Adventures in Autism

I’ve decided to take a break from writing about day care to share a funny quirk of parenting B that used to frustrate me, and now just amuses me.

B does not have near enough lead time for Christmas.  He needs a lot longer than a month to get excited about it, I suppose.  This week he is very excited because “Santa is coming!”  It does not matter how many times I explain that Santa already came, and I show him the gifts Santa brought and the pictures we took that day.  He continues to insist that “Santa is coming!  Santa is bringing presents!”

This happens every year.  He helps me decorate the tree, he unwraps gifts as fast as I can wrap them (I do all my wrapping on Christmas Eve after he is in bed now), and he is completely disinterested in the general festivities on Christmas morning.  I have to force him to open presents that day, and the opening of gifts is an all day affair.

I still don’t understand why he is so eager to open presents on December 1-24, but on December 25 he just cannot be bothered at all.  He lives to challenge my expectations!  This used to be a source of tremendous frustration for me, but once I realized it was a pattern, I decided to just go with it and relax.

Since about December 30, he has been watching Rudolph on DVD and talking about Christmas.  The tree is down, the decorations are gone, and the gifts are half-forgotten in his toybox, but he is finally excited about the holiday!

I think I need to get his internal clock adjusted.  It’s off by a few weeks.  It’s either that or put up my Christmas tree right after Halloween so he is ready for Christmas sometime near the actual day.

Now I am trying to decide when I can hide the Rudolph DVD without causing trauma.  I might go crazy if we are still singing “Silver and Gold” in July.