A "Corn Maze" of Social Skills
It never ceases to amaze me how the simplest and most routine events can completely highlight all of Aisling’s most autistic traits. I’m also constantly amazed at how these events provide much-needed learning experiences to help my daughter practice social skills and work towards important developmental milestones.
This weekend, I took Aisling to a local farm for a Corn Maze event. We went with a dear friend and her two younger step-nieces – one six, and one nine years old. Aisling was cautiously optimistic about the event – extremely excited to see her friends and playmates, and very patient in the long line. As we waited, the other girls grew restless, and their grandfather scolded one of them. Aisling started to react – basically, she was going to question the grandfather’s authority verbally – but I whispered to her to not get involved, that this was not any of our business. Aisling has a very black-and-white sense of right and wrong, and very strong convictions about how relationships should work between parents and children (possibly because I tend to be diplomatic to a fault in my discipline with her) so I was nervous about what she might say and felt the need to interfere in the conversation. Aisling is definitely a child who will “tell it like it is,” and she hasn’t quite grasped the subtleties of language or the definition of “rudeness.” I believe this is a pretty common trait for many high-functioning autistic children, however.
Once we were actually in the Corn Maze itself, we wandered around for a while, letting the kids lead the way with their maps. Eventually, I realized that the children weren’t actually even trying to read the maps, and were instead guessing each turn they made. Aisling began to get extremely worried, and kept yelling out quite dramatically, “We’re doomed!” I assured her that we weren’t, and that we’d be able to find our way out without a problem. I took over the lead of the expedition, leading the kids safely to the checkpoints and eventually out of the maze.
One of the things I noticed while we were in the maze was that Aisling’s fine motor skills are still rather underdeveloped for a child her age. At each of the checkpoints in the corn maze, there was a small hole-punch that you were supposed to use to “punch out” the corresponding number on your map to track your progress. All of the girls, of course, wanted to punch out their own maps, and I noticed that the nine-year-old could handle the hole-punch swiftly and easily while Aisling and the six-year-old both struggled a great deal with this process. The girls would hold the maps steady for each other and would often need to use two hands to punch the holes correctly. This was the first time in several years I’d noticed a significant delay in Aisling’s fine motor skills, and I began to think I might need to request further work and therapy to assist her in this area.
Another one of Aisling’s autistic traits came into play as we waited in the line for the hayride to the pumpkin patch. Aisling’s most recent obsession is snakes – she reads articles about them on Wikipedia, looks up pictures and videos on YouTube. On our recent trip to the Knoxville Zoo, the big highlight for Aisling was the Reptile area, where she got to look at all sorts of different types of snakes in their glass cages. I even bought Aisling a rubber snake at the zoo which she named “Hiss” and carries around with her like a security blanket a great deal of the time. While we were standing in line for the hayride, she started asking everyone standing behind us what their favorite snakes were, if they were poisonous or not, and announcing that her favorite type of snake was a rattlesnake while quoting various facts about it. The people in line around us were either significantly older or younger, and as such they were interested in participating in this social interaction for a few minutes. I always breathe a sigh of relief when her attempts at social interaction actually work, when people talk to her and answer her sometimes bizarre and stilted questions. I always find her so interesting, delightful, and unique, so I take great pleasure when complete strangers seem to delight in these traits, as well.
All in all, the trip was a great success. Aisling had started out in the morning in a rather grumpy mood, and she was definitely much more energized and focused after our outing. She was able to focus on her remaining homework for the weekend and get it done without any problem. The exercise of walking nearly two miles along with the sensory stimulation of a bumpy hayride may have had something to do with it, or perhaps it was simply a child’s delight in other kids’ company and in doing something different and fun. Whatever the reason, encouraging her to step outside her usual limits and regular routine created an extremely positive effect for the rest of the evening, and we were even able to work on developing some social skills as we shared an interesting and fun experience with other children.