Schedules

Every morning, we have a routine. I’ll say to Penny, “Time to get dressed” and Penny will yell at me, “SCHEDULE!”

Why do I forget the schedule every day? Your guess is as good as mine.

Penny loves to know what’s coming. She likes to be prepared for the day. I assume it calms her anxiety because knowing my schedule for the day helps my anxiety. A part of me also thinks she just wants to know when she gets to play on her Tabby again. Who can blame her, really.

When we first started with her daily schedules, we started out with these beautiful laminated ones where she could take off the task as it was complete. Those morphed into drawn schedule because I am not great at being prepared and organized. Recently these have turned into just numbered lists, because I always forget to make the damn schedule and I usually have about 30 seconds to write one before Penny is late for the bus. I’m clearly killing this parenting thing.

Last Saturday, I wrote out Penny’s schedule for the day as per her request. She followed it really well until it came time for gymnastics. I had somehow forgotten to include gymnastics into her schedule. Penny LOVES gymnastics so I just told her we were going, thinking that she would just come along happily.

Yeah, no, that didn’t happen. She SCREAMED. She bawled. She yelled about her schedule. For a second both Shamus and I were annoyed because dammit, Penny, we go there every Saturday. You love it there.

And then I let her stay home. Because you know what I realized? The main reason I was annoyed was because gymnastics was on my mental schedule and she was changing it. She and I aren’t really that different after all.

You best believe I made sure gymnastics was on her schedule yesterday though.

The schedule also helps get her out the door to do anything. The other night I wanted to go for a drive because it was nice out. She kept yelling, “no! Schedule” and I’m like, “girl, it is on your schedule. Go look”

She stomped over to her schedule to try and prove me wrong. She pointed to it, “Supper! Dr….ugh. Drive.” Then she dragged her feet over to the porch and put on her shoes.

So, as much as it drives me nuts trying to remember what to put on her schedule for the day, I selfishly love when it works in my favour.

Also, pro-tip. If you can’t remember at 6am what your evening is going to look like but you want to ensure you have some wiggle room – stick one on it that says, “surprise”. Sometimes it’s a 2 hour drive, sometimes it’s a donut. It works for us.

This is also proof about how Autism and Anxiety can present so differently in different people. Rory hates a schedule. I always say he hates the anticipation. He is able to go through his whole day not really knowing what’s coming, so when he figures out what we’re doing for the day he gets incredibly excited.

Like, today we went swimming and when we told him it was time to get ready because that’s where we were going, he laughed and yelled out, “yeah!!!” And when we were in the car, I asked Penny if she was excited to go swimming (because, again, she likes to be prepared). Rory answered instead, “vewwy” (very).

This again has it’s downfalls because sometimes Rory gets something in his head and he gets very upset when it doesn’t come to fruition. The other day I picked him up early from daycare for a meeting we had and he had it in his head that we were going to the Janeway (which he loves). He was so upset when we pulled up to our house that Shamus had to take him for a drive and didn’t actually get to attend the meeting.

These are things that schedules would help.

I love a good visual!