By Anonymous
There are certain things I’ve come to know as facts throughout my life. Certain ideas that are drilled into me, as deeply-rooted as an oak tree, and as hardy as the ground beneath my feet.
One, my brother has mild-moderate autism.
Two, I cannot change that no matter how much I want to.
Three, I must make adjustments to my life to compensate.
Four—and most importantly—my brother will always come first in any situation.
His autism has been especially difficult to deal with during this quarantine.
Autism displays itself in many different forms. My brother is obsessed with routine and repetition. He has to have lunch at exactly 11:30 AM every day, and dinner at 7:00 PM on weekdays (or 8:00 PM on weekends). He has to wake up and go to sleep at the same time, or else he’ll be cranky. If he doesn’t get what he wants then he throws a fit. If he loses a round in a video game, his tantrum could tear the house down.
To change a behavior of his requires finesse; you have to slowly ease him into it, so he barely notices the change. My parents and I feared that quarantine—especially one as sudden and earth-shattering as the one inflicted upon California—would cause my brother to spiral into something we couldn’t possibly help him recover from.
After all, quarantine meant that he would be missing school and not seeing his friends anymore. It meant we couldn’t go to amusement parks or the zoo. It meant no more going out to restaurants or seeing our cousins. No more birthday parties or days at the beach.
I’ll admit, it was difficult. He didn’t really understand why we couldn’t go out. To him, COVID-19 was a very adventitious concept. It didn’t make sense why we had to stay home; after all, people would always be sick with something, yet everyone was always able to go outside without fear.
It was, perhaps, more difficult to deal with the questions. “When are we going to go back outside?” or “Why can’t we go to the beach?” or “Can’t we go to our cousin’s house?” or “How come we aren’t going to Chicago this summer?”
They were all questions we didn’t have an answer to, and he hated not having an answer most of all. He’s always had a curious and active mind. He likes to get out of the house, and to have his mind working overtime. He loves to explore and learn new things. His autism keeps him active and eccentric and always needing mental stimulation. Putting him in quarantine was like putting him in a jail cell.
So these past few weeks, our family has been working overtime to give my brother the attention he needs in such a confined environment. We’ve talked about new and exciting things, watched documentaries instead of TV replays, and tried to get him out of the house as much as possible.
I’ll admit, if this quarantine was good for something, it was able to bring my family together. We talk to one another more often now that our schedules line up. We have riveting discussions about the things we learn from documentaries. And most of all, we have come to understand my brother, his behaviors, and his complex mind more than ever.
Autism will always be a major struggle in my family’s life. But working together has made it easier than ever.
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