Phantom Fixations

One of the biggest Autism challenges that can come up deals in PERSEVERATION... At my house, this has been known to manifest itself in a myriad of ways. The subject matters with the most "Staying Power" have been wheels/cars/trains (they graduated into one-another, think of it as a sort of evolution/train of thought progression) and most recently the Titanic & Phantom of the Opera for Kaiden, with Kian's being first Piracy followed by Phantom & Titanic/Brittanic (they are triplets remember, but Vivienne adamantly tired of the Olympic early on) and most recently Doctor Who is creeping into the mix.

Remember, that these extreme fixations/focus involve the exploration of ALL aspects, good, bad & oftentimes gory but not limited to scientific aspects of these subject-matters. This means that they want to know EVERYTHING about these subjects...how they work, the history, invention of, the evolution of, the application of, and of course the movies relating to these things/people/events.

 The trick as a parent is finding a happy medium(there is good & bad to this)that can be tolerated by all in everyday life. How does one teach a child about non-child-friendly subject matter? THANK YOU National Geographic & History Channel...Travel Channel too...Imax is your friend...you find each & every documentary & show ever done on the subject is what you do...with the Titanic issue, James Cameron snuck footage into some of his documentaries that hawked his movie which I did NOT realize until it was too late & there were blue people floating accross my television screen that had to be explained...

Don't get me wrong, sometimes it's not so bad...your child is cute in their little pirate-themed attire playing with their little Fisher Price Pirate toys that somehow evolve into Captain Jack Sparrow etc...& that hat you bought at Party City or that Santa brought a few years ago really DOES have an indefinate lifespan (or in our case had BETTER have longevity) and looks almost as new as the day it came to live with us 5years ago this December (no joke it goes to school on hat days still...)

This means that Daddy gets to share Daddy-son time by building tiny models of the Titanic with boy boys-cute & invaluable memories, right? Great until you find yourself on Youtube watchin videos of people who have built similar models...cute until one of them turns up a design that breaks apart exactly the same as the real-deal only they show it sinking & the thought of a prized model/toy that has taken on the same meaning as a boy's Teddy Bear & it's shown sinking into water, ruining a perfectly good much loved toy...is heartbreaking & worthy of supersonic screaming as if one is being tortured...yeppers...not so cute anymore...

There are days when building a model can be a good experience...& then there are days when my living room is eaten up with a makeshift fixation of building Kaiden's very own amusement park & suddenly Makeshift-Disney has grown up & taken over faster than the real-deal did in Florida...or he decides he really MUST build the Paris Opera House & Daddy finds himself on a latenight run to Thrifty for boxes for Kai to try his hand at Parisian architecture which we know is doomed to fail-OCD/Perfectionism states it must be true to mind...which almost NEVER happens & results in meltdown...

For our Phantom fixation, the boys asked Santa for Phantom Action Figures...in typical kiddo fashion & in keeping with their triplet Titanic order (Olympic, Brittanic & Titanic, for 3) both boys wanted different versions of Phantom...the same yet different, just like they are...Here you can see the Stage Version of Phantom for Kian & the movie version for Kaiden-silent film of course!

You get the idea... Which brings me to today...Kian woke up and built a lego version of his mindseye view of the Paris Opera House...which in Kaiden's mind looks NOTHING like the real-deal (having tried building his out of cardboard, then out of legos already, he knows this isnt going to work.) Meltdown ERUPTS...expletives follow...interspersed critique of said lego building & tears from Kian began to fall...but were soon quelled with a heated discussion of the opera house sewer system...and Kaiden began to monologue on sewers & how they are underneath our city too...and how he wants to explore the real ones in Paris...coupled with a comparison of our own sewers...

I can see NO good coming of this...as we drove to school, he noted the location of every drain along the way...each window to our sewer...noting where the pipes drain into this ditch or that, seeing how the Ockley Street Bridge goes over the bayou where the sewer pipes drain rainwater...the wheels are turning, clicking, the mind is working and he wants to go exploring...

Meanwhile, I sit here documenting, and multitasking, searching in hopes of documentaries on the Paris sewer systems & maybe even the Opera house if I get lucky...in hopes it will quell the curiousity for another day, save me the worry of elopement manifesting itself in a very real possibility of a Kaiden-led sewer expedition...

Will anyone else understand should he go the extra mile? With autism you literally never know...you never know what is being thought...it can look like he wandered off, but in his mind it isn't wandering, it serves a purpose...will he venture out to explore, gosh I seriously SERIOUSLY hope not...

But in the meantime I have to plan as a Mother to try and divert his mind, give him something to do instead of want to go out...something to sate his quest for knowledge that is safe yet constructive, avoid the meltdowns, head off the elopement tendency...(think as an example something similar to how, when Kevin was "misplaced" in the "Home Alone" series & his mum knew exactly where he could be found-at that Christmas Tree...for Kaiden at the moment, the sewer would be his Christmas Tree, only far more dangerous.)

Since then, I've discovered an online Google interactive walk-thru tour of the Paris Opera House and other Paris landmarks.  It keeps them occupied and hopefully satisfies their quest for knowledge on the matter...I only wish it would explore the catacombs a bit more... I hope to have a host of documentaries found online ready to go...we have several Phantom based books with pictures that I've pulled out in hopes of appeasing him and his renewed Phantom Fixation!