(The Emergency Game, Adventures To Share & Village Goats)

Many of our kids love structure of time and activities ….. therefore, so do many of us parents. School is dismissing soon for the holidays, and we will have the kids home ever-more-so during this time of COVID-19 shutdown.

What John needs isn’t more stuff. Instead, he needs a greater database of experiences, to think more of others and to build his vocabulary.

It will be a much quieter, different kind of Christmas at our house. John’s brother will be staying in Oregon. John’s beloved cousin/nephew and family will be staying at their home. John’s dad went into hospice care on Christmas Day last year, and on to heaven mid-January. Bin, our exchange student, is back in Vietnam. So, things are a lot quieter.

Plus, puberty is here, and so is his rising awareness of the world around him.

So, we need some new ideas.

Such as: He is getting a village goat for Christmas. Where the village will be, we don’t know. But I bet we will talk more about geography. The World Vision goat he is donating will be surely loved and will have a great life somewhere, providing micro-economic support to an extended family.

Another thing we will be trying: Have you ever had a list of things you wanted to do and yet ran out of time? We have. So, this year, we are being more purposeful. Each desired adventure is written on a note to be wrapped, and one-a-day will be chosen by John for the next day. This will get us out of the house for part of each day, and still allow for some goofing off (John’s favorite thing to do).

Rather than allowing the hours to drift into endless electronics (other than the Raspberry Pi component Santa is getting John), we will continue to have his daily list to get done first. (Raspberry Pi may move up the list hierarchy.)

It’s my poor planning if there isn’t time on that list for shared mom/son conversation about life. One of the results of all his interventions and the natural process of growing up has been his increased interest in life around him, including urgency and emergencies. (I want him to learn to hustle, to move faster, not to dillydally….. you know what I mean, right?)

These days, we see ever-higher stakes on why we must educate our children of neurodiversity to somehow handle the chaos of the world. One of our worst parental fears: What if they get caught in the wrong place at the wrong time? They won’t be seeking trouble, but could slip into it accidentally.

Some of our young people have a challenge in processing complex requests, putting sentences together under pressure and following rapid instructions. What if our kids get caught up in something they don’t understand? They don’t sense the danger nor knows how to handle it?

Therefore, we practice. We practice what to do and we practice short sentences he can use when the pressure is on.

We have to train developmental delay to see traps ahead, to calculate social risks, to pay attention to the clues from others. By no choice of their own, our kiddos are naive, distracted, sensory-overwhelmed and challenged in processing language.

And yet, adapting to these risks is what helps them step into their desires, their motivations and to be able to move into their adult lives.

So how do we get them to react faster and be more aware of such dangers?

We are playing the Emergency Game (audio podcast link) at home: processing each Amber alert, every ambulance siren. Asking the question: Is it real or pretend? When a firetruck goes by, what is happening there? When we go anywhere, can he find his way back? I let my kid lead the way retracing our steps. A gathering of people these days will catch our eye: What is going on? Is it an emergency? Does he need to do something? Or need to escape to safety? What is safety, exactly?

Randomly, I will playfully holler at him to “come here, quick”. He dillydallies, so I call out “emergency!”, and he laughingly comes trotting over. “Doesn’t seem like an emergency to me, Mom” he says. So we label that a pretend one.

Years ago, I made these cards to give away when my son would have a bad-decision-emergency, and onlookers wanted to give me an earful. As you already know, helping your child through such an important and urgent teachable moment requires your full focus. Not much time to educate advice-givers, you have your hands full. The times that I ignored the spectators and didn’t say anything to educate them, I felt shame and regretted they still had their wrong presumptions.

With these cards, I could hand them a bit of understanding, and then focus on helping re-direct my child through our own little emergency.

What ideas do you have?

We have been working on the workshop “The Emergency Game: Training Neurodiversity To Be Aware of the Unexpected, Avoid Danger & Practice Escape from Entrapment”. (video link).

Our kids need good solid neural pathways and awareness of emergency-responses. They need to know how to read body language and tone of voice. So they have will automatic tools to use to survive if they are ever in the wrong place at the wrong time.

So, in this season of forced leisure, social isolation and slower pace of everything, it’s my mom-job to keep him bored enough to keep his brain busy. If I let him fade into the black hole of electronics, it will displace the deeper, creative, critical thinking his future needs.

So we will set and keep some boundaries.

Perhaps some of our ideas may spark something in your family.

Let’s keep talking.

With respect to all,

Gayle