Special Interests, Hyperfixations & Learning to Navigate Disappointment | Beyond Expectations Podcast Ep. 17

In Episode 17 of Beyond Expectations: Parenting Autism, Michelle Chabolla and Sean Dobson discuss special interests, hyperfixations, and why change and disappointment can be especially challenging for autistic individuals.

Through personal stories about Gregory, they explore how passions can bring joy and comfort while sharing practical insights on setting boundaries, managing expectations, and building coping skills for greater independence.

This episode is proudly supported by Gregory’s Special Creations.
Visit: http://www.gregorysgifts.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the podcast Beyond Expectations, Parenting Autism. Follow Michelle Shabola's journey of raising a child with autism, the challenges, victories, and rewards. If you're a parent, caregiver, or simply someone seeking to understand autism on a personal level, you're in the right place.

SPEAKER_01 0:20

Here we are with Sean Dobson on Beyond Expectations. How are you doing?

SPEAKER_03 0:26

Hosted by Michelle Shibola. It's Michelle's program.

SPEAKER_02 0:30

Hosted by Michelle.

SPEAKER_03 0:32

I'm like the Ed McMahon to this, to uh to your Johnny Carson.

SPEAKER_02 0:35

Questions by Sean Dobson.

SPEAKER_03 0:39

Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 0:40

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 0:41

So this no special guest this week. I've been I've had a lot of fun with our special guests.

SPEAKER_01 0:45

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 0:46

And and it's kind of cool that we've had some people write in and volunteer to come on and um and provide their stories. So it'll be super fun. We'll be meeting new people.

SPEAKER_01 0:56

And more fun guests to come. Lots lined up.

SPEAKER_03 1:00

Excellent.

SPEAKER_01 1:00

Today it's us.

SPEAKER_03 1:02

What we can get into the nitty-gritty.

SPEAKER_01 1:04

Today we're gonna get into the nitty-gritty about being a mom of an autistic child that has special interests. Most people know what Gregory's special interests are, but I will recap them. He collects Savorski crystals, he collects albums and listens to them. Albums, vinyl albums.

SPEAKER_03 1:26

Right.

SPEAKER_01 1:27

He loves original anything. So if it's an original signed by the actual artist, loves that.

SPEAKER_03 1:36

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:37

Um, what else is he interested in? NASCAR, NASCAR fanatic, um, history channel, discovery channel, Smithsonian channel, fanatics.

SPEAKER_03 1:48

Would you would you lump that stuff all as like a fixation on learning?

SPEAKER_01 1:52

And no, no, I'm just saying that those are his special interests. And then there is the hyperfixations, which I I learned the actual name of it. I knew he had it, and I knew we were dealing with it, but I didn't know what it was called. So a hyperfixation is if you're out and about and he sees something he wants and he's really into it, and it could go along with his special interest, right? But it may not be may not be the best deal, may not be the best thing for him to buy.

SPEAKER_03 2:24

And instead of waiting, that he did he has a hard time with the concept of money. How's how's that gone?

SPEAKER_01 2:31

Right. So he has no concept of money, he he knows money, and it's really hard to describe. It's like value. Maybe he doesn't know value. So, for example, you and I were on a bit on a vacation with him. He went into a very high-end um gift shop.

SPEAKER_03 2:52

Oh, I know I I didn't know the story we're gonna talk about. Now I know the story we're gonna talk about. He went to a story that's a scam, is what he went into.

SPEAKER_01 3:00

So I went in there with him. Very nice hotel, very high-end gift shop, and I always let him look. He loves to look. Well, he came upon this amazing sheep head dinosaur head. I don't know what it was. He could tell you exactly what it was. It was huge and it was very nice. It was cool if you were into that.

SPEAKER_03 3:21

It was like a petrified animal head of some kind, sheep head, had fanes and and sheep's head had like big long teeth, and right, it was it was petrified in some kind of stone. It was cool, so it was like a fossil.

SPEAKER_01 3:35

And it was eleven thousand dollars.

SPEAKER_03 3:38

Yeah, that was the scam part. Everything in that shop was was priced on the economical, right?

SPEAKER_01 3:44

And so he, of course, wanted me to see it, and then when I said, Oh, that's great, but I didn't support the purchase of it. Who did he go to show? Uncle Sean.

