Dan and Autism

Don't Get Too Attached

Sorry I haven't been updating much, but nothing interesting happened until yesterday.

Tuesday night I did an over night and nothing really happened.

I worked Thursday and we ran a bunch of programs with the guys and cleaned the house. I did an overnight that night too. Friday morning we ran out of someone's meds because we never picked up meds from around a week ago, so we had to stop to get them on the way to work.

Friday night I did another overnight. Around three in the morning, I heard alot of noise coming from a resident's room. I was concerned, so I checked in on him. I found him on the floor humping a pillow. I went back to bed after that and didn't get much sleep.

Saturday was what I want to write about. It was a reminder that I shouldn't get too attached to these guys, because one's feelings can really get hurt when something goes wrong. I won't lie, I definitely have a favorite amongst the six guys I take care of. I don't give him any better treatment than any of his housemates, but he's the one guy I volunteer to spend more time with whenever we have to split up. On Saturday, however, he was misbehaving alot. At around 7 PM, he was trying to ask me something, but can't talk and wouldn't give the sign for it, so I asked him to show me what he wanted. He took my hand and led me up to his room, then pointed at his bed. I asked him if he was trying to go to bed, and he nodded and gave me the sign for "go to sleep," but I had to tell him it was only 7 o'clock and he would have to wait awhile. The reason behind this is if he went to bed at 7, he'd wake up by 3 or 4 AM and start making that terrible siren noise he does and wake up everyone else in the house. At around 8, this resident started tamtruming non-stop. It was very uncomfortable, because he was jumping and doing a high pitched scream, and I couldn't tell if he was in pain or not. We thought he might have been constipated because he kept asking to go to the bathroom. But the real reason he was asking was because when we let him go to the bathroom, he would actually just try to sneak off to his room and go to bed. He also may have been tantruming because his parents visited earlier in the day, and he acts like a maniac around them, probably because they don't know what to do with him.
Anyway, the reason this bothered me on such a personal level was because it almost felt like a betrayel. It's because he knows he's my favorite, so when he's taking swings at me and screaming in my face because of something I wouldn't let him do, and I'm trying to calmly ask him to stop so I don't have to punish him. I feel guilty punishing him because all he wants to do his go to bed and he can't understand why I won't let him, but he's acting out of control. We eventually sat him down in another room and told him to stay there until he could sit quietely. He was still in there when my relief came in and I could go him.

It just stinks sometimes.

posted by Daniel @ 10:15 PM