Dan and Autism

"Go To Bed" Means "Make Alot of Noise" and Alone In A Room With Twelve Autustic Men

Friday there was only one other staff member besides me, so we had a lazy hang out by the pool day. Both of us also don't know how to cook, but we gave making a raviolli a shot. It turned out okay, but I don't think we made enough for everyone, so I had to make myself a peanut butter and jelly sandwhich for myself for dinner.
One of our guys obssesses over laundry, so we switched his laundry day from Thursday to Sunday in order to make him deal with change. Predictably, as an autistic man, he dislikes change. So, on Friday, as soon as he got home from work, he snuck to the laundry room with his clothes and started his laundry before anyone could notice. Tricky, tricky. So, this threw off the schedule of another one of the guys who does his laundry on Fridays, and he spent alot of the day staring at the laundry room window.
At night, I slept in the upstairs bedroom again. Upstairs is where 5 of the six participants sleep too, and if they decide not to sleep, that means the poor person in the upstairs staff bedroom isn't going to sleep either. One of the guys in the room next to me decided to spend two hours jumping up and down on the floor and shouting his name. I went into his room to give him his adversives, but after a couple of times, I knew I was fighting a losing battle and just gave up. Then he finally went to sleep. I guess that was another guy's cue to start making that terrible siren sound he made last time I did an overnight. If I didn't know better, it's almost as if they all planned to take shifts in noise making so I couldn't get any sleep. As I lay in my bed awake, I secretely wished one of them would freak out and need to be physically restrained. At least that way, they could be stopped.
I was not happy when I got up Saturday morning to do 8 AM medicines. Luckily, my shift ended at 3 PM that day, so I was relieved and able to go home and finally get some sleep.

On Sunday, I decided I wanted to work and called in to see if there was an open spot on the schedule. There was, so I went to work. When I arrived, we had two staff members and three residents of another group home that were visiting to watch the World Cup Finals with us. One of our participants didn't seem to like the company, as he spent most of the world cup shrieking. I took him outside an sat with him. At one point, I was alone in the living room with the three guys from the other house. This was worrisome, because I knew nothing about their behaviors, their communication skills, or what I'm supposed to do if they behave poorly. One of them, who only speaks in grunts and "blehhhs" game up to me, rubbed his hand on his bald head, and extended his hand to me. I didn't know if he wanted me to rub his head or shake his hand, but I went with the safer bet and chose the latter. He had a hearty handshake.
They eventually left because they had to do their meds. I learned that our laundry-obsessed resident from Friday, who also had a near freak-out on Thursday, had freaked out earlier in the day when he tried doing his laundry again. They took his watch away (that's his adversive), but he became aggressive and tried breaking into the locked laundry room, then started taking swings at people to get his watch back. He had to be blindfolded and cuffed and wrestled down the the floor. I was dissapointed to hear this, because that resident was the calmest and best behaved one in the house, and he hadn't needed to be taken down like that in almost a year.
Later that evening, the other house returned, but this time, with all six of its residents. We were all sitting on the porch, but for some reason, at one point, all the staff but me were in the house. So, it was me, alone, with twelve autistic men, and about half of them were bigger than me. Do you ever get that feeling when you think, "Hmm, something really bad could happen here." I'm stuck with six autistic men, and I know nothing about their aggression levels and what their behaviors are. Of course, they all started acting up, one after the other. One tried to steal a staff members cigarretes, so I had to tell him to put them back. Then one of my guys started pressing on himself, so I had to put his hands down on his lap. Then one of my guys started screaming, so I had to tell him "no noise." Then one of the other house's guys started rubbing the one of my guys that hates to be touched. I told him to stop touching people that don't want to be touched. Then everything became calm. Honestly, I half expected one of them to loop up, say "now", and then all twelve guys would start acting like lunatics at the same time, and I would end up very hurt. Luckily, my paranoid hypothetical situation did not come true, and everyone behaved.

Wednesday night, I'm headed down to Cape May until Monday to stay at a shore house that our organization owns. Each group home gets one week in the summer to stay there. So, basically, I'm going to get paid to go to the beach. That's awesome.

posted by Daniel @ 12:37 PM