Screens Stay in the Windows
If you have spent any time around Dylan at all you have probably heard him say this- the screens stay in the window. I don’t quite remember when it started but Dylan didn’t like screens. He would push them out of any window he saw them in. He would literally knock you down to get to the window first and push them out. Wherever we went I was Instantly sizing up the place to see if there were windows with screens. I had to have a plan in my mind of what I would do if he went for the screen- how would we escape? The hard truth about autism in all its varying degrees is that often Dylan was excluded even from things for individuals with autism. He was always in the “most difficult” category. There is a camp in Akron for children with special needs. They have 1 Sunday a month as well as random weekends as respite for families. I couldn’t believe it when I heard about it. An actual camp that a child like Dylan could go to!!! He would hang out with peers his age and do all the “camp things” his typical peers got to do. I remember anxiously signing Dylan up to go and dropping him off for the first time. I couldn’t believe there could be something where I might get to have a “normal” weekend with Kevin and Anderson. These weekends would be the only time Anderson would have a friend over. (It is probably an entire blog post about growing up the sibling of an individual with autism. ) The camp has a drop off of 5pm Friday until 10am pickup on Sunday. There were all sorts of children with special needs that attended. It was one weekend a month that provided a little peace for our family (even though I carried my phone around the entire time he was there waiting for camp to call with an issue). And can you believe after Dylan went there for a few years they did call- the camp director called. And he wasn’t nice. He explained that Dylan wasn’t allowed back because he pushed some screens out of the windows in his cabin. This wasnt the first we heard of this and we had been working on it. My husband and I had even offered to replace all the screens at camp. We had sent Dylan’s behavior therapist out from school to work with him as well. But the decision was Final- our child with Autism was kicked out of the camp for kids with special needs. The very camp that claimed they could and would take anyone. Over screens in the windows.
Dylan has pushed out screens all over northeast Ohio/ at school, at the camp in Akron he isn’t allowed back at, at our house in Geneva, at his favorite breakfast spot in Geneva, at family and friends houses- and the list goes on. But he will tell you on any given day - Screens stay in the window because he knows they do and he knows he isn’t supposed to do that. Yet he can’t control the urge he has to push them out.
There are so many battles parents are fighting every day. If you don’t live in the Autism world I am sure it is hard to grasp- all the things that run through our minds on a daily basis. Trying to think like Dylan so I can anticipate his next move and be ready.
As spring approaches and you get that first nice day when you can open your windows and let the fresh air in think of us for just a minute. I haven’t had windows open in 22 years. Between them being nailed shut to not having screens in them it just isn’t in the cards for me. And that’s ok. Because I pick Dylan over screens any day.