SPEAKER_03 3:56

He dragged me in there. I about fell over. He's like, Isn't this cool? It's very cool. How much is this? $11,000. I'm like, it's less cool now, it's not nearly as cool as I thought.

SPEAKER_01 4:05

But see, I fell, and so and it and remember, he wouldn't let go until you went, he had to show you, had to show you before we left. So he showed you. And he never moved on from it. We went on to go to other cities, other places. Remember, we left that hotel, right? And we're having dinner, and we went to this special restaurant just for Gregory. And what was he still thinking about? The eleven thousand dollar dinosaur. Yeah, the fossil.

SPEAKER_03 4:45

Oh, I didn't know it was getting that bad. I I remember he brought it up a couple times and he got and he went to stretch.

SPEAKER_01 4:50

And then I remember you and Michael started looking elsewhere for the exact same fossil that happened to be everywhere.

SPEAKER_03 4:58

Exactly. It wasn't it wasn't rare at all.

SPEAKER_01 5:00

It wasn't rare.

SPEAKER_03 5:01

That's what I was in the shop was a scam because she was asking $11,000 for something that was available online for a tenth of that.

SPEAKER_01 5:08

Exactly. Yeah, exactly a tenth of it. And what I really want to emphasize here, this is so hard because you see you see it as a passion, you see it as oh my gosh, he wants it so bad, but really not. You see it at he can't move on. He literally can't move on. It's not a tantrum. We've all had toddlers that had tantrums.

SPEAKER_03 5:31

Yeah, that's I I would think this is kind of like um when you have a young child, right? You have to teach them this skill of like the answer is no, and it really is no. And we can cry and we can and we can pout and we can fall on the ground and bang if we want to, but the answer is still gonna be no. And so they basically part of growing up and part of maturing, and and I guess it's probably I'm guessing four, five, six years old is where they're like they realize that no's no, and right, and they're gonna have to accept that. And so you're saying like he just didn't won't accept no's no?

SPEAKER_01 6:04

He won't accept no is no, and he just it pretty much just ruins the whole day. So I saw it happening. I looked at him, he said, I need to stretch. So he went out and stretched, he came back, suffered through dinner. And at that point, we had done a lot. Remember, we had been everywhere, and I also knew he was exhausted. And it seems to happen with him worse when he's out of sorts. I call it out of sorts, he's tired, he's exhausted, he's not gonna move on. So the next day, if you I don't know if you remember or not, but I canceled us going with you and Michael. You and Michael went on. I took him to the swimming pool so he could get some deep compression, some good movement, and then I could talk to him about it, and then I talked to him about it at lunch, and I said, We need to talk about this. And he just froze, I mean, just froze. And I said, You're not in trouble, but you need to apologize to your uncle, you need to apologize to your brother because you were awful. You were awful last night. And I do talk to him like that, and I know I'm really hard on him, but I know he understands. I know, I know he does. If he didn't, I wouldn't. Michelle, that's gotta be the hard part.

SPEAKER_03 7:12

Is it when do you have to make exceptions? And when do you when should you make an exception to say, well, this kind of behavior wouldn't be tolerated otherwise, but this person has autism, and so we have to make exceptions for him. And then and then and when do you say bullshit? Like, I'm a mom and you're a kid and you gotta learn how to behave. Like, I that must be like super hard. When we're alone, I pull no punches. Really?

SPEAKER_01 7:37

You treat him like a mom when I have time to let him do what he needs to do to vocalize and get it all out one-on-one in public. I let it, you know. I obviously I'm not gonna do that to him in public, but when we're alone, all hands on deck, man. He's and he under he understands it, and I think he gets over it faster. Now, if you were there, you would oh my gosh, what is she doing to this?

SPEAKER_03 8:05

Feel you, because it's just you you you scold him like you would a five-year-old or a six-year-old.

SPEAKER_01 8:09

Absolutely, and hold him to it. And don't let him go, you know, to his house where he wants to be, make him go somewhere else and deal with it, you know, make him uncomfortable, make him realize, and he will, he'll he'll he'll feel awful. He'll say very sad things. He'll say, I just feel awful. I'm so disappointed in myself, and I just let him vent. I'm like, you're right. And I do throw out that he's 31 when he's biologically 31, but is he 31? No, he's not. But I do how do you think about his age?

SPEAKER_03 8:39

Is he 31? Is he a six-year-old in a 31-year-old body in your mind?

