Housework
Autistic children have to be taught everything separately that others learn by imitation — often with a lot of patient repetition. Very patient, with much repetition. Repetition. That is, repetition.
For years I’ve been telling Kende to put his clothes in the laundry basket in the evening. In vain — he leaves them on the floor. For years I’ve been telling him to take his plate away after eating — he leaves it on the table. For years I’ve been asking him not to pee on the toilet seat — yet he still pees on it. When that happens, I send him back, he protests, I insist, he gets upset and resists, I pretend to be very angry (though sometimes I don’t have to pretend much), then I threaten to take away his phone or mowing time, and then he finally does what I asked, grumbling. But usually, various swear words start flying around, which I generously put down to his Tourette’s syndrome, so we don’t have to argue about the same things all the time.
Lately, Kende often asks how long he still has to go to this school. I always tell him, “just this year, then you graduate.” He says, “I’d already go from here.” I understand him. He has been going there for nine years now and learns more or less the same things; he still counts within 10 or 20 and reads and writes on a first-grade level. He often says: “Tomorrow I’ll go on sick leave.” He hears this from his sister, who goes to a vocational school and already works every other week. There, you can’t just stay home for no reason — only if you’re on sick leave.
Lately, my son has been sick a lot. Even last school year he was almost always at home, and I was already afraid he’d have to repeat the year. And now this year, already in the second week, he got sick again, and last week too he was at home. At times like that, he blasts folk music in the living room and songs like Bogyó és Babóca for preschoolers, about two hundred and forty times a day. Speaking of repetition. And he wants pancakes. Every day. And every five minutes he asks the same questions. You can probably guess what my days are like. I cook him something healthy then, which of course he won’t eat, because it’s disgusting. Needless to say, I would also be glad if he were at school more. But no matter how much I tell him that he has to go to school, and that if he doesn’t, he’ll have to repeat the year, he just keeps repeating, a hundred and fifty times a day, that he doesn’t care, that I should leave him alone, and that he’s very sick.
Lately, though, he usually says all this rather kindly, which makes me melt completely, since I’m used to his wild swearing and banging. He’s sixteen, strong — I can’t drag him by force even into the next room, let alone to school.
But then I had an idea, when he kept complaining about how bored he was.
I said:
“Well then come, I’ll give you housework so you won’t be bored!”
He: “No!”
Me: “If not, then you have to go to school.”
He: “Alright then, yes. What should I help with, Mom?”
I thought I misheard… I shook my head, blew my nose (in case my ears were blocked), and asked:
“So you’ll help?”
He: “Yes.”
I didn’t even know where to start.
Me: “Alright, then please hang the laundry,” I said to him and handed him the basket full of wet clothes.
He: “Okay.”
One — that is, one — minute passes, and he comes and says he’s done.
Me (in disbelief): “Already?”
He: “Yes.”
Me: “In that short time?”
He: “Yes.”
Me: “But in that time even I can’t hang up one washing machine’s worth of clothes…” I said doubtfully, but he nodded convincingly, very cutely.
Me: “Are you sure?”
He: “Yes!”
Me: “Can I take a look?”
He: “Yes.”
I start walking toward the drying rack. He follows right behind me like a shadow and says:
“Mom! I don’t know how to hang laundry. How do you hang laundry?”
By then I’ve reached the rack — and I see, amazed, that he’s dumped all the clothes, just as I took them out of the washing machine, wrinkled, in one heap, right onto the rack. And done. Why didn’t I think of this before!
After we laughed ourselves silly and I showed him how to hang the laundry properly, I asked him to clean out the fireplace and bring in some firewood. That caused some small and large messes, but he managed it quite well. Then he had to wash the dishes. Not the kitchen — the dishes. But he didn’t understand it that way. Around the sink, there was foam in a three-meter radius.
When I was a child, there was a film I loved, where they let the foam out of the bathtub, and it flowed into the living room, and they danced in it. As a kid, I wanted that, too. Sometimes dreams come true late in life — but what a joy it was when it finally did! It was quite a sight to see the soap splashing and the foam on the floor, the wall, the window, the dog, the kid…! After the operation, the dishes would not have passed a food safety inspection, but at first glance the result looked quite satisfactory — and only later, when we ate from the plates, did it become clear that they were still quite soapy.
While my dear little boy was finally bustling in the kitchen instead of me, I was trying to work a bit in the background, watching the funny events with one eye. Then I heard him muttering to the dishes and the sponge: “This makes me so mad… damn it to hell!”
Then the next day, when we repeated the program (repetition is the mother of learning, right?) and he also had to take the garden furniture down to the garage for the winter, he collapsed onto the couch in the evening, tired, and said:
“Tomorrow I’m going to school! I’m better now!”
So that’s how our entertaining sick leave sadly came to an end, and the repetition of gray weekdays began again. I think I am the one who is a little bored now.
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