Unschooling Food, Money and Personal Hygiene.

This is cross my mind this morning and I had to share it. Hopefully it'll bring
some comfort and possibility to some on this list.


FOOD.
-----

Well, the philosophy still stands. If we buy it, then I have to be prepared to
let him eat it all, at any rate he wants. Tho I don't stop him from eating it
all at one go, I do suggest to Greg perhaps after 2 bags of crisps, allow space
for dinner and finish off the 3rd bag or 4th bag afterwards. Or keep it for his
midnight snack. This normally works, the idea of having something to munch on at
11pm before bed, seems to entice him enough to stop at bag no 2.

So, the past 2 weeks, Greg's been buying and eating crisps for breakfast (before
his regular breakkie), lunch (before his regualar lunch), have his regualr
dinner and crisps for midnight snack.


Chewing gumn is another fix he is hooked on. And those aspartame do kick off his
hyper activeness. We're very sure of this becoz we know Haribo gummies don't,
chewy sweeties like Fruitella don't, sugar lumps don't but give him a sugar free
gum, you'll see his senses heightened and give him another, Greg is be
absolutely buzzing like a busy, busy bee!! LOL!!

But again, if he buys a box of chewing gum, I am fully prepared to let him
finish it at his pace. As always, I will suggest that if he has too much, he'll
be "aspie drunk". It is Greg's choice to whether lose himself into such state or
remain "sober" of which he's now discovered a choice of jaw compression
actitivities he can indulge in - Haribo Starmix or Knex sticks (the rubberised
bendy Knew stickes from his beginner Knex set) Greg has tld me that it calms him
down when chewing on these 2 things. But he has yet to share what do his aspie
drunk do for him.


Aspie drunk is what me and Greg refer to that feeling of "losing control his
brain (I recognisegd it as impulsiveness)and feeling like wanting to do lots of
things (I recognised it as erratic behaviour)"

In short, HYPER ACTIVENESS.

I do explain Greg my perspective of him during his aspie drunkness, and he
explains his internal emotional perspective to me. We reckon it is no different
to how a person will behave when drunk. Losing control and senses of one's
judgement and balance...hence the word "aspie drunk" becoz we refer to these
behaviours as part of his aspieness.

So yesterday, he's decided not to touch his box of chewing gums, but instead
chewed on a new Knex stick.



Personal Hygiene
----------------

Greg hates showers and brushing his teeth, just as much as any other aspie kid.
But he doesn it, with much moans and groans and complains. I cannot say we're
unschooling in this department but showering and brushing teeth is definetely a
non negotiable issue. But what I do is I am constantly explaining to him why we
need to do it.

We talked about how important his new teeth is for it's meant to last him a
lifetime. We talked about how important fresh breath becoz it doesn't turn
people off when we talk to them. Bad breath can gives people a wrong impression
that we're dirty, which we're not (and he very quickly points out that he
showers everyday! LOL!) And I do re-inforce the idea of "bad breath turning
people off" by deliberately not brushing at night, and eat something stinky
before bed like cheese, and talk to him closely first thing in the morning
before brushing my teeth. Most definetely do the trick about turning Greg off
LOL!!

To support his sensory needs, we do try lots of different tooth brushes, for the
fun of it. He's settled for an electric one which he alternates with a regular
one. We alos experiment with lots of different tooth paste and chance upon an
organic one which is a smooth trasnparent gel instead of the white gritty paste.
For me, this gel like consistency takes some geting use to , it's like baby
tooth paste but a minty version. In the end, we edned up with 2 toothpaste, the
white gritty one for us, and gel tothpaste for Greg.


He stills moans everyday, asking why should he shower when he showered the night
before. I still tells him, it is his choice, either shower, then he can snuggle
next to me in OUR bed, or don't shower and he can sleep and deposit all his
"germs and gritty sand particles" that he collected during his daytime charging
arond playing.....ON HIS OWN BED, next door in his OWN room. NOT IN MY BED.

And very often, once he is in the shower, he forgets about his moans and very
happily plugs in the bath plug and wil be playing away for the next half hour. I
do buy lots of bath toys. We have multi coloured bath bombs. We have a huge
basket full of toys, syphoning tools, measuring cups, toys syringes. I am
looking for some bath coloured tablet in the shops...I saw some crayola ones,
once a upon a time but can't find it now. I do hate shopping online but looks
like I have no choice.


MONEY
-----

To how i understand from an teenage aspie support forum, it seems like aspie
kids commonly has no sense of budgetting. They either blow the whole lump sum in
one go and moan for the rest of the month till the next payday, or some of them
have no cpmprehension of money and never spends any at all (tho this is a
minority)


My kid is the spend everything and moan forever type LOL!!


He will blow his whole £20 (plus any loose change that his dad gave him every
evening) on one thing...and then realised he's now broke. And then start wishing
he hadn't blown the whole lump sum on "this toy" (which he now decides is sucha
waste of money!)

And then he'll spend the rest of his afternoon, picking at the new toy's fault,
justifying how it is not worth the amount of money he's paid for it. And then
the next few days will see him adding salt to his own wound by goin on the
internet, checking out all those other toys that he could have bought, or how he
could have 5 different toys instead of just spending it on ONE. Then he
degenerates into a lump of self pity and keep saying what a stupid decision it
was to buy "THAT so not worth it's price TOY", eventually, starts calling
himself stupid for not thinking properly.

Then he'll start asking, what can he do to get extra pocket money. I points out
that his egg runs gives him generally £3 of profit. He thinks it is not enough.
Then he suggest car wash, which I agree to, but he''ll want to do it now (many
times, this is at some silly timing like bedtime or when we're on the way to
somewhere. Any suggestion to do it tommorrow morning is declined)

Then he'll start declining if I offer to pay him small money if he helps with
the laundry, or helped pick up his toys, for really, we don't have many things
that he can do, just so to earn extra money.
And he wants BIG money, not small money that he'll have to save up to form a
decent amount.

And this circumstances repeats itself every month.

Two days ago, we're in the mall. As always, Greg is moaning about how broke he
is, how he is unable to buy anything despite me offering to give him £2 to
spend. I am beginning to think how spoilt my child is!!! And I really can't face
this dilemma anymore.


So, I've decided. Instead of me paying for his food and drink and all. He's to
pay for it himself. I'm giving him £10 everytime we're out and about. He's to
pay for his half of his share. He's to pay for his meal, half the parking fees
and petrol which works out to be roughly about £5 average. I worked it out, that
the balance £5 should eseesntially buy him either a decent toy, maybe with
balance left over, which can be save for next trip or he might decided to blow
it all on a 2nd toy. Or if we're near a games arcade, he should be able to play
a game or 2.

All in all, theoratically, Greg should be able to feel fulfilled, and happy, and
in control over his own budget. And still not feel sad and despair over his
decisions, becuase there will be another £10 coming his way when we next go out
again. Hopefully, this will teach him a better sense of budget.

With Greg sense of "big money", he might surprise me by not spending his 2nd
half of the £5, but to use it just for the sake of buying something, but to save
it for a more desired toy in the future.


So, how's everyone getting on with thier aspie journey?


BWS
SharonBugs.