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Community Corner

Camping At Home

Parents bond with autistic son during last week's power outages.

Along with thousands of other Highland Park residents, during  

Based on what I was hearing out my window, I had a feeling right away that this was no ordinary storm, and that this outage would last for more than just a few minutes. 

And that was bad news: Power outages and autism do not go well together.

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Many kids with autism have anxiety issues, and my son is no exception. So it was not surprising that Kai got anxious as soon as the lights flickered and then went out. It happened right at his bedtime, just as we were about to turn out the lights in his room for the night anyway. But once he knew that the power was out, he became wide awake.

I tried to calm him, but as the heavy rains and gusts of wind rattled his window, he got more nervous. I ended up having to lie down in the extra bed in his room before he finally relaxed enough to fall asleep.

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Difficulty with change

When we got up the next morning and found out that the power still wasn’t on, I worried about how that might affect Kai. Most kids with autism do not handle change well, and a house with no electricity means a lot of change from the usual routine. 

At school, even a minor shift in schedule can throw Kai off. Once he shouted at the teacher just because she had the kids line up a different way than usual when they were running late to go to the school library. He also once caused a disturbance when his math class was canceled in place of a special program on conservation. 

At home, we try to stick to a regular schedule, and give Kai plenty of notice whenever we do know of an upcoming change. 

But, with a power outage, there is no time to prepare.

The next morning

When Kai woke up the next morning, he was surprisingly unconcerned that the lights were still out. He actually thought it was fun to eat breakfast by candlelight.

But then he began to realize that other things were affected, too. 

“Can I go on the computer?”  

No, that runs on electricity.

“Does the television work?”  

Nope.

“Can we do Wii?”  

No, not that either.

Now, I never really thought of us as a family that was overly dependent on electronics or media. When Kai was young and obsessed with letters, he watched Wheel of Fortune regularly. But these days he rarely watches any television program, other than showing an interest in all of the numbers on the weather forecast when we happen to have to the news on. 

And while he likes watching DVDs, his busy school and therapy schedules mean he usually doesn’t have time for more than a half hour or so a day. 

But the one electronics-related thing he has been doing more often lately is going online, usually to find something related to the periodic table. He has become quite adept at discovering all sorts of information on the chemical elements.  Just on YouTube alone, he’s found dozens of songs about the periodic table or videos of people discussing various elements. Who knew that would be such a popular topic?

For my wife and I, the occasions when Kai surfed the Internet were rare respites from the constant attention he typically requires. Now, with our Internet unavailable, we realized how much we had come to rely on YouTube. So I became the anxious one. What were we going to do?

Camping at home

But you know what? Kai did not fall apart.

He dug out an old board game that we hadn’t played in a long time. We enjoyed “camping” in our house. We read books by lantern. We had fun trying to eat up all the ice cream before it completely melted. 

We bonded as a family.

Early Thursday morning, we heard the beep of a clock as it regained power. It had been off for 32 hours. That was not nearly as long as some of our neighbors, but it was the longest I had ever gone without power in my house.

I am happy to have all of our modern conveniences again. I am thankful that our situation wasn’t as serious as others. But I’m also glad we had one day without electricity. It showed me that my son might be better able to deal with change than he was before. 

And, it reminded me that for all the marvels of modern technology, nothing beats low-tech bonding time to bring a family together.

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