Flying With Autism

Flying with autism can be a challenge. We have only attempted it twice. Five years ago we went to Seattle, Washington. I was not a blogger back then but I remember the trip going fairly well and the airport staff being very accommodating. We were nervous about getting through security without a meltdown so we practiced “going through security” at home a few times before the trip and we read a social story about airports and the whole process. Tate was eight years old, and although he was big for his age, he still was identifiable to everyone as a child. At the time he was just getting over five-years of anxiety that revolved around his shoes. Taking his shoes off in public was a big deal, a really big deal. But like I said, he was beginning to outgrow that and we practiced at home. He knew exactly what to expect and he did a fantastic job.

This time I hoped things would go just as smoothly. We talked at home about what to expect. We watched a video online that was supposed to prepare children to fly. Tate was confident he was ready to fly. Just as I have found in many other situations though, how well things go often depend on one single employee’s attitude or behavior. One person can mean the difference between success or failure.

At the airport this morning, as we passed from the unsecure area into the screening area, I coached Tate through the removal of his coat and his shoes, which he did as slowly and methodically as he does everything. There is no rushing Tate. He was holding up the line. People behind us were patient and I was pretty sure they could tell he had a disability. They might have even heard me talking to the guard who stamped our boarding pass only seconds before. The guard had raised his eyebrows a little when I accompanied my six-foot tall son up to the counter to help him, so I explained, “This is my son. He has autism.” I had been afraid the guard might ask him for an ID because of his size, not realizing he is only thirteen. Tate becomes more socially awkward than usual when he is in unfamiliar surroundings and put on the spot.

Once Tate got his shoes and coat into bins and onto the rollers, I realized he was wearing a watch. I asked him to take it off. He did this, slowly. The people behind us were beginning to get bins and go on around us and that was fine. No one was critical. In fact, most smiled at me as I apologized for being “in the way.” And then, one of the guards, an older man with a full head of gray hair, began barking at Tate and I to speed it up and move along. I looked up and said, “We are doing the best we can. He has a DVD player in his backpack. Should we take it out?” He snapped, “There is no time to take electronics out of the bag now. You are holding up the line.” So…. I put Tate’s backpack into a bin, my computer bag into another bin, slid them down the rollers, and we walked through the scanner. Tate went first and he was beginning to look intimidated. Rushing Tate will automatically slow him down. Tate went into the scanner. I modeled for him how he should raise his hands. As soon as he was on the other side, he began asking me for his watch. I went into the scanner but in my rush to stay with Tate and appease the annoyed guard, I neglected to remove my own shoes, so I had to go back out of the scanner and put my shoes in a bin, me on one side and Tate on the other, him asking me to find his watch. I apologized to the guard and explained that I was frustrated because of another guard’s rudeness. She knew exactly what I was speaking of and apologized to me for his behavior. I made it through the scanner to help Tate who was very nervous about that beloved watch. Guess who was now on the other side of the scanner now too? The nice gray headed man! And he was loudly asking who had left their things on the rollers. Of course the things he referred to were Tate’s. The guard was rushing us to move faster. I helped Tate grab his shoes, coat, and backpack, and we moved off to the side. I showed him I had his watch and I shoved it into my pocket so not to hold up anyone who did not want to wait while he slowly put that watch back on his wrist. Priority was getting those shoes back on and finding the rest of the family. I grabbed my own things. My shoes had just come through the machine. I had easily found my coat and my shoes, but my computer bag was nowhere to be seen. It should have come through right after Tate’s backpack. Tate was still worried about that watch and I needed to catch up to the rest of the family so I actually forgot for a few seconds that I was still missing that bag and walked away. After we found the rest of the family I exclaimed, “My computer bag! I forgot it!” So…. back I went to the security screening area. There was the same gray-headed guard, holding up my bag and asking loudly, “Whose bag is this?” I thought, “Seriously. There are six or eight guards working here. And I get to deal with him again!” I told him it was my bag and apologized for leaving it. He asked if there was a laptop inside and I told him there was. He asked why I had not removed it from the bag when I sent it through the scanner. I told him that he had told me that we were holding up the line and that I did not have time to remove electronics. He snapped that I had only asked about a DVD player in a backpack. I took a deep breath and I said, “My son has autism. I was trying my best to help him get through security but you were pushing us and trying to hurry us so it was hard to deal with both him and you. You were rude to us and my son was moving as fast as he could move. We would have gone through faster if you would have been nicer.” He grumpily replied, “There was a long line behind you” as if that totally excused his rudeness. I noticed that other guards were listening and he did too. I was glad. I’m not so sure he was. He removed my laptop from my bag, scanned it with a wand, put it back into my bag. He handed it to me without another word. There were so many things I wanted to say but instead I muttered, “Thank you.”

Flying 

So, when you ask how Tate has handled our travels so far, I would have to say, with the exception of ten minutes of intolerance from one grumpy man, a small ‘bout of anxiety over his watch being off his wrist for mere minutes, and the fact that I forgot to bring his chap stick after I assured him I had it, Tate has had a great experience. Did you know the same lip balm you can buy at Walmart in Kansas for about one dollar costs $4.25 in the St. Louis airport? Considering the hours it took to get from Kansas to New York City and the many people we have come in contact with, one intolerant man, a few minutes of anxiety, and the inflated price of a chap stick, has definitely not put much of a damper on things for him or any of the rest of us.

Shoes: Fetish or Fashion?

