his/her turn would not freak out, which was a
nice bonus, of course. There were plenty of times
we broke House Rule Number One... but it was
a goal that we aimed for, and it helped some-
times. It also made for comic relief when some-
one mid-meltdown would scream at someone
having a panic attack that it was not their turn!
Laughter is always good medicine, particularly
in an autism household.
Autism Parenting Magazine | Issue 68 |
35