The Saga of the Traveling Coffee Cup

No autism tonight.  This post is a good ole' woman vs man vent about coffee mugs of all things.  You would not believe how many times this conversation comes up in this house.  Coffee is a staple, plain and simple. We drink it all the time and take it with us everywhere we go.  So when one of us goes to grab a travel mug from the cupboard and there are none, tempers flare and words are exchanged....all love of course.

Let me first take a step back and explain something about my hubs.  Because of his bipolar, there are days where he is just a little more on edge then others.  He does his best to keep it together, but if something pushes him over the edge, well then sometimes the unexpected happens.

Take for example one fine day when we were out shopping.  It was before the kids, even before the marriage and we were out Christmas shopping. It was a cold December day and I had taken a coffee mug with me to get my morning dose of caffeine.  The mug I took was my favorite mug.  My life long friend made it for me in a pottery class she took in college and I used it everyday. 

Let me break the story once again to explain something else.  I have a horrible habit of not finishing my drinks.  I begin to drink something, get distracted and leave my cup/mug/bottle laying around.  Hours may go by before I realized I lost my drink and I go back looking for it.  Unfortunately, there have been many of times that my lost drink has gotten spilled for this reason or that.  The cat knocked it over on the coffee table, you move the laptop and hit it, or say when you get into the car you bump into it spilling all over your pants.

Okay, so it is a bad habit to leave half empty (some might say half full) mugs around like a trail of bread crumbs everywhere you go.  I admit it.  And yes, I too would be upset if when I got into the car I spilled semi-warm coffee down my pants making it look like I peed myself while out Christmas shopping.  I get it, I really do.  So, when he got upset grumbling about my bad habit I let it go in one ear and out the other, starting the car up and driving to our next destination.  When I looked over to see how bad the wet spot on his pants was, I busted out laughing.  I couldn't help it.  I know its childish, but it was just so funny.  Well, apparently my then finance did not think it was that funny, because next thing I knew, the passenger side window was going down and my favorite coffee mug was flying out of it landing somewhere on Interstate 70.  No words were exchanged as I longingly looked for my mug in the rear-view mirror.  It wasn't until we reached our next destination did I say.  "I really loved that mug."  His reply, "I really love dry pants."  And the saga began.

I few days later, I found a traveling coffee mug on the kitchen counter.  I took it as a "I'm sorry, use this in the car" small apology/hint.  From there we have been adding to our traveling coffee mug collection but unfortunately when we add some kids to our pack a new problem occurred.  I started leaving the mugs in the car.  I know, I know...another bad habit.  But I just honestly run out of hands.  By the time I get the kids in, the diaper bag, my purse and usually some bag of groceries or toys or something, I just down right forget the mugs.  So then, when the next day rolls around and my hubbie goes to grab one, there are none there.  So then he mentions there are no mugs and I reach right into my back pocket and bring up the mug toss incident.  And the saga continues. 

Of all things, coffee mugs.  We bicker/joke over coffee mugs.  So we have finally found a solution...disposable coffee cups.  Yes, it might have taken eight years for us to finally figure it out, but when we spotted them we both laughed and threw them into our cart.  His response, "Now don't go getting attached." 

Just don't run with it!!!

My last post was pleading for some help with my son's newest obsession....knives!  Of all things, my aspie decided somehow that he NEEDED to have knives.  And when I say obsession, it really was.  It was his every thought, and because he liked to cut himself with them we had to hide all of our knives and denied him anything sharp at all.  Well, it didn't work.  He had meltdown after meltdown.  Destroyed our house during fits.  Regressed in potty training and really just had a horrible time.  So, I used this blog to post our struggle and hope to hear some suggestions on how to handle the situation.  And of course you guys pulled through!  With some private messages and emails and the help of our therapists, we developed a plan of attack to help our aspie through this tough time.  And our plan of attack just might surprise you. 

