Because there's nothing an autistic child, who craves stability and predictability, likes more than the idea of a sudden, unpredictable, massive event that would shake the earth and everything around him.
(Just as I'm typing this, I see a tweet from a friend who lives just south of me that says "EARTHQUAKE." Are you shitting me? There was actually an earthquake in the near vicinity while I'm fucking blogging about earthquakes? What are the odds? I didn't feel it. Hubs felt it in SF, though)
In the car yesterday after school:
Child 1: Will there be an earthquake today?
Me: Oh, fuck. Um.... I don't know, I don't think so, I hope not. Why do you ask?
Child 1: And what is an earthquake, again?
Me: That's when the earth shakes all around you. And is really fucking scary. And things will come crashing down around your head. And people could die. And the next one that happens around here will be so serious that we have food stored in a shed in our backyard just in case our house falls down.
Child 1: And will we have to leave the city?
Me: Leave the city?? Why would... wait, did they say in your class that you might have to leave the city?
Child 1: yes they did.
Me: No, if there's an earthquake we will not have to leave the city. We can stay in Berkeley where we live.
So, thanks People Who Write Standards. Now my autistic child, who has a really hard time with sudden, unexplained things happening, is now worried about earthquakes. And what do you say when your child asks if there's going to be an earthquake today? Which he does? Now? Apparently all the time? What can you say, because nobody knows the answer. There was a fucking earthquake as I was writing this thing! I have no idea how I'm going to handle this one. Fucking earthquakes.
But, hey! On the plus side, he's learning stuff in class, right? Yeah.
9 comments:
OMG! That would be funny in another universe. Julia gets like that too. She'll learn some new scary thing, and ask, and ask, and ask, until I want to just LIE already!
Sorry for the crazy. Hope he moves on to something else soon. :-)
Feel ya. Substitute Hurricane for Earthquake and you have my life. At least we have some warning. Although that warning is usually 24/7 from April 1 to November 30 evey year.
Who told you to live on the earth's butt crack anyway? It's gonna fart every now and again you know.
You just couldn't make it up. It's like rent-an-anxiety. XXX
Wow, BD, that's truly a beautiful analogy
My daughter has conflicted feelings about earthquakes! One the one hand, she's bummed that she hasn't felt a single quake yet. For some weird reason, she either has slept through them (like the 4.8 one that was epicentered 5 miles away. Actually, I slept through that one too while hubby was freaking out) or was outside playing at preschool (like the 5.4 one that freaked me out while I was at home). At the same time, she's scared about "The Big One" and won't even read her Magic Treehouse book about earthquakes because she's too scared to. LOL
I'm with Big Daddy and the hurricanes, so I have no earthquake experience. I can tell you that when 'Bot was in first grade, and they learned about fire safety, he didn't sleep for about six months. He wanted to stay awake so he could warn us if there was a fire at night. He drove my husband nuts about batteries in the smoke detector, and he practiced our fire escape plan (which we made at his insistence) over and over and over and over and ov....you get it.
Back in 2008 of April there was an earthquake near here...well kinda far away but close enough that I felt it rock and heard it rock somewhere near 3am. In Missouri, earthquakes aren't all that common so of course as soon as it shook me awake I freaked out big time because that is a bit of a phobia for me. I opened the kids doors, put on my shoes and socks and a coat and grabbed the diaper bag and stocked it full of crackers and bottles of water. I just sat there in the dark waiting for the shaking to return because I heard the aftershocks were more severe than the first one....which it wasn't all that bad and people in California would call me a total wimp.
Oh. My. Goodness. That is some serious ironic craziness. My kid's been worried about a tornado. Thank you to my parents for showing him The Wizard of Oz. =)
I totally get your frustration. Is there a way to get a hold of the curriculum ahead of time - a little warning maybe. Or maybe they should tell us what they teach them. One of my 5 year olds asked, "Mommy, why do you cover your head in a fire drill?" And I said "What the f##%? Not really, but you know. So then I said it sounds like you had an earthquake drill. "What's an earthquake?" And so it goes...
Oh, and Ashley - after my kids say The Wizard of Oz, every breeze and cloud meant, "is it a tornado?"
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