Drops in the bucket
It was raining and I had one preschooler to get from the parking lot to the school. The toddler had to come along too, because you can’t leave toddlers in the car by themselves.
Toddlers and preschoolers don’t like you when it’s raining and you’re in a hurry. They either lift up their feet and execute very exaggerated, enthusiastic stomps in the middle of a puddle sending water up their legs, pants, diaper, and everyone else in close proximity, (which is you because you’re holding their hand trying to lead them away from all the water hazards in the parking lot), or they stand petrified in the middle of the parking lot because there’s water running down their body, from their head, into their eyes, and down their arms and legs and toes.
W was the toddler, J the preschooler–the petrified child who refused to move from the parking lot to the school door. There was only one entrance that was unlocked at all times–the entrance by the red sign with the yellow arrow you see in the above picture and it was probably less than 100 steps away from where we parked. There was another door (the exit door) about 30 steps from our car, that always remained locked from the outside. But that day, teachers were letting water logged moms and kids through the locked door and since it was the shortest distance from point A to point B, I shuffled that toddler and preschooler through the parking lot to take that opportunity.
“Nooo!!! Not that way! Not that way! NOOOO!!!!” J screamed, and fell into a complete, disastrous, meltdown. I was dragging his slippery body, (and W’s too) down the hallway. It took the help of another teacher (not J’s preschool teacher, but someone else) in the hallway to get him finally to his classroom. A good 15 minutes to get him to calm down. I was close to tears.
When J was finally calmed down, J’s preschool teacher pulled me aside and said, “tomorrow, I want you to come into the school through the exit door again.”
“What? Are you crazy?” I said. “He’s going to have another meltdown. In his mind there’s only one way in the school–and that’s through the entrance. No exceptions.”
“Exactly. And we need to get him to be okay with taking the ‘wrong door.’ His autism makes him feel like he has to do things a certain way or else the world is going to end. We need to teach him that the world isn’t going to end if he doesn’t take the same way to school every day. We need him to start learning to be flexible. It might take a week or two, maybe longer for him to be okay with the new way.”
And so for the next week and a half, W, another teacher, and I took J kicking and screaming through the “wrong” door to school until he was okay with it. In fact he became so okay with it, when his teacher decided he was flexible enough to switch back to the “right” door, he had another meltdown. He would only take the “wrong” door.
“You’re going to just have to take him again kicking and screaming through the “right” door again until he’s okay with it,” she told me.
And so W, another teacher, and I took J kicking and screaming through the “right” door again. This time it took him less than a week to be okay with it again.
A small, painful drop in the bucket to increase J’s flexibility.
That bucket is oh so very large. We’ve been adding drops to that flexibility bucket for more than ten years now, and life always seems to make that bucket bigger, but I think we’re finally getting to the point where we’re starting to accumulate some real, legitimate drops that are finally filling that bucket closer to capacity.
Friday was a reminder of the importance of the flexibility bucket and how much we’ve filled it. Because after Steve and I picked up J and W from school we decided to pick up flowers for the garden and this happened on our way to Home Depot:
It was hot, 90F and the four of us were stranded in the Holiday Inn parking lot. The kids were tired and thirsty after a long day and week from school. Steve jacked up the car and proceeded to change the tire, upbeat and in a really good mood because “this was a great learning experience for the kids to see.”
That learning experience ended up being an hour and a half in the parking lot, because after we got the lugnuts and hubcap off, we had a terrible time getting the tire off. I retrieved the manual from the glove compartment because we thought “it must be a Prius thing and there’s something different we need to do that we’re not doing.” The sun was unbearable. There were rain clouds in the distance. Someone had stopped by earlier to offer us help, but we were at the beginning of the process and figured we didn’t need any help. At this point I was wishing we had taken that kind man up on his offer.
But although we spent an hour and a half in the scorching heat and everyone was in a grumpy mood, no one had a meltdown. J wasn’t mad because we hadn’t made it to Home Depot yet. He wasn’t mad because he wasn’t allowed to sit in the car. In fact, he found his own spot under a tree by the side of the road to try to keep cool. It was dinner time and no one was having a meltdown that we were missing dinner.
We called the mechanic at Costco (because we had ordered tires earlier that week because we knew this tire had a screw in it–and for the record Costco said we’d be just fine driving on it until the new tires arrived) and they suggested that the old tire had some corrosion on it and that we should try kicking around the tire. Of course, all of us had sandals except J (because of his pronation, he can’t wear sandals). After a small but minor protest, J let me borrow his shoe so I could kick the tire. Eventually it came off, we drove to Costco to get the tire fixed and then made it home–3 hours later from our departure time. No Home Depot. No flowers. And a really late dinner.
This story might not sound like a very big deal, but as I stood in that parking lot in the blazing heat I thought back to that time in J’s preschool parking lot. How one tiny change in plans made for one epic meltdown and three weeks of training his brain to handle going into his school building through a different door. I thought of how grateful I was for all the years of tiny drops in the bucket, drops we’ve been putting in even just a few weeks ago. I credit a lot of Friday’s success to J sitting around forever in hot weather for 3-4 hours, just to run one race. I credit years of teachers and coaches pushing J to do uncomfortable things–things that trigger meltdowns because now life for him is 100X better. The flat tire was no picnic for any of us, but we weren’t managing a stressful meltdown on top of it.
So to everyone who is trying to fill their bucket, or to anyone who is helping someone else who is trying to fill your bucket, keep at it. Those tiny, painful drops of struggle and lessons in endurance will start to pay off, and they’ll pay off more and more often. It will be worth it. It will make those hard times down the road a little easier. Promise.
