Idiosyncrasies

Idiosyncrasies are one of my favourite things. I love knowing people’s different quirks that make up who they are. My best friend can tell you almost everyone’s birthday if she’s heard it once – it’s hilarious and amazing.  Shamus is incredibly musically gifted – he can hear a song and almost magically learn how to play it on guitar. One of mine, which makes me seem a bit boring in comparison, is that I like my tea at room temperature. I’ll often put ice cubes in it so I don’t have to wait for it to cool down.

One of the coolest things about my kids is how many idiosyncrasies they have. Part of it is related to Autism (if you want to look into the “why” they do some things), and part of it is just personality.  Here are a few notable ones that they have right now off the top of my head:

• Rory has to see every door close behind him. This is usually not an issue until, for example, he tries to slam the door in the face of a delivery person who has about 7 boxes in his hand (yes, that happened yesterday)
• Penny, when she doesn’t want to do something, yells out “Nope!” Almost everyone in my inner circle has started saying it now. A couple of the school staff have told me they’ve started saying it as well. Very catchy.
• Rory has to watch everyone leave our house from one spot in the kitchen. Once he has ensured the door is closed behind them, he runs across to the living room window and watches them walk down our walk way.
• If I ask Penny for a kiss on the nose, she has to kiss my nose, left cheek, right cheek, left eye, right eye, left eyebrow, right eyebrow, and my chin before I can do the same to her. We both have to say, “ah, thank you” after every kiss too. So cute.
• If you ask Rory for a hug, he will usually run and give you a kiss on the lips. I’m actually unsure if he knows the difference between a kiss and a hug, but it’s adorable nonetheless.
• When Penny is getting dressed for the outdoors, we have to do right boot, left boot, jacket, zip up jacket (with no help – God help you if you help her zip it), hat, book bag (if applicable), then gloves. If you put on her book bag before her hat, for example, she will (usually calmly) remove her book bag and hat, then re-put on her hat and her book bag. The pattern musn’t be interrupted.

I know there’s more – there are so many. Some of them they’re really rigid with – like, if anything changes in the pattern or activity, it will upset them. I’ve always felt that unless it’s harmful in anyway, or just super inconvenient for them overall (in that they can’t get something perfect so they’re always upset about it), that we just let them do their thing. 

There was a time when I would obsess over everything they did “differently” and try to interrupt the routine or habit – with Penny in particular – but with time I’ve mostly stopped. Appreciating their quirks instead of looking for ways to change them gives me (and them) a lot more peace. 

There are some quirks where we’ve felt we’ve had to intervene. I’ve spoken about this before, but for a year or two Penny wouldn’t take off her socks. She bathed in them and even went to the pool in them. The whispering of people in public didn’t bother me much, but the anxiety she had about it was debilitating for her. Like, if one slipped off a little on accident, she would meltdown. She’s since let us take them off for bathing purposes, and recently she’ll even go to bed without them (probably once or twice a week). That’s a huge deal for her. Idiosyncrasy: wearing socks everywhere. Debilitating idiosyncrasy: never removing them ever because of anxiety, even when it was unhealthy.

Rory has a tendency to like to control his environment – putting things in certain places until it “looks right” to him. However, at some point he got into the habit of leaving certain items on the stairs. Idiosyncrasy: putting things in weird (to us) places because it looks right to him. Dangerous idiosyncrasy: placing things on the stairs so people often trip up or slip.

I should probably note that it’s pretty hard to change a behaviour once it starts. It usually involves a lot of screaming, meltdowns, compromise, and oftentimes helping them replace it with a different behaviour that is still not particularly favourable but easier to manage. I’m not a specialist in that area though, so I can’t speak to how everyone implements behaviour changes. I am, however, a specialist in my kids and for them, just saying “don’t do that” doesn’t really help in the grand scheme of things. There’s often a lot of prompts, fading out prompts, patience, written programs to follow/document (sometimes), social stories, visuals. It’s usually not, “stop that” and they do – I mean, sometimes it’s that too, but it depends on the situation. 

It’s not a perfect science, obviously. There might be places I should have intervened and didn’t, or probably shouldn’t have intervened and did. But, that’s parenting, amirite?

I’d love to hear about your quirks and idiosyncrasies. Anyone have anything fun to share?