One of Tyler’s quirky AU things is that he LOVES to be wrong – yep, he loves to “try again” loves the red X’s on a game and the attempt at doing it again. This is cute in thought BUT it’s very hard to accurately test him in some areas and many times hard to test in a standard manner because you know he knows the answer – as he memorizes most every…thing, but he prefers the being wrong over being right – lol. This is also very hard to encourage him not to desire to be wrong. He’s very dramatic as well so he loves the sighing, the head hanging, the lip curling and then the big eyed excitement and standing tall pride of getting it right – some therapist say it’s a processing thing – going from beginning to end – starting off getting it wrong and progressing to right – some therapist say it’s a brain stimulation thing, the chemical set off of being down and then instantly up and he gets to be in control of how it feels. None of us can actually figure out why he likes to do this. Thank goodness his teacher sees and knows what I know about this quirky behavior Tyler has.
Now – yesterday I thought I would take him bowling and attempt bowling without the kiddie bumpers. Since I can’t bowl as it is I knew there would be several gutter balls from each of us. But, just as I suspected, Tyler began to intentionally gutter the ball, and he would say “oh no” very dramatically and then look at the screen and say “gutter ball” he did this several times.
Since I am not a competitor, I am not into saying I am winning and you are losing. I do believe in good healthy competition for those at a cognitive level of understanding competition and if you like to compete, but I am not a competitor. So I was trying to figure out a way to make him strive not to intentionally get gutter balls and I came up saying “uh oh, no points” and great job you got points. I stated the same for me (remember I have no athletic ability including things such as bowling, so unintentional gutter balls come often for me- lol). As we progressed into the second game, it did get better, he began to attempt to get the points instead of intentionally hitting the gutters. We both hit the gutters several times, neither of us intentionally – lol.
Well we were done by 10:00 a.m., it was great to have the bowling alley to ourselves. I really enjoy being in the bowling alley myself when it’s not full of people – I have developed autism by association. 🙂
Autism Plus More 