The moment an autism diagnosis is in your hands it is very easy to get sucked into the idea habits or behaviors a child has are autism related. After all in time you notice every single thing your child does is documented and picked apart. Every paper you fill out puts your child under the microscope of a social standard and age expectation, it's overwhelming for any parent. A recent preschool screening made me want to crawl in a hole with hundreds of questions and a result that was 15 pages long picking apart my child in every possible way. 15 pages of people deciding what my child is all about in a very short time spent and it's easy to think they know because they are professionals but the reality is, he is a kid. A kid with funny habits and behaviors that are almost always credited to his diagnosis, especially when we all forget he is really just a kid.
My son has a habit of sometimes eating a frozen waffle right out of the freezer and because he has some sensory challenges this must be autism related. When I tell people this or they see him eat a frozen waffle frozen everyone assumes this must be an autism effect and up until the two days ago I assumed this too. After school my 16 year old came through the door with a couple of his friends. Typically they grab a snack and head out the door and this day a he brought a friend who has only come around a few times. All of them hungry and when someone mentioned frozen waffles he let his hunger be known. My daughter handed him a frozen waffle and that hungry 16 year old who is not autistic ate the waffle right out of the freezer, the way he likes it. I realized at that moment someone who could tell me why was standing in my kitchen and his answer was simple, "it tastes better that way!"
I have personally never tried a waffle this way and it's against the way I am programed to eat them because I am socially adjusted to eat them the right way. So socially adjusted I just made a statement that declares the instructions on the box to be the "right way." Shame on me for that! The right way is the way a person likes it and I was elated to see a kid eat a waffle and hear the reason why. Which sounds a little off but when everything your child does is judged a moment like that is a moment your grateful for. It's a moment of clarity and a simple reminder that not everything happening is unexplainably different or a sensory related behavior.
A child with autism is certainly against the grain but sometimes it's really just because "It tastes better that way!"
