One of the most difficult
things to deal with concerning Autism is a violent outburst. The
outbursts can catch you off-guard and at the most inconvenient moments.
This frequently happens in the middle of the night, when the house is
quiet. I am awakened quite often at 1 or 2 AM to the sound of stomping
or being pulled from bed by my 19 year old autistic son, John.
Those not familiar with the nature of the outburst can become
frightened. We had it happen just about everywhere we've taken John.
Being out in public with John is not the big problem. The problem is
when we are in close proximity, such as in a vehicle. He will bang his
head on the windows or anyone close by. Thank God he hasn't broken any
of my windows yet, although he has broken some on his school bus.
Fortunately, John is very good about always putting on his seatbelt,
which is a good thing if he's going to have an outburst.
It's become especially difficult to take him shopping. He absolutely
does not like to be standing still and waiting. But we have found
little tricks to get us through a day. For one, he likes to push the
shopping cart, and he likes to be the one to pick up stuff. When we go
to Sams Club, we get a flat bed cart and let him sit on it.
John does like to walk. When he was younger, we would take him mall
walking. In school, when he is frustrated, they walk him around and it
calms him. They say he uses it as a self-monitoring tool, which is a
big accomplishment for John.
His outbursts really didn't get bad until about 3 years ago. At the
time we didn't have cell phones, we only had one vehicle, and that
meant I could not be reached at my job most of the time. This became a
real problem when the school started calling and needed someone to come
pickup John from school. To complicate matters, my job required some
travel, which meant I may be at a customer site where I could not leave
even if I wanted to. Worse than that, at the time, a sniper was
victimizing the DC area. This really made the whole situation that much
worse.
The outburst seems to be started when John was prescribed Seroquel. It
took some time to figure that out, but things did get better once we
stopped giving it to him. We have tried some things with his diet, but
let's face it, the average person cannot afford to but all natural,
organic foods that have no Gluten, Casein, or MSG.
It's not really funny, but it is somewhat amusing to see how some
people react to John when he's having an outburst. A few years ago, we
were visiting my in-laws in Florida. It was the week of Christmas, and
we were at the local mall. Now, compared to any mall in the Washington,
DC area, this mall was not crowded. We'd been shopping and walking
around for a few hours. At about 3PM, we were in the mall corridor when
John decided he'd had enough. He started hitting his head on us,
stomping, and yelling at the top of his lungs. Then he decided he was
going to bang on the window of the Radio Shack store. People began to
scatter light like rats, obviously unaware of the nature of what was
going on. We quietly manhandled John and headed for the exit. We almost
expected the police to come after us, or to stop us somewhere along the
way home.
John
Crawford is the father of 19 year old John (IV) who is autistic.
