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Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Tues - Two and a half baths























Which half would you like?

It’s one of those little American oddities, a few words that are completely incomprehensible.

You can read it on a page, you can say it out loud, the net effect is the same. What on earth are they on about now? But that was in the good old days when I was a fresh faced immigrant. Years have now passed and I am far wiser. Non-Americans will be pleased to learn that Americans do not have diddy little baths. This is America, the land of big, bigger and the bestest.

Many moons ago in England, I lived with my family in a tall Victorian terraced house. Tacked on the back of the house as an after thought no doubt, was the bathroom. The bathroom had a bathtub, a toilet and a hand basin, but not very much else. It did have a deadbolt and a lock with a rusty old key the size of my small hand, but you needed the strength of a rugby player to shut the door, let alone lock it. All five of us were good sharers and privacy was non existent.













If we were really desperate, there was always the option of the old lean to toilet in the back yard next to the air raid shelter.

This original toilet was there before the bathroom was tacked on.

It was a place only for the brave.

I am, and always have been, a cowardy custard.










Hence I have little sympathy with the current generation of children in my care when it comes to foibles.

When it comes to foibles, which it usually does, their father has one, a foible that is to say. Every morning he shaves in the bathroom next to the kitchen. The bathroom has no bath and is the same size as a crampt cupboard. Standing room only. As he froths and shaves, rivulets of water run down his hands and forearms to collect on his elbows and then drip onto the linoleum floor. Two little puddles of dribbles, every day. This is no great hardship. What is great hardship, for me at least, are the blood curdling screams from my son, every day, when he decides to use the bathroom and finds his path blocked by his dribbling father.

The bulk that blocks his way isn’t the hardship. The hardships are the two puddles. It would be easy to step over the two puddles located closest to the sink, especially if you only have child sized 13 feet and are on your tippy toes, or easy for some people. Other people pogo on the spot and scream, loudly, every day.

Many people, would learn that if you encounter the same problem every day, it might be a good idea to find an alternative solution, preferably a quieter one. Other people need help finding solutions. It is hard to find a solution when you can’t hear. Generally speaking, it is hard to hear if you are screaming your lungs out.

All too often, I find myself just looking at him. I have to remind myself that he has an ‘on’ switch and an ‘off’ switch but no dimmer function, a period when he could think and work out an alternative. It’s an all or nothing approach to life. The absurd can sometimes seem ironic. It is quite sobering for me to realize that this is not a child having a hissy fit or a meltdown, but someone struggling with a gargantuan obstacle, a puddle that might just as well be Niagara Falls. It’s tempting to giggle, a nasty habit that I seem to have acquired over the years.

Instead, I wait a moment to see if the frenzy is spiraling up or down. If it’s on the up and time is precious, I have no option but to scoop him up and cart him off to the loathed toilet down the hall. If it’s on the down, then we have the opportunity to repeat the sequence, to find an acceptable alternative, every day.

Maybe one day, he’ll step over this hurdle all by himself. Just as with so many of the other foibles. It won’t disappear but he will find other ways of coping all by himself. Maybe soon.

3 comments:

Jeni said...

Not the same problem here (doesn't involve water puddles) but the same basic principle - Maya has recently started to somewhat freak out as soon as her mother disappears from her sight - even when she has watched her walk to another room, heard her say where she was going, what she was planning to do there too. Maya will immediately start asking "Where's Mommy?" and that sentence then gets repeated, over and over and OVER again! Thankfully, it usually only escalates to a meltdown -or close to meltdown - on the days when Maya is home and her Mommy has to leave for work and those times can be really exasperating as the questioning -and fussing/screaming/crying/kicking -you name it- can go on for a long, very extended period of time. I keep telling myself "This too shall pass" as other quirky things generally have done. The big question is will it pass before my nerves go completely frazzled? Hopefully, I will completely adapt, be able to turn deaf ears -probably made deaf by the earlier screaming though. All in a day's happenings, as you know, all too well. Soldier on!

Family Adventure said...

I know it's not the right solution, but for the sake of sanity during the morning rush, can Dad shave elsewhere? You know, in another half of the two-and-a-half baths?

Heidi

Unknown said...

Granted, I don't have THAT problem, but I DO shave in the morning and I always hated the cold floor in the bathroom - and my wife would always yell at the liquids that found their way to the floor during morning ablutions. The solution was simple. I put a bathmat on the floor in front of the sink. My feet stayed warm and the liquids were taken up by the mat and Annie was 'happier'. Could that not help you?

 
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