SPEAKER_01 8:44

I think he's probably 10 or 11, maybe.

SPEAKER_03 8:48

Yeah, nine, 10 or 11 emotionally in terms of what he can comprehend and how he can function. That's pretty good, right? I mean, a 10 or 11-year-old you can leave him at home, they can make their own lunch. Yes, yes.

SPEAKER_01 8:58

He's very capable of that. Um, decision making, I think that's where he's at. He's probably IQ. There's not telling him how smart he is because he can absorb everything, but but on a taking care of himself, probably 10 or 11, I would say. We're getting there. He gets better every year.

SPEAKER_03 9:14

So if you so you discipline him the way you wouldn't have an 11-year-old. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 9:18

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 9:19

This is not this is not the kind of behavior we're gonna expect, and you gotta do better.

SPEAKER_01 9:22

Right. And it's different. His special interests are very expensive, very expensive. We go to LA every year, he goes to this celebration, he's gotten to where he goes to this authenticity, authenticity celebrity shop. Which you know what that is, like a member of the shop. So when we go in, I go, now wait a minute, how much, you know, because there's a Star Wars head again, $14,000, you know. So we put a budget on it. He goes in there and he's really good about sticking with the budget. That's another way to deal with it, is just put him on a budget. He has been hysterical, though, in the Savorski store. We started to walk in there, and I said, Now, Gregory, Christmas is coming, your birthday's coming. Let's try not to spend, you know, $100, $150. That's your budget today. And he walks in and he goes, I won't spend more than a thousand. I say, Gregory, I know, I know.

SPEAKER_02 10:27

I mean, the whole store starts laughing. I'm just like, oh my oh no, this is not what I said.

SPEAKER_03 10:34

What kind of so you got he's got this vast uh collection of the Swarovski crystals. Does he interact with them or does he look at them? How does it how does that create like enjoyment? Yeah, yeah. Like, how does it why did how does he enjoy them?

SPEAKER_01 10:49

There is a connection living room in this beautiful glass case, and he gets to enjoy them every day. And he listens to his albums. He and he really does enjoy every single thing that he collects. I have to admit, I can't say that he collects things, puts it in a box, and puts it away. Lego. So it's not hoarding. He's not hoarding. He loves Legos, he builds them, he builds them and displays them. Now that can get out of control. Legos are expensive, and then you have the problem of where do we display them? Puzzles, he works thousands of puzzles. I mean, well, hundreds, hundreds of puzzles he's worked, and so we glue them and hang them in the shop. I don't know what anybody else would do if they didn't have a 3,000 square foot shop to hang them in. But he, you know, he hangs and we make art out of them. So I say, I totally say you support their special interest and you just be very sympathetic to the hyperfixation. It's it's hard for them. It's really, really hard to move on.

SPEAKER_03 11:50

Well, but but the message just seems kind of mixed, right? You're saying, on the one hand, you're saying you gotta, it's a special needs person by definition. You gotta make they have special needs, right? So if they have this hyperfixation uh tendency, then you have to be sensitive to it. But then you also you're saying you gotta guide them through it where it's not it's not acceptable to just perseverate on something and and be stressed about it and keep trying to get the answer to change. So it seems like it's very a very tough thing to navigate, right? Like when does a mom know it's time to lay down the law or it's time to indulge this?

SPEAKER_01 12:30

I think you have to go on your child's, you know, how mature they are, right? How much they can handle. I mean, are they asking for a $11,000 fossil or are they asking for a $10 toy? Although, right? I mean, you need to not give in every single time. But and then at what how much are they comprehending? We really didn't deal with this. Like we just went on vacation to Colorado, and he another thing he uses is handmade soap. That's all he uses handmade soap, bar soap, and there's a soap lady that he loves in Breckenridge, it's expensive soap, it's it's like $12 a bar. And so we go every year and he gets a year's full of soap. I mean, he because he's not gonna go back until next year, and she's super, super, super nice to him, and he remembers her every time. And we walked in this past weekend and she wasn't there. It had the shop had changed hands, threw him completely off.

SPEAKER_03 13:34

Oh, wow.

SPEAKER_01 13:35

Basically, told the lady that she wasn't the right lady. Bring back the grace. I said, Gregory, he goes, Well, that's not what I meant, but that's not the lady. And she goes, You're right. She said, Did you come here last year? And he said, No, we didn't come last year. And she said, You're right. Two years ago, I bought the shop from Kim. And he goes, That's her name. So then he got to know this lady. But now that I don't know if that's a special interest or a hyperfixation. You figure that out. He has to buy it from her every year.

