Autism Transitions

This blog is more or less a follow-up to my last blog. I had alluded to transitions that relate to my son’s age—fifteen.

My son recently transitioned to getting himself to school on his own (mostly) without help from Mom (he’s been on time since this transition, including making his own breakfast).

We are also working on other transitions with our fifteen-year-old.

What transitions?

The first one was just a recent conversation, but a significant one.

We discussed spending money on gifts for others—his own money.

Up until now, my husband and I have purchased gifts for relatives, friends, whomever. When our son went to a birthday party, for example, I bought the gift that he brought.

I was the money source.

Well, we discussed how to make this transition.

We discussed how he has to begin to use some of his own money to buy these things.

Why?

We feel it’s the right thing to teach our son.

How to start this transition?

We decided to talk about the upcoming Christmas. We felt, for the first time, he could use his own money to buy a gift for his parents and maybe his grandparents or his uncle.

We wanted to keep it small for the first time out.

The gifts do not need to be big, just thought out for each person

We explained to our son that Mommy and Daddy can’t keep buying gifts that are supposed to be from him for him. This transition is necessary, yet another one that happens when a child reaches a certain age.

It’s part of the growing up and changing—becoming an adult.

Were there any other transitions?

Yes, and this one was delightful because it came from my son and it was really adult-like.

My son has an “older” computer, however we recently took it to a computer technician and got it “cleaned up.” We did this because his computer had some issues and he had been using our computer, often creating a logjam for computer time.

His computer runs better now, and we improved our wifi connection as well.

Still, my son downloaded a game on it, and the game doesn’t run well (it lags a lot).

Well, we had told our son that the number one priority for his computer was school work, not games. So, at this time, we were not at all interested in getting him another computer. We had just put money into cleaning it up, and it ran well now, for its intended use.

My son accepted that explanation.

Then, he came to me with a plan. Quite a reasonable one at that.

What was the plan?

He decided to save money to either upgrade this computer (with more memory or a better hard drive) or to even buy a new computer.

He not only wanted to save his money for this plan, but also asked how to earn some money. He wanted to know if there were chores at home (or even at his grandmother’s house) where he could get paid. (We’re not talking a lot here).

Just his past weekend, I had him in the yard helping me with a project and mowing the lawn.

I figure he’s motivated to improve his computer situation since he’s never been that much of an outdoor chore person. It went well and he earned a little toward his goal.

More importantly, he displayed some maturity by coming to us with a reasonable plan of action.

It’s a great step towards helping him become a responsible adult. Autism Transitions.