Demetrius: Wilting Flower…
Demetrius and this rose had alot in common yesterday
Saturday was 85 degrees and yesterday was warmer, reaching the mid-nineties in the heat of the day. It felt it yesterday. We’ve had a gigantic swing in temperatures over the past week, going from 53 a week ago Sunday to the 90s (new record high).
What happened I should have expected, but it had never manifested itself in such a way before.
These autistic kids, almost unanimously, have sensory issues. Some (most) of these autistic kids can’t handle loud noises, or certain fabrics on their skin, etc…the list is as varied as it is endless. Never would I have thought, though I should have, that being out and about in severe swings in temperature would have the same net effect – but they did on poor Demetrius.
We went to a baseball field to throw the ball and play with our dear friend Joseph..in fact, at one time or another all of the kids were out tossing the balls back or forth or taking batting practice. At one point I was tossing the ball to Demetrius in the outfield.
Demetrius: Daddy, I’m really hot.
Daddy: We’ll leave in a few minutes, lets play a bit longer.
Demetrius: My body hurts. I’m hot.
Upon that note, we got some lemonade from Ms. Elaine, gathered up Maya, and headed to the car. Upon firing up the air conditioning as high as I could, I pulled into a Dairy Queen, got two chocolate dipped cones and a big bottle of water. He downed both.
He was just weird, and moody, the rest of the day. We went to get Mommy’s birthday present and he laid in the middle of the floor of the store…the air ducts were on the ground and I think he was soaking as much in as possible. He was really lethargic, and everything was a battle and pitched fit. To the point where he’d start having a tantrum… and he wasn’t articulating why he was ‘pitchin’ the fit’.
About 7:30pm he was crying and grabbed Kim and just said, “I’m tired.”
A shower and a couple of stories later, I asked him how he felt. He told me he was ‘not hot’.
He basically passed out after that.
It took me thinking about it the rest of the night to put 2:2 together that it may just have been sensory overload yesterday. He actually prefers the warm weather over the cold (unless there is snow), but too sudden a change is tough for all of us (and the pollen! As I said Saturday, both are killers – heat and pollen!), let alone him.
Oh well, he did like it when we lived in Southern California….
Hey kid, who didn’t like 75 degrees and an ocean breeze!