SPEAKER_03 14:10

What do you do if that shop's no longer there?

SPEAKER_01 14:13

Oh, that's happened before. It's not good. You find another shop that you hopefully, you know, that you can talk him into because that has happened before. Because there's there's a collector shop there that has collector, you know, collecting things that that closed. Right. But he has these certain shops, these certain restaurants, every single visit that he goes to. So I and that may, I don't know where that falls in to an obsession or he has to go to this restaurant because it has the game room. He has to play the you know, the games, and and none of it's outlandishly expensive. It's just it's a routine beef jerky. There's a beef jerky guy. This time he was closed. But he handled it.

SPEAKER_03 15:02

He finds what he likes. He finds what he likes, and then he has that that comfort with right knowing, right? I mean, didn't we? I think we talked about this that that people with autism are more likely to like the watch reruns because they there's no surprises, right? They know what's gonna happen next. It's comfort, it's comforting to know what's gonna happen next. Relaxing knows what's happening next. And so is that basically the same thing? It's like no, like new things are hard, so I like the old things.

SPEAKER_01 15:28

I guess so.

SPEAKER_03 15:29

I mean that's it. It kind of sounds a little bit awesome, right? I mean to me, you know, if you had like your your soap lady and you had your it had your like the restaurants you liked and the shops you liked, and you got to go to them every you know that when they were always there and you didn't have to go to new places. I that sounds amazing to me.

SPEAKER_01 15:54

I mean, he has his favorites, and I and I think we all do, I think you're right. I think we all do, but it just amazes me when he gets so upset, so upset about it, and he knows he knows.

SPEAKER_03 16:10

So in the hyperfixation thing, when you have to say no, right? When it's the when it's the the shop at the bottom of the hotel trying to steal ten thousand dollars from a guest is a crazy banger. Um then does he would you say he gets mad, sad? Does he get like hyper anxiety where he's gonna like throw up or like what what are the emotions, or is it, or is it all of that?

SPEAKER_01 16:35

It's all inside. He holds it all inside.

SPEAKER_03 16:39

So the disappointment. Does he think he did something wrong by wanting it? Is he taking it on himself that this is a bad thing he did, or is it just the disappointment of like not getting what he wants?

SPEAKER_01 16:48

I think it's the disappointment of not knowing it's not a good deal at the end, right? Because he he ended up being okay with one that we found online, right? That you and Michael found, but he wasn't settling for that that night. Remember, he was not gonna settle for what y'all found that night.

SPEAKER_03 17:08

Yeah, oh yeah. We had to get off the Google and figure out how to get him what he wanted without getting the solar problem. Right, but that didn't that, but that didn't solve the issue.

SPEAKER_01 17:17

It was still like not until the next day till I got him out. He swam all day, and then at lunchtime we had to talk. I made sure that he got that decompression out, that he got the movement out. He you know, had moved on to another activity, he hadn't forgot about it, and then we came back to lunch. I said, We need to talk.

SPEAKER_03 17:38

But does he what's it? I guess I'm trying to figure out is it is it like you know, when someone's told no, there's a disappointment, right? But if someone's told you're making a bad decision, that's much more personal, right? And is that what gets him so upset, or is it just the fact he can't get his way?

SPEAKER_01 17:56

He gets disappointed that he can't move on.

SPEAKER_03 17:58

He gets very wants to go on and he can't do it, but he feels it, right?

SPEAKER_01 18:03

I totally think he can't move on. I don't know how that would feel. That would feel yeah.

SPEAKER_03 18:12

Wow. Yeah, where you yourself want to want to get past this, but your anxiety levels, your like your emotions are just wound up and you can't get and you can't get past it.

SPEAKER_01 18:23

And he can't manage the emotions. So now when he shows people that the one he's got that was you know tenth of the price, he goes, now I did see one.

SPEAKER_03 18:34

It's still out there, he still wants the rip the the rip-off one.

SPEAKER_02 18:38

I'm just like, oh my god, we're going right down this rabbit hole again with $11,000.

SPEAKER_03 18:46

It's gonna be forever.

SPEAKER_01 18:49

I know I'm not the only person that deals with this. I have seen major special interests that look like obsessions, right?

unknown 18:57

Right.

