Fire alarms and other windmills.

People with autism frequently latch onto things to be afraid of. They either run from these things or lash out at them in an attempt to make them go away. It's often related to sensory issues like the fact that for a couple of years I couldn't blow dry my hair or use the blender - scary, loud noises were out. We had meltdowns in parking lots over loud engines and I once got cranky with a neighbor whose friend sat on his motorcycle in the driveway, revved the engine really loud for a long time and then peeled out just for funsies. By the end of it my son was screaming in the living room and it took a long time to get him to settle down. I don't expect the world to adjust to him but I wanted our neighbors to know that their motorcycle friends needed to act like they were in a residential neighborhood. Luckily, the wife was just as angry as I was and any future motorcycles did their funsies elsewhere.

About a year and a half ago my son decided that elevators are scary because there is a sign by the call button that says to not use it during a fire. He would approach the button, fingers in ears, push it then scurry back to me and go through his new script. (This is my son and me in a classic question/answer script) "There is no fire?" "No, no fire." "The elevator is working?" "Yes, it's working." "We don't use it in a fire?" "Nope." "The fire button is for firemen only?" "Yes, firemen only." We would then ride elevator, fingers in ears and jumping for safety as soon as the door opened.

I gotta be honest, we now take the stairs if it's less than 4 floors.

A couple of weeks ago my son expanded his fire on elevator fear to encompass all fire alarms. He became, almost overnight, afraid of seeing any fire alarm or sprinklers in the ceiling. This brought our options of places to take him to 1. our house 2. other peoples houses. All public buildings are required to have fire alarm systems in plain sight so that they can be used in an emergency. So any trip anywhere began with tension in the parking lot, fingers in the ears at the door and a touch of panic as soon as the fire system was found. (You better believe he looked for it!) He honestly felt unsafe and would turn to his script for comfort. (Same question/answer format) "There's no fire?" "No, no fire." "No one will pull the fire alarm?" "No one will pull the alarm." "Are we going home?" "No, we just got here and I need to shop." "But we have to go home!" "We will in a minute." "How many minutes?" "5" "How many seconds?" "A lot." "Is there a fire here?" "Gaaaaaahhh!!"

Needless to say this was no going to work. He was upset, I was having a hard time with patience and I couldn't convince him to settle down. My only hope was bribing him with soda when we were done if he stopped talking. So I asked a couple of friends and they recommended social stories, a tool that has worked wonders for us in the past. I didn't know exactly what to write though and I was a little afraid of making it worse. Luckily, I also put out an email to his autism teacher and she wrote and gave him the social story the next day. I haven't taken him to a store yet but I have high hopes because it's a good story and he has read it many times over.

I went ahead and put the story up as the photo for this post so that you can see exactly what a social story is. (I think that if you click on it you can see a bigger version) For my son it really seems to help cross from words into stuff he fully understands. He's a great reader but if you pair it with pictures then he seems to really see and understand better. We have used them for all kinds of things from potty training to proper behaviors during the holidays. They were an almost daily tool in his younger years but now we just break them out when needed. You'll notice the cool little pictures - those are part of a program that automatically pairs an icon with the words you type, making the story easier to illustrate. His teacher did a good and thorough job in my opinion and I totally owe her some chocolate or something!

Leave any questions in the comment section. I'll post later about how well this worked after we go to a store.