Environmental activism starts at home, doesn’t it. Like many families, we sort our rubbish, compost our food scraps and have a milk bottle in the sink to catch water from the hot tap while it’s still running cold. And the bottom of our coat cupboard is a sea of blue and green reusable shopping bags. I’m sure this is a familiar scenario!
However, I often find myself doing odd bits and pieces of shopping while I’m out on other errands, and inevitably, the ubiquitous supermarket bags are at home. Luckily, not all reusable bags are as cumbersome as these. There are light, capacious bags available which roll up into little packets not much larger than a child’s fist. I carry several in a small backpack (my handbag equivalent), along with my purse, glasses and phone. So whenever I buy something, I know I’ll have a bag to put it in.
In my constant quest to combine life skills with exercise for my Dancing Wombat daughter, I often walk with her to the local shops. There, she can practise the social interaction required when ordering a drink, buying a magazine, dropping off prescriptions and shopping at the supermarket. This Wombat needs to be taught the skills of queuing, watching and listening for the call of “Next”, making eye contact and speaking clearly while ordering or exchanging money, waiting for her change, saying “Thank you”, and moving away from the counter with her purchases before re-organizing them.
What seems simple or even natural for many people doesn’t come easily to her. So I hope that through frequent practice – rote learning – these life skills, patterns of interaction and social behaviours will become familiar and routine for her. Part of this is saying “No” to plastic bags. Instead of Dancing Wombat looking down and shaking her head when she’s asked, “Do you need a bag?” I’m trying to teach her to say, “No thank you, I have my own.”
I realised last weekend just how much of this practise is done with me, and not Hubby Wombat. And also that one of the patterns I’ve created has thrown up another scenario that needs to be worked through.
We were away on church camp at Phillip Island. During Saturday afternoon’s free time, we decided to walk into town to “get the steps up” and share a hot chocolate. The three boys were happily socialising with friends but Dancing Wombat’s peers had dispersed. Opportunity knocked.
Hubby wanted to buy a mozzie zapper, being particularly susceptible to these little beasties, and I suggested that Dancing Wombat could go into the supermarket with him. She could get some more steps and practise her shopping skills. Well. It proved a revealing exercise.
He emerged from the supermarket, clearly not in a good frame of mind. Dancing Wombat was trying to take the plastic bag from him. I raised my eyebrows. “Hmmm?”
“She caused all sorts of problems at the checkout, because she didn’t want a plastic bag,” he explained, trying to keep the bag away from our extremely agitated daughter.
“Problems?” I queried.
“I was at the self serve and she didn’t want a plastic bag, and then the weighing got mucked up and I had to do it again…” (I inwardly rolled my eyes… Not such a big deal?) “… because something something something… and, no – leave it ALONE!” This, to our daughter, who was desperately trying to get the mozzie zapper out of the plastic bag.
I forget the details, but our daughter was even more upset than her father over the whole situation.
“We don’t need the bag. Can I take it back?” she pleaded.
“No,” he replied. “I want it as a rubbish bag.”
“Daddy’s right.” I backed him up. “It’s really good to use our own, but we can use this bag again. It won’t be wasted.”
She’s nothing if not persistent. “But we have our own.” She turned to me. “Mum has bags. We don’t need a bag.”
Actually, today, Mum didn’t have bags as her backpack was at the camp. I turned around to show her.
“Do I have the bags with me?” I asked her. “Am I wearing my backpack today?” She hung her head and shook it in reply.
“Use your words please. Yes or no. Am I wearing my backpack today?”
More head shaking. At which point, I think I joined in her meltdown.
“Answer me please. Use your words. Am I wearing my backpack?” I was cross, and getting crosser. “Come on. Am I wearing my backpack? Yes or no?”
More head shaking, and now the tears started, but she’d given up trying to get hold of the plastic bag. Hubby, understandably embarrassed by this public display and showing more compassion than his seething wife, tried to calm me down. “Come on, this isn’t helping. Just let her be.”
But I’d had enough of head shakes as a mode of communication. “I’m fed up with it,” I fumed. “EVERY time we’re out, EVERY time someone says “Hello”. She just shakes her head. She needs to learn she has to use her words. People are really nice and they say it doesn’t matter but it DOES matter. And if we don’t teach her, who will?”
“That’s true,” he agreed, “But it’s not helping now.”
Of course, he was right, but I was stubbornly, unfairly, determined to hang out for that one word. And our daughter was just getting more and more upset. No wonder really. It was bigger than the plastic bag.
When I reflected later, I realised that there were several things disrupting Dancing Wombat’s familiar pattern:
- we were away from home on a camp with over seventy other people
- we were at a different supermarket
- she was shopping with Dad, not Mum
- Dad chose to use a plastic bag
- Mum didn’t have her backpack with the familiar reusable bags; and – worst –
- Mum had turned into scary, unsympathetic dragon lady with no understanding of what her daughter’s brain was trying to process.
This was a lot of change, which is always harder for those on the autism spectrum. However, I was by now galloping heedlessly on my high horse. “Do you know what she said at dance practice after school on Thursday?” I demanded of my husband, knowing full well that he didn’t. “One of the really lovely older girls said “Hello” to her, and she absolutely refused to reply. I asked her why, and she said ‘She’s not my friend.’”
Hubby was suitably aghast. “I think what she meant was that this girl wasn’t her close friend,” I continued, “and I talked to her about that. But she has to learn, and I’m at my wits’ end to know how to do it. She only has one more year of school left…” The end of school looms like the Apocalypse in my mind.
Dancing Wombat tried to move away and I sternly caught her arm to stop her. Hubby muttered about security cameras and it not being a good look. All completely correct, but not enough to move the two intractable females at odds on the path in front of him.
I don’t remember exactly how the situation resolved itself. I do remember calming down a little (not before time) and Dancing Wombat did eventually answer the question with words. We had a big hug and I apologised for losing my cool and being so revolting.
“But you must use your words, sweetheart. It’s REALLY important,” I told her.
“I won’t do it again,” she sniffled.
“And I’ll try not to be such a horrible grump again,” I promised in return. “Now, what about that hot chocolate?”
Change is constant. And when our kids seem to be dealing with it, we don’t pay attention. Like a swan gliding gracefully across a lake, we forget that its legs are paddling madly under the surface to keep it going.
My lovely girl was managing beautifully with the change of location, the change of routine, the hustle and bustle of camp meals with seventy other people and while I noticed her managing, I don’t think I appreciated how much effort this required on her part. Clearly, a lot, as a single plastic bag was the straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back.
Next time – there’ll be one – I’ll try not to saddle up my high horse. I’ll take some extra deep breaths. I’ll give us both time to consider our issues individually, before trying to work out a way through them. The learning process is for me as well as my daughter. Despite years of dealing with ASD, I still have much to learn.
And finally – a chalkboard behind the counter at Cheeky Goose where we had our hot chocolate had a salient message for me to contemplate as we sipped our drinks.