SPEAKER_01 18:58

They have to have, they have a whole lot of one thing, and some of them don't ever move on from it. They just need they need that same activity over and over and over again.

SPEAKER_03 19:09

And they just where they collect. Uh oh. Where they collect, like when you hung up there for a minute there. Okay, I think we're back.

SPEAKER_01 19:16

I think we're back. Yeah, like they just collect and collect and collect, and it almost becomes a hoarding thing.

SPEAKER_03 19:24

And so, and so if you have if you're a parent, so your advice, if you're a parent to a child with autism and they have this, this we'll call it well, it's sort of two different things. They have this special interest thing where they love back in the day it was beanie babies or whatever, right? They've got their thing, or it's the or it's the crystals, and those crystals are expensive, right? And like like, do you at some point we talk we talk about economics a lot? We had and we had the guest on that talked about the special needs trust and and and living. I mean, like invariably this is going to be something that Alec that absorbs a lot of your financial resources, right? You have a child that that is going to be part of your household potentially forever and then beyond, right? So so these these special interests can get expensive. So, like, so if you have that, if there if there are special interests in these things that you can't afford, what do you do? Have you ever successfully switched them off of one track onto another?

SPEAKER_01 20:20

With his crystals, I've gotten it finally, I've gotten it down to where it's just special occasions, but you know, his other special interest are Broadway shows and yeah, I was gonna mention that before. He loves to go to live live so late, and you know, I really don't feel bad about that because I just feel like that is such a learning for him. It is I know they're expensive seats. I I bought nosebleed for Lil Mermaid, and he will not let me forget every time I renew because we haven't let me see where the seats are, and I'm right. He goes, Remember, I can barely see can't you hear a cynical person?

SPEAKER_03 21:04

Can't you hear a cynical person listen to this conversation and saying this is just a spoiled person, right? This is like I want I want what I want, I want it when I want it, and I want the best, and and I'm not gonna pay for it, someone else has. So, like, what's the difference between uh a special interest that absorbs time and money? Um, and and and so and like like what's the difference between autistic person a person with autism who has these sort of gets gets so focused on these things, and someone that's just like, yeah, I want that too. I want my own soap lady, I want my own whatever. Like, what's the difference between being spoiled and and having these conditions?

SPEAKER_01 21:47

Well, Gregory works for it. He makes his own money, and I try to show him the difference of having money and not having money, and that's really hard. Money's a very hard thing for him. I don't know if it's Because it's just not physically in your hands? I I really haven't figured that out yet. Because if he does use cash, he gets ripped off. Now no one takes cash.

unknown 22:11

Right.

SPEAKER_01 22:12

Or it's a bank card, which would be like a check. It's just just swipe that thing and you get what you want.

SPEAKER_03 22:19

Yeah, so so why not do it all the time?

SPEAKER_01 22:21

Try to make him independent. At the airport, you know, I I'm working on it. Like at the airport, he's got 5,000 magazines he could take, but he buys a new one. And he always gets those special time or newsweeks that have the Beatles or Elvis. And they're $15 or sometimes $20 magazine. Right.

SPEAKER_03 22:43

He comes, you know, and I'll let him go look by himself. But at the end of the day, he makes his own money and that sets his budget. So you cover food and housing and whatever. Right. And if he makes enough money to buy the magazine, he can buy the magazine. So he has his own agency over his own resources. With with guardrails that you don't let him buy the $11,000. But that's that's wild. Because so, so how would you think about the answer to my question? Like, so what's the difference between between like overindulging someone right and being sympathetic to the fact that they have autism and they can't control these things. Huh? Is it just moms? Is it just mom's no?

SPEAKER_01 23:31

It's just mom's no, and moms have a I mean, you truly have to know your your child's maturity. They may not be asking for anything. He didn't ask for anything until he was almost six. Never asked for anything at stores or anything. Now he wasn't talking a lot, but he could still point and you know, and he would just pick a toy up and put it back down. And I think the first time he wanted something was like, oh my gosh, he asked for something. You know, he actually wants something. And he doesn't ask for a lot. I'm probably making him sound way more demanding and more spoiled than he is. He truly doesn't ask for a lot. It's just that when he asks for it, it's quality.

SPEAKER_03 24:12

Well, and when he asks for it, it's like you're in a pickle because saying no is hard and getting him to accept no is nearly impossible.

