Vent and need for suggestions | Autism PDD

Moving can be terribly disorienting, especially for someone who is more visually oriented.

I think one more time book has a GREAT suggestion (albeit one that takes lots of fast work).  Can your ds hlep you decide how to arrange and decorate?  Making at least some of the decisions should help him.

If it has only been a month, that's not so bad.  My kids (NT and ASD alike) took quite a bit of time to get adjusted when we moved.   

Can you take him back to the outside, or even inside, of your old home?  Sometimes it helps to know that that place is still there, and also to realize, your own things are not still there.  This helped our kids a lot.  We ahd to go back to the old house to clean and fix up some stuff, and they came to realize that the house was no longer where their things or family was.

I used to have an office next door to a psychiatrist who ended up becoming my friend.   After I moved once, I had terrible insomnia for the first time in my life.   He told me to go home and decorate my bedroom completely, hang all the pictures on the wall, get the drapes up, dig out the bedding and remove any boxes.    He said I needed at least one room with familiar surroundings to feel secure and "at home".   Well, it worked.   Plus it was a good motivator to get things done.  

SO, when my son was 17 months old - we moved again.   And I got his room all finished before anything else.   Put all the same Thomas stuff on the walls, put up his same blue curtains.... and it really helped the transition for him.

Hope this helps and good luck.

 

Thanks everyone for the suggestions.  I have to say taht today was a great day for both of my boys which is  a rare concidence.  We did a study of a robotic dog at the UW and both kids had a ball and then took them to Olive Garden for dinner where they actually tried a couple new foods including salad.  I am hoping this means that they are starting to settle back into a routine and things will get back to normal.  I think Linda you had a good point on the room idea.  I have been painting their room since we moved in with the desert theme from Cars.  I even put a route 66 sign on their door.  I think I am going to take a break from it for a while and see if that helps with some of the stress levels they are having.  I figure in a couple weeks I will finish painting it and start on the next room.  I am doing their playroom as underwater Spongebob complete with the Pineapple house so I think that should make things a little more appealing to being in this house.  Our old apartment was sold out form under us and completely redone so I don't think he would know it was the same one we lived in if we went back. 

That's tough. My feelig is that they feel thattheir lives are totally out of
order and they are just flailing about from it. Do what you can to give
them a sense of predictability back -hang up a visual schedule and
structure the day the day kind of things. My ds is going to a new school
and we are making a binde rwith pictures of every building and person
that is new and a social story about change. You could make a social
story for them about the move and getting back into old routines in a new
place.
As for the potty training, what worked last time? You might just have to
take the step back and let him go through the training steps again.
Good luck. So this is my long vent.  We moved almost a month ago into a new house because they should our old apartments out from under us as condos.   Since we have moved I have seen totally regression with my oldest ds.  We went from him pottying in the toliet by himself to having accidents constantly.  The other issue I see is I have been driving him back and forth to school everyday until his last day which was Friday. During this whole period off time he has seemed to be okay then within the last week or so he has become extremely clinging.  He was crying at school and trying to run away because he thought we had left him.  Since then getting him to sleep on his own has been a task and currently it is 1 in the morning and he is curled up in my lap sleeping while I type because he won't stay in bed.  My other issue is that his little brother is also freaking out at this time and has started some of the behaviors we have been trying to control with my oldest ds.  He is a fighter and hits, kicks, etc.  If you put him in timeout he cries for a minute and then is back at it.  So far he and the little neighbor have gone at it already this week and given each other bloody lips.  He is also in the phase where he wants to potty train so he wants to be naked constantly and my oldest ds doesn't understand why I won't allow them both to be naked all day long.  I am ready to pull my hair out.... and to top it all off I am looking for a new job that is during they day instead of working through the night.  Any suggestions at all for how to calm this down and get my oldest ds pottying again would be fantastic.  Oh, my goodness -- you are SO ambitious in your decorating schemes!  I am envious!  Those sound great -- wil lshare pix when they are done?
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