What we knew was that our current way of dealing with it did not work....at all!  And so we did the opposite.  We gave him knives.  Yup, we armed our little dude with two of his very own knives that he could only use for 15 minutes, three times a day with supervision of course.  During the other times we put them in a treasure box in the kitchen where he could go and check to make sure they were there any time he wanted.  If he worked hard and completed all his work, then he could earn "bonus" time with the knives as well.  The other condition to the knives, thanks to the input of my husband, was that the knives had to be used as a tool accomplishing some task.  He did not wanting him just to hold it or study it, giving him time to think about cutting himself.  Instead, he had to cut fruit, vegetables, whittle a stick, cut flowers, etc.  Our therapist even constructed a knife use chart that had Velcro images of the knives with the times to give him a visual understanding of how many times a day he could play with the knives.  When he accomplished a task, he would remove a imagine allowing him to understand then how many more times that day he got to work with the knives. 

From the word go, he was curious and happy to have time with the knives.  We ended up falling into a pattern with the knife use so that when our in home therapist was here in the morning, our aspie and her would cut fruit for a snack.  Then for dinner he helped me cut vegetables for dinner and after dinner daddy and him did some sort of "manly" cutting.  He loved having his own special knives and as soon as we started this schedule, his meltdowns cut down dramatically.  We are now in week 3 of our routine and he has gotten to a point that he talks about knives constantly but the need to have them and search for them has lessened greatly.  He also has not cut himself since we started.  Although he still likes the feeling, he for some reason is not using them on himself. 

So there you have it.  We gave into the obsession, which is honestly the last thing I thought we would ever do.  It's a crazy feeling to allow your five your old to holding sharp knives and using them by himself when everything in your gut tells you to take them off of him.  But I, nor any other parent with a child on the spectrum, have a "normal" kid.  Our kids think differently, act differently, and are different and so, I guess a different response should not surprise me!

You have OCD....yeah you know me! Please HELP us!!!!

Let's be honest, all of us to some extent have OCD.  I for instance can only set an alarm to wake up on even numbers.  I can't explain why or when it started but I CANNOT make myself do anything else.  My husband cannot wear black socks, and if he has too he takes a shower immediately after they come off.  He also keeps his money a certain way and if it gets messed up, then he has to immediately stop and fix it.  It's obsessions, thoughts and weird stuff that we can't stop doing.  Washing hands repeatedly, etc.  Now by no means do I know what it like to truly have OCD, and this post is really not about OCD, its more just about the O:  Obsession. 

For the last couple of weeks, my aspie has been obsessed with knives.  All knives.  Butter, steak, Swiss Army, pockets, and everything else that exist in our house.  He loves the idea of them being sharp and shiny.  He tries to sneak them whenever he can and we have had to lock up all our kitchen knives, my husbands hunting knives and even the butter knives from our son.  Unfortunately, that has not stopped our son.  When he could not find knives he started looking for screwdrivers, toothpicks or anything else that has a sharp point to it.  He is now looking when we go to other places and tries to sneak things home.  The other day he got a knife from my in-laws and locked himself in their bedroom with it. 

At one point, he cut his thumb on a knife that he had found (prior to the lockup, before we knew how bad it is) and he never cried.  He was more worried about getting in trouble with the knife than anything else.  The cut was bad and we managed to get it to stop bleeding after about twenty minutes and never once did he cry from the pain.  In a way, we think the feel of a cut feels good to him and hence enhances the obsession.

I am writing this tonight in a desperate plea for help.  None of us (BSC, TSS, doctor, etc) know how to truly handle this.  Our therapist have told us in the 15 plus years of working with kids on the spectrum she has never seen this, as well as her co-workers.  We have tried everything from time out to replacement to down right screaming at him because we have been so concerned and stressed out over the issue.  And for letting him play with toy knives to replace the behavior, we tried.  He wants the real deal.  He cannot really tell us why he wants them, and as a whole we all think he truly doesn't know either.  He has torn our house apart looking for anything sharp.

And so I ask please help.  If you have any recommendations or have dealt with this kind of thing with your own aspie, please share and let me know how you handled it.  We are pretty desperate.  If not, please share this on Facebook, Twitter, where ever you can to get it around!  We are hoping that someone, somewhere can give us suggestions on how to handle this and what to do. 


Please understand too, he does not want to hurt anyone with them, he wants them for himself to feel and hold.  It is NOT a violent thing.

I ask and plea again, please share and any and all suggestions you have will be extremely helpful. Feel free to post on this blog or on my Facebook page!!!  Thank you in advance for all of your help in sharing and helping our family face this extremely delicate and scary issue!