SPEAKER_01 24:18

And when he doesn't ask for anything, I mean just Sharon. Sharon's the worst. She'll just say yes. My oldest sister's because she was with us in Colorado and he asked for something. I said, buddy, and she'll go, but he never asked for anything. Oh no. He doesn't. He really doesn't. He doesn't have a car. He doesn't, you know, if you think of the expenses you typically you have with a typical child, you don't have those. He didn't have college. He doesn't have a car. He doesn't, you know, have a lot of the typical expenses. So you're like, oh well, well, it's not okay for $11,000 fossil, but it might be okay for a $20 magazine, right?

SPEAKER_03 24:53

Well, but but what you're saying though is that is that you you treated him like you would a 10 or a 10 or 11-year-old kid that that basically wouldn't take no for an answer and was pouting about it, upset about it. And but the different the difference was instead of like maybe a 10 or 11-year-old, you yell at them or or punish them or take away their phone or whatever. With him, it's about giving him space and time, removing them from like more stressors and more stuff, and like giving him a bunch of time to accept that there's a no.

SPEAKER_01 25:27

And nine times out of ten, after the whole big thing, he will apologize. He understands, and that's what I think it's a real temporary thing that they just he can't move on from at that moment, but a couple you know, later on, he will move on and he'll apologize.

SPEAKER_03 25:45

But you've been fortunate, but I've got other friends that I have friends that have um you know adult kids with autism, and there's been problems with violence, and I think it ties back to the same thing, which is they get told no, and then because like at the end of the day, like you're scolding him, you're chilling like he's 11. He's a six-foot-tall, 185-pound man.

SPEAKER_02 26:04

I know, too. Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_01 26:06

He could he could literally pick me up and throw me across his shop if he wanted to. He really could.

SPEAKER_03 26:11

But some parents have to deal with that, right? They have to deal with uh with someone that gets upset and then they get violent, right? Right. And so, like for that situation, it seems like you're in them. So, why don't you think you're in that situation? Why not you? Why don't you think you've ever had that that situation?

SPEAKER_01 26:26

Honestly, it just be you just got luck, lucky with them? Yeah, the massages, the the de-stressing him, the putting him back in when you know what people say. I can never understand how to say he needs that massage. I mean, I can just read him like a book. He's just like this, and he he's has a really hard time processing, has a really hard time functioning. I take him to Mark to say, here, fix him, and he comes out and he's de-stressed, he's back in, he's just I I don't even know how to describe it. It's like back. I've asked him to, and he's what's it called? We can call him out.

SPEAKER_02 27:12

He's he listens to my show.

SPEAKER_03 27:14

Well, I mean, not everyone can afford it, and right, and it's and it's well, and there's it's not available, right? Like that there's not that many practitioners, I guess. Correct. He's very special. So people may have to go figure out how to how to get by with their own.

SPEAKER_01 27:27

There are other ones, but he they're hard to find. They're really hard to find. When I moved from Colorado, my most stressful, stressful thing in the move was making sure I could find another craniosacral therapist.

SPEAKER_03 27:41

Craniosacral therapist.

SPEAKER_01 27:43

It took me probably six weeks to find him after I got here. I made sure he was ready for the move, and then I found Mark, and he's never left him. He's been with him for 13 years.

SPEAKER_03 27:55

Wow, that's amazing.

SPEAKER_01 27:56

But um, I think that just recenters him and and lets him know where he's at. I just think the stress alone and anxiety can really do harm to anybody. Stress is stress is awful and anxiety, and then if you don't know how to release it, you know, get away from it. I get away from it. You get away from it. He doesn't know.

SPEAKER_03 28:25

You might have the same tendencies, but you've somehow been able to have a nervous system that allows you to cope, to cope with the no, cope with the stress, find a way around it. But I mean, but to be fair, people that don't have autism and have a lot of stress, a lot of them end up in the bottom of a bottle of whiskey somewhere, right? So correct. Like they find they find bad ways to to deal with it as well.

SPEAKER_01 28:44

To deal with it, to medicate themselves. Yes, absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 28:47

Yeah, to medicate themselves. And so, but with but but the tough part about being a mom in your situation is you gotta you gotta find that thing that's even harder to describe, right? That thing of like, I can't have a spoiled person. They have to learn, they have to some behaviors acceptable, some not, but then I have to lower the bar a little bit, and it just feels like it's impossible for a man to know.