In my last post, I spoke of Tate’s attachment to objects, and I spoke briefly about his shoes.  Mentioning the shoes, brought back a lot of memories for me.  I’m sure Tate’s attachment to his shoes was partly because of the familiarity and routine that went with wearing the same shoes every day.  However, it was more than just that. 

When Tate was at preschool, the attachment to his shoes sometimes got in the way of his daily activities.  There were times when Tate was expected to remove his shoes.  At rest time, or for water play, or sand play, the shoes needed to come off and Tate was stressed.  There were occasional art projects when the kids were supposed to trace their feet, or even make footprints with paint that caused Tate to melt-down.  Paint caused sensory over-load for Tate, even when he was using his hands, so the removal of shoes was a double whammy.  There were a couple of games the teachers played with the students during circle time that caused Tate a lot of anxiety.  One game called for the children to remove one shoe and throw it into a box or bucket.  A child was asked to pull a shoe from the container and take it to its owner, thus teaching matching skills.  Mercifully, the teachers made sure Tate’s show was on top, and back on his foot as soon as possible.  There was another game that was similar and I think both shoes had to come off for that game.  We wanted Tate to take part in as many activities as possible and learn to deal with these kinds of things, so he was forced to participate most of the time.  Tate got plenty of warnings before it was time to take his shoe(s) off and plenty of reassurance that his shoe(s) would only be off for a short time.  I watched circle most days through a two-way mirror and it was hard not to intervene, run into the room to get his shoe back for him.  When Tate becomes anxious it is hard for me to watch.  He seems to be in pain physically. 

When Tate was eight we planned a family trip to Seattle.  It was to be Tate’s first time to fly.  I did not know how Tate would handle the flight.  I had heard some pretty awful stories from people about flying with children who had autism.  Tate’s behavior consultant suggested a social story.  She reminded me Tate would be expected to remove his shoes when we went through security.  She also reminded me about how different the bathrooms look on a plane, another potential trial for Tate.  I am usually able to anticipate and prepare Tate for hardships he will face, but I had not even thought about the difficulties of getting Tate to walk through security.  Any one part of the whole process could have been hard on him, but especially the removal of his shoes.  Allowing his shoes to ride on a conveyor belt would be another potential problem.  Yikes, I was getting worried.  We read the social story several times and acted out “going through security.”  Pretending and imagining are hard things for Tate to do so acting out a scenario is difficult but we tried.  Tate had lots of questions about it all and was quite anxious as he got used to the idea of giving up his shoes to a stranger.  When the day came to leave on our trip, we rushed through security without a hitch.  Tate was nervous and he did stim but, overall, he did very well.  I credit the social story and the practicing.  Thank goodness Tate’s wonderful behavior consultant anticipated the problems and helped us to prevent them.  The airplane ride turned out to be one of Tate’s favorite parts of the vacation.

Tate seems to have outgrown most of his anxiety over shoes.  He still cannot tie a bow so I buy Velcro shoes.  I found a shoe store that carries them in adult sizes.  Tate’s feet are huge now so we just buy the same shoe every time, one size bigger and he hardly notices we got new ones.  Shoe shopping used to be so traumatizing for Tate and now it is not an issue.  I sure hope the Velcro shoes go all the way to size 15 because I imagine his feet will grow as big as his brothers’ feet have.  His feet are already bigger than his brothers’ feet were at age ten.

Shoes are an issue for Sydney too but in a very different way.  Sydney does not form unnatural attachments to inanimate objects. She has favorite toys and clothes but no more than any typically developing child would.  She does, however, LOVE shoes.  Sydney doesn’t get attached to any one pair.  She loves them all.  She learned at a very early age, to say “my shoes are hurting my feet,” as we walked past the shoe department in a store.  I, being the intelligent person that I am, only got “taken” a few times before I figured out the game she was playing.  Sydney’s favorite shoes are flip-flops.  She cannot wear the cheap ones because the plastic gives her blisters, and her high tolerance for pain allows her to ignore the blisters until they are huge sores. (See my earlier post called “Does it Hurt” for discussion about pain tolerance.) I have to buy her flip-flops that have fabric between the toes, and even then, watch for her feet to get sore.  I tried just avoiding flip-flops for her entirely but she took all the laces, straps, and buckles off all her shoes trying to create flip-flops herself.  She just loves them so.  I have to hide them for the fall and winter.  I used to toss them onto a top shelf in my closet.  I have had to find a much better hiding place because the temptation is too much for Sydney’s limited impulse control.  She knew those shoes were up there and climbed my shelves to get them down whenever I was not watching.  Most of my older kids would not have disobeyed like Sydney does, and if they had, they would have learned from a single spanking not to climb the shelves or attempt to get something off-limits.  Sydney does not learn from a spanking and she cannot plan ahead and remember the consequences of her actions.  It amazes me continually that Sydney does not seem to realize she will be found-out if she wears shoes I took away from her.  The impulse control to touch, grab, or obtain things that she wants, is just too great for her to resist.  Exposure to alcohol in the womb took the ability to control her impulses.  No amount of talking, reasoning, or consequences for her actions can give that back to her.  One of my biggest fears for Sydney is that she will someday be in jail because she could not resist the impulse to shop lift and steal things.  I have read that a large percentage of the people in our prisons today, show signs of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS), thus they have little impulse control and they have poor judgment.  They do not learn from the consequences of their past actions or think about what the consequences of their crimes will be.  FAS is a birth defect that mothers (BIRTH mothers) could completely eradicate.  If no more babies were born with FAS the number of people in prison would drop dramatically in a few years.  A child should not have to pay the price for a birth mom’s binges.  It is a life sentence.