PUZZLES & CAMO SHELLY HUHTANEN

Undoing the Doing

I was led to believe that if I questioned the BCBA, then I was not fully invested in my son's potential. Now I'm wiser. We may be undoing some doing, but there is no time for regret.

Brush your teeth. Run upstairs and take a shower. Make yourself a bowl of cereal for breakfast, because I don't want you leaving the house without eating something. Take your medicine. Clean your room. These are all realistic requests for a typical teenager. Now that my typical son, Hayden, is home from college, I probably say at least one of these requests daily. I'm not saying I don't hear any snide comments after my request, but I'm sure he complies at least 75% of the time. I can't do this with Broden. At 17 years old, Broden is still prompt dependent, and even though we have worked tirelessly to teach him life skills, such as dressing himself, I find that he will still wait until I walk into his room to see if he's completing the task. I don't even have to saying anything. I'll walk in and look at him, while he's sitting in his chair in the corner, with this navyblue terry cloth robe wrapped around

him. He'll yell, "Get dressed!" I'll yell back, "That's right! You know what to do!" Then I run back into my bathroom to continue getting ready.

With his prompt dependency, it is difficult for him to do tasks involved with everyday living. I meet with Broden's BCBA, Amanda, every month. Every month when she asks me what my goals are as a parent, I tell her that I want Broden to be able to shower himself. He's seventeen years old and he should be able to bathe himself. There are obvious reasons as to why this needs to happen. He's a teenager and he needs to understand that there are standards and requirements for self-care. How can we work towards me leaving him for two or three days with a caretaker if he can't bathe himself? Who bathes him if I'm

no longer around or too ill to provide that support? Another reason is one that I feel guilty saying, but I'll say it anyway. I'm tired of bathing him. There is some shame when I say that I'm tired of it. He's my son and he didn't ask to have severe autism. He needs help showering, so I should do it until I can't anymore. But there is a voice in my head that asks, "Wouldn't it be great if I could tell Broden to take a shower while I take mine in my bathroom, so we could get ready and get out the door faster in the morning?"

SWAMPED WITH PROMPTS: "Broden started ABA therapy when he was twenty-six months old. ABA has evolved over the years. There used to be so much focus on compliance and trying to shape children on the spectrum, to be like typical children."