SPEAKER_01 29:10

It really is, and I can see him sometimes doubling up his fist. I can hear him get very frustrated in the shop sometimes. I hear a different hum or a different noise, and I'll peek in and say, Is everything okay? And he'll just look at me because he's frustrated, like I've given him something too thick, or you know, something's not going just the way he wants it to. And I'll say, you know what, why don't you step away from it and come back to it? And he will, and he'll come back and he'll, you know, he'll he'll put together, but I can tell in a different of his noise. But the duck, you know, if he's frustrated somewhere and he's got his hands and his fists, he needs to go stretch. He needs to stretch.

SPEAKER_03 29:48

That's that's does he know that, or do you have to catch him before you start swinging?

SPEAKER_01 29:53

Uh he's never swung, but I I can look at him and he'll say, Can I go stretch? And I go, Yes, you can. And usually it's a screaming baby, it's a noise off the chart, a real high-pitched noise, not not music. You see how loud he can take music, he can take games. It's that distress. If he knows someone's distressed, that is highly. Right.

SPEAKER_03 30:20

That he wants it to be better and wants that person to be better and he can't.

SPEAKER_01 30:23

And he looks at me like you know, he's asked me to fix babies on airplanes before. Fix it.

SPEAKER_03 30:28

You know, want my baby, put on your but when I have a scream at me. This might sound terrible, but when there's a baby screaming next to me, right? Well, you know, now that I've had had kids, when there's a baby screaming next to me, I feel terrible for the parents because I know that they're like they don't want this and they're embarrassed and they know it's affecting everyone else. But that but I would say the the the screaming baby first comes to me as like that's noise I don't want to hear, and whatever. It doesn't come to me as like, oh my god, the baby's in trouble because I know it's not, right? The the mom's there, whatever. Right. But with him, it's reverse, right? He's worried about the baby, he's not worried about himself being and being inconvenienced, right? Yes, and that's and that's what creates the so this so there's something we have to we have to learn about the super high level of empathy that he has, and and I think it's common with people with autism, right? This is why he's fun to be around, right? He's he's just a super, you know, he's a super good energy to be around.

SPEAKER_01 31:21

He he literally, I could probably count how many times he cried as a baby. Really? Which is so I look back and I'm like, you know, he never cried. He never, he never cried.

SPEAKER_03 31:34

It was so it's like he didn't worry about himself. He would because a lot of times crying is like I'm unhappy, right?

SPEAKER_01 31:39

Um I need something the happiest baby you ever well, you saw him. He was happy all the time. Even Mark said, he had a grin on his face in every day of high school, he just the happy guy.

SPEAKER_03 31:52

He seems to be happy now, right? That he's on the ground, like so, and so I guess it's these extremes, right? Because he's happy all the time, but then when he gets upset, he loses control of his ability and doesn't have these. So mom's got to be that part of the nervous system that dials it back and helps him find a way to get past what ordinarily other people would sort of just take a deep breath and grit their teeth and and move on. Then the mom's gotta step in, or the parent, the parents gotta step in and and be that nervous system for them.

SPEAKER_01 32:21

Right.

SPEAKER_03 32:21

And just that's wild. Oh my goodness, it's so I gotta take care of that.

SPEAKER_01 32:24

It's so complicated. But he's but this hyper fixation is definitely Gregory. I live it so much. And it's just and since you've experienced it, I was like, oh, we have to talk about it.

SPEAKER_02 32:34

Oh, that's still you live it, you don't, you're like, uh, he wanted it, whatever. Oh, you saw yeah.

SPEAKER_03 32:40

No, I would say it's different than like a kid that gets a toy on their mind. It's different than that. You can tell it's a it's a level of like of like, you know, it's a true fixation. Like we can't we can't find a way to move on.

SPEAKER_01 32:52

We can't move on. But we did, we didn't buy the eleven thousand dollar bowl.

SPEAKER_03 32:57

Exactly. Luckily, exactly.

SPEAKER_02 33:00

We had to hide it in our suitcase. Anyway, this is great. All right.

SPEAKER_03 33:05

All right, this has been a great conversation. Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 33:07

Thank everyone for listening.

SPEAKER_03 33:09

That's right.

SPEAKER_02 33:09

All right, until next time.

SPEAKER_03 33:11

All right, bye.