When change doesn’t bring rest

I’m ecstatic. Bringing in the weekly shop no longer means trudging up three flights of steps. We’ve moved and I feel a deep sense of peace – that my kids have a proper house and a postage stamp garden. I even love the astroturf, which I thought I would hate. I’m sat out there now, with a glass of iced tea, on what is the hottest day of what has been a great summer.  It feels such a privilege after eight years at the duplex, just to step outside with a drink, the kids upstairs, away, rather than under my feet.

But the peace is periodically broken. Jonah has been acting up.

They say – that authoritative voice that assures me that this is a ‘thing’ and not just Jonah –  they say children on the Autism spectrum adapt poorly to change. But with Jonah, this comes out in tangential ways. He’s been okay with going to bed in a new room; okay, even with Ava getting the mezzanine bed with the playhouse underneath that had previously, as a toddler, been his. But then, as a lanky boy with at least a foot more to grow, he’s ended up with the bigger room.

With the summer holidays in full flow, however, Jonah’s had more than enough change than he can cope with, and has taken refuge in his devices, the Wii, given by a friend following his broken collar bone, the DS bought by his grandmother, the iPad mini brought for the family by Father Christmas.

The half hour rule has gone out of the window, what with the move and the unpacking, but as it always has when Jonah’s given enough rope to hang himself with it, it’s been stressing him out inordinately. Today, after a warning about screaming every time Sonic the Hedgehog cops it, I took the Wii away. The devil was unleashed, and it’s getting stronger.

We had the classics, but this time, with added violence. Jonah has stated on a number of occasions that he hates me, but now he adds a thump as well. And quite often he aims them at his sister, who hovering silently nearby, annoys him beyond reason. Today, I had to lift her onto the kitchen work surface out of harm’s way.

It’s my fault. Stunned into a calm slap on his rump two days ago following a screaming fit over socks, he quieted, but seethingly. He’s hell bent on revenge and now asserts that he won’t listen to me ever ever again, he’s seen fit to dole out slaps hither and thither if he doesn’t like what he hears. When I calmly explain to him my reasoning, he screams and yells, covering his ears. When we walk away from him, he marauds through the house, wreaking havoc through our newly assembled lounge, hurling cushions awry. Luckily he hasn’t gone for anything breakable, yet.

It was quite comical, as maneuvering  Ava away from the hurly burly on a promise to make  lollies downstairs, he followed, and tried to interrupt proceedings, going so far as to remove the freezer plinth and wave it around, threateningly. Luckily soon after his new manny, Kev showed up, sweating after losing his way through the park to the new gaff, and Kate and Lola turned up minutes later, needing tea and childcare, which put paid to my sunny half hour painting my nails. An hour later, after forcible sunscreen application, and fishing nets had been dug out of their boxed hiding places, they were all of them dispatched to the eco-park only to return some hours later with a frog, who is currently turning desperate circles in the paddling pool, awaiting a return to the pond. It’s not just Jonah who doesn’t like change.

But isn’t it nice to have a a paddling pool in which to put a frog, if only temporarily?

This Daily Heil article discusses how children on the Autism spectrum spend twice as long playing video games – cue the predictable blame trhe parents responces. But interesting nonetheless.