A Christmas Miracle
A miracle may be a bit of an exaggeration but please hear me out. We had our children Logan and Abby visit today for Christmas. They both have autism and live in a group home over an hour away.
People with autism often struggle with unexpected changes. Our daughter Abby is particularly sensitive to this. She once had a meltdown simply because a guitar player played a song without a capo that he normally played with a capo.
Today had a number of major unexpected changes. The plan was for Abby to go back tonight and Logan to stay. Abby doesn’t like overnights and Logan really does. When it was time to go, she was confused as to why Logan wasn’t leaving as well. This was different and she wasn’t overly happy with it. But she left without a fight.
I got her to leave with a promise to stop at Tim Horton’s on the way home. Most of them are closed on Christmas Day but Amanda had seen one that was open and so I stopped there. Unfortunately it closed right before we arrived. We always stop at Tim Horton’s on the way home. And yet Abby was fine just popping into a convenience store for a chocolate bar.
Then we arrived at her group home. Although her worker was there, she didn’t have a key to the house and so we had to wait until someone with a key arrived. Abby generally doesn’t like waiting and she normally doesn’t need to wait for a key. But Abby did fine with the wait and we eventually got into the house.
We had three opportunities for meltdowns, changes much bigger than the causes of previous meltdowns, and yet everything worked out fine.
Was that a Christmas miracle? I don’t know for certain but I will take it.
