Wednesday, April 11, 2018

Quirks

I love that word - quirks, quirky.  Everybody has quirks. The dictionary says that a quirk is a peculiar behavioral habit. Here are a short list of mine:

  • I often buy a hard copy of books that I've read digitally
  • I like my coffee just so - stevia, milk, flavored ground coffee - and usually 3 times a day
  • I do not really like wearing shoes but I also don't like my feet to be dirty
  • If I play solitaire on my phone, I can't stop until I win
  • I like things in pairs or multiples of 3 - 2 things, 3 things, 4 things are ok - 5 things is not
  • I have been debating, internally, if I should start collected Funko Pops for about 6 months now
  • I prefer lower case letters - particularly I don't like how uppercase a looks

I could seriously go on.  I love all my quirks.

Early in our autism journey, we would say that B-ma was just quirky.  I'll never forget when I told Ryan I thought B was autistic, he looked at me and said "If he is, you are".  We are both pretty quirky. 

So, what make B autistic and me quirky?  Well, there's a whole medical diagnosis that I wouldn't bore you with.  My way of thinking is that my quirks don't really interfere with my daily life.  If I don't drink my coffee, I wouldn't feel awesome but I can move along with my day.  I wear shoes almost daily and like buying them.  If I take them off and my feet get dirty, I can hang for a while before I clean them.  I use capital letters when absolutely necessary. 

Sometimes B's 'quirks' stop him in his tracks.  He can't move forward.  In the beginning his communication was a problem.  Life is much more difficult when you can't communicate. Now some of the leftover communication troubles are cute quirks.  For example, he says "What'd you said?" instead of "What did you say?" and we LOVE it! For a while if B's food was too hot, he would throw it and then would not eat the rest of the day.  That's problematic. 

Our goal for B is to be able to live and get along in the world that will not conform to him.  So we watch for his quirks and make sure they add to his fabulous personality instead of restricting him. 

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