On the Move

In treating children with Autism practicing Pediatric physical therapy or Relationship Development Intervention (RDI) here at Child and Family Development in Charlotte, NC, I see core difficulties in children with Autism as they try to manage the challenges of daily life.  People with autism have difficulty negotiating an emotional world where so many things are decided by how you feel about a situation.

This week I had a mother come to my therapy room and tell me her son (my client) was down at the car with his sister and wouldn’t come up. She said she thought he was overly tired and hungry. Could I please come help? Sure, I thought. No big deal. The moment he saw me, I knew he would come right up. He loves me and requests me all week long. I got down to the car, and sure enough there he was clinging to the outside of the car crying and saying he wanted to go to McDonalds and get chicken McNuggets. When he saw me, nothing changed. I was flabbergasted. I’ve seen him for almost 10 years and he had never done anything like this. I tried to catch him, pull him, drag him, bribe him with food, and nothing worked. He was crying and wanted to go to McDonald’s and get chicken McNuggets. I wondered since he had never done this before, should we let him go to McDonald’s and just skip PT? What would be the ramifications of this if we did? His mom asked me what we should do. I said more to myself than to his mom, “As soon as I figure out what is the best thing to do, I’ll do it.”

Isn’t life a lot like this? How many times in my life, have I thought, “If I just knew the right thing to do, I’d do it.” I’ve felt this way about friendships, relationships, sibling differences, work outs, medical issues and more. Don’t you just wish life came with a little book that you could look up in the index what the answer is? More times than not, the answer comes down to emotional decisions informed of course by experience, speculation, and your gut feeling about a situation. How do you know when it is time to choose a new friend, a new décor for the living room, a new school or a new behavior management technique for your child? When is it time to let an old friend go? It comes down to advice from all your friends (or maybe despite all the advice from your friends) and your final feelings on the matter. These kinds of choices and conflicts are natural challenges for people on the spectrum.

What happened with the child in the parking lot? The mom commented that her son had been doing this recently at school, lying in the floor crying and getting out of work. That’s all I had to hear, and in my gut, I knew the answer. I “helped” him in the building, and we got to work. 

Emotional choices and challenges task all of us, but are particularly challenging for people with Autism. Relationship Development Intervention targets the core deficits of autism to work on the building blocks of these skills. Call me if I can help you, (704) 332-4834 ext 114.