Boredom is the enemy of a busy autistic mind

               What happens when taking your child to public places is difficult and it’s too cold to play outside? Boredom happens and boredom is the enemy of a busy autistic mind. When his mind becomes idle he expresses just how he feels about that and yesterday Phillip was clearly telling me all morning his mind was stuck on idle. He has plenty of toys and things he could play with but most of those toys don’t require him to figure anything out so he doesn’t have much of an interest for more than a very short time.

                I have spent more money than I care to think about on small pointless toys he either had no desire to play with or investigated it and didn’t care to play after he figured it out. I even have toys he will never touch but in my mind I want him to because I thought he would like them, and they sit.

                After a long morning of screaming boredom I set out to find something that would curb his idle irritation. It had to be something very busy but not too busy. It had to be without loud sound effects and bold obnoxious colors and lights. All of which he doesn’t care for and sometimes the sound alone completely kills the appeal. I had the perfect toy in mind and it was a train table similar to the one he had his intense focus on in the book store the other day and I knew Toys R Us had some complete with train set on clearance from Christmas. They had one and not in the price range I was hoping for but at this point I didn’t care one bit because everything we needed to kill boredom for more than one day was in that box.

                This is how quickly the train table eased Phillips desire to soak in information. As soon as my daughter and I unloaded the one million parts from the box, his irritation was gone. Completely gone and his patience was restored. It took my daughter and me four hours to put this entire project together and Phillip was quiet and content the entire time. Picture a mommy on the edge, a 12 year old who doesn’t understand it’s harder than it looks, very bad directions, and a toddler who spent the morning with zero patience. This should have been a recipe for a complete disaster but it turned out to be four hours of quiet therapy on a bad day.

                When the table was complete, with a few minor setbacks, Phillip was engaged and busy for the rest of the evening. He played past his bedtime quietly and got up this morning to continue his train table adventures. I was counting on his reaction this morning because there was a 50/50 chance he would be done with it, but the odds were in our favor!

                I don’t like this train table. It’s big and I am a slightly bitter about the “clearance” price but what I can’t stand even more is how boredom affects Phillip. His mind is constantly craving things to do and at this very moment he is opening and closing a sliding closet door, keeping a close eye on how it moves across the track above. Just a bit ago he was investigating the labels on everything in the refrigerator door. It is fascinating to me and extremely challenging to figure out what is not enough for his busy mind and what is too much because both elements have a huge impact on his comfort level with the world around him. A challenge so many people are trying to figure out.