Several
years ago I wrote this short piece about Aaron and the covers on his bed.
Helping Aaron change his sheets today
reminded me once again of another characteristic of Aspergers - an insistence
on sameness. Aaron wants every wrinkle
pulled out of his covers when we're putting them on his bed, and there is one
smaller blanket that must be centered.
Not only that, but he likes several blankets, in addition to his sheet,
and they must be put on his bed in a particular order.
I remember once, several years ago, that as I
helped him change his sheets I decided that there was a better order for the
blankets to be put on the bed. My order
made it easier to tuck the sheet and blankets under the mattress. So I matter-of-factly showed him my plan as I
changed up his plan for the Order of the Covers. He said he didn't like it. So very patiently I showed him again that my
Order of the Covers was a good Order of the Covers. The same covers were included as always but
in a different order. Aaron stood there
pondering and the only word that he heard, as I would soon discover, was the
word "different." Not the word
"better" or the word "good," but only the word
"different" - which is not a favorite word of Aaron's. He complied with my plan at that time, and so
we completed the bed making with the new Order of the Covers. I trotted happily on my way without giving
that exchange a further thought.
Until the next morning. Aaron usually makes his bed before leaving
the house, but something that next morning didn't seem right about his bed and
so I took a look. AH HAH!! After we had gone to bed the night before,
Aaron got up and changed the Order of the Covers back to HIS Order of the
Covers. "Well, well, well," I
thought. Two can play this game! And I changed the Order of the Covers back to
MY Order of the Covers. HaHa! That'll show him! Neither of us said a word that night before
bed, but don't you know that when I got up the next morning he had changed the
Order of the Covers back to HIS Order of the Covers again?! We went back and forth then for several days
in our silent battle over the Order of the Covers. Finally, though, I faced reality. Did I really want to spend the rest of my
life remaking his bed every morning? Was
this issue really worth that? Nah, I
didn't think it was.
I conceded.
He won the Battle of the Order of the Covers. Good grief, I may as well admit it. He won the whole war!
Well, as of
last August Aaron has a newly painted room along with a new bedspread, new
valence on his windows, new pictures on his walls….new, new, new! I wrote about his insistence on keeping his
books on the floor beside his bed, despite the NEW lined basket that I have in
his night stand for just that purpose.
Aaron doesn’t really care about new lined baskets nearly as much as he
cares about his routine of keeping his books and notebooks on the floor beside
his bed in a tidy little row. So just
like I quit fighting the order of the covers, I also quit fighting the books on
the floor.
Now we have
yet another war. This one concerns his
bedspread. His nice new bedspread. I noticed something funny about it one day as
I helped him make his bed or change his sheets….I don’t remember. But I do remember that something wasn’t right
about his bedspread on one side. I
pulled and tugged, only to find that the whole right side was tucked in, like a
sheet. But you don’t tuck bedspreads in
like you tuck in sheets.
Aaron
noticed me looking at the bedspread as I tried to figure out what was wrong
with it.
“Mom, I like
stuffing it,” he said.
“Ah,
stuffing it,” I replied as I began to understand what he had done.
“Yeah, I
stuff it,” he went on.
Well, I
proceeded to unstuff the bedspread as we made his bed. I explained that we don’t tuck bedspreads in
like we do sheets.
“Why?” Aaron
asked.
And I
explained that bedspreads are made to hang down nicely, all smooth and pretty,
and not be tucked in.
“So I
shouldn’t stuff it?” he asked.
“No,” I
answered. “You don’t stuff it.”
So you can
guess that over the next few weeks I have often found that his bedspread has
been stuffed. I have then unstuffed
it. But at night, as he and I get his
room ready for bed or maybe after I leave the room, he stuffs the bedspread
again.
The other
night he saw me staring down at the stuffed bedspread once again. I looked at him and didn’t have to say a
word.
“You don’t
want me stuffing it, Mom?” he asked
“Right,
Aaron,” I answered for the umpteenth time.
“You do not stuff your bedspread.”
“You mean
you don’t want me stuffing it because you can’t see it?” he wanted to know.
And I told
him it was something like that.
Explanations don’t matter one bit to Aaron, I have learned. Pretty hanging bedspreads matter not at all
to him, either.
So today I
found once again that his bedspread had been stuffed. I asked him to please tell me why he stuffed
it.
“Well,” he
began in all seriousness. “I lean my
feet against the side and they halfway come out under the blankets.”
Aaron
doesn’t like his feet coming out halfway under the blankets. I didn’t even bother to ask him what position
he had to be in for this to happen. I
know that we are in another war and that Aaron will win this bedspread war as
he also won the war of the order of the covers.
So now
instead of saying, “Bring it on!!” – I say, “You know, it doesn’t really matter
in the great scheme of things.”
I will make
his bed the way I want it made on the days that I have the opportunity, but
otherwise, stuffed it will be.
I’m just
thankful that Aaron makes his bed, to one degree or another. And maybe we’ll come to a
compromise…..stuffed at night, unstuffed in the morning.
A sleeping
bag on top of his bed is sounding better all the time, actually.
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