Thanks for coming out, Lurkers and Long-Lost Friends!! I will post responses tomorrow, cross my heart!!
Ch. 45: My Little One-Hit-Wonder
Ed and I hurried across the lobby toward the
Cubs Den. I was concerned that a CM had called about Billy. What kind of problem? I asked, hoping it was just something minor (like he spilled something all over his clothes and needed a change.)
Hope for the best; prepare for the worst.
They said he hit Tricia, Ed growled. My first reaction was, well, at least he didnt hit another child. But this was bad enough!
She probably
screeched at him again, he said, shaking his head. When will she learn that she just cant do that? Tricia, of late, had been having increasing difficulty dealing with her brothers behavior quirks
most of all, with his loud and constant stimming.
He would get annoying, she would yell at him to stop, he wouldnt be able to verbalize his feelings and so, he would try to push or hit her to get her to stop scolding him. It hadnt happened that often, but it had happened.
We had been working on getting her to use other approaches, but she was having a hard time not responding with the instinctive youre-such-an-annoying-little-brother tirade.
It can be difficult enough for adults to work with an autistic childs behavior and communication problems; it must feel like an impossible task sometimes for their siblings. After all, shes only a child, herself.
We soon arrived and the children were waiting. They were in trouble and they knew it. Oh the shame! The disgrace! Expelled from a Disney kids club!
Billy ran to me and hugged me around the waist.
I be
good boy! he announced.
I be good boy!
There were no other children in the club at the time, but there had been two other kids there with them for a short while. Tricia had been doing some coloring with the two little girls and Billy (as expected) was busy watching a video and sorting through the clubs video collection.
Do you remember way, way back in the infant stages of this report when I told you about Billy and his video/DVD obsession? You dont? I wonder why!
Billy doesnt just like to watch them. He
sorts them, he
stacks them, and he
reads the covers, out loud, over and over. At home, he collects them like baseball cards and plays with them all the time. He opens the boxes and makes sure the videos are rewound (the library loves him!) and the DVDs are positioned in their covers so that they are perfectly straight.
Recently he discovered
Amazon.com. He likes to scroll around and look at all the kids DVDs and read about them! Last summer we received an unexpected package via UPS. I mustve left my credit card number on the site after ordering something, because Billy figured out how to place an order for a DVD and have it sent to him!
Thank goodness it was only one!
Anyway, with that in mind, Ill tell you what happened. (According to Tricia.)
Billy had all the videos off the shelves and strewn around the floor in little piles, just like he does at home. Apparently, one of the CMs asked that the kids clean up a little, but when Tricia tried to put the videos away, Billy got very upset and did not want her to touch them. He can be quite rigid that way; its a symptom of his autism. Well, the CMs kind of missed that because they kept encouraging the kids to clean up.
So Tricia was trying to do as she was told, but Billy was frustrating her. And Billy was trying to enjoy all the videos the way he likes, and she was frustrating him by trying to clean them up.
She yelled at him; he cried and hit her on the arm.
Then, Tricia says, both CMs got very excited and immediately called us to come pick them up. It was only a little hit on the arm, she said, it wasnt a big deal or anything.
But, the rules of the kids club clearly state that there will be no hitting or aggressive behavior tolerated, so the kids had to be ejected. Well, we really couldnt argue. After all, rules are rules and hitting is wrong. We were done with our dinner, anyway, but
.there went our visit to
Pleasure Island! 
We walked across to the villas with Billy chanting, Good boy! so he wouldnt get punished and Ed chastising Tricia for not handling the situation better. Well, in my mind it really wasnt her fault completely.
First, I really shouldnt criticize because I was not there to observe
but looks like Im going to, just the same!
It seemed as though the CMs could have been a bit more flexible when it came to the lets all clean up routine. Yes, they are totally unfamiliar with Billy and his quirks, but two very basic hallmarks of autism are
rigidity and a
lack of awareness of how ones actions affect others. If, as I had been told, the staff really did have lots of experience with caring for autistic children, they should have been a little more cognizant of this.
Second, it seems to me that after Billy had vehemently objected and Tricia was having difficulty getting him to let her pick up the videos, one of them could have come over to intervene instead of allowing the situation to escalate. Yes, Tricia is his sister and knows him better than the staff. And yes, she was a resource to help them communicate with him. But, she herself is a child, and as a child, she should not have been expected to figure out a way to make him clean up after himself.
I would have tried to persuade Billy to pick up the videos by making a game out of it and by offering some small reward. If you pick up all the videos, you can choose one to borrow and take back to your room for the night! Or, I would have just waited for Mom and Dad to come back and let them handle it! Honestly, I could have had him picking them up in a minute flat!
But, thats a different thing altogether; Im his mother.
In his defense, Billy does a lot better taking directives from Ed and me than he does from Tricia. (But hey, isnt that the way it is in most families?)
Anyway, I wasnt overly impressed with the way the childcare CMs handled the situation. It wasnt like they had a room full of kids and just couldnt give Billy the increased supervision hes used to. Two CMs for four children is a pretty darn good ratio. And it was the staffs insistence on the clean-up that precipitated the incident in the first place!
In any case, Im rambling. Sorry.
I just remember it being kind of a letdown.
I had been told that the staff had experience caring for autistic children. Now, I would conclude that, just because autistic children have used the childcare clubs, that doesnt necessarily mean that the staff has any
additional training or possess the
skills needed to handle them. Perhaps this was an isolated incident. Unfortunately, I would not feel comfortable putting my autistic child in one of the Disney clubs again.
Well, you can imagine that all four of us were a bit out of sorts as we returned to our villa. Ed
..oh, Ed had been out of sorts since Roaring Forks. Billy was nervous because he knew we were not pleased that he had hit his sister, so he kept looking for reassurance by saying, Good boy! I be a good boy! over and over and over. Tricia was annoyed because her father indicated that she had not taken care of her little brother the way she was supposed to, and I
.well, I couldnt help thinking about all we had been through together on that up & down
roller coaster of a day:
Up: Beautiful day; we got to AK just after rope-drop.
Down: Conflict with AR; had to make her get the wheelchair again.
Up: Awesome FOTLK; the kids were chosen for the parade!
Up: Tricia dancing with Tam Tams in Africa.
Down: Back row on safari again
lots of bad pix!
Up: Kids really enjoyed the exhibits and taking the time on the PF Trail.
Down: DIRTY BIRD!
Up: Another great ride on EE with the kids!
Down: Billy got soaked on KRR b/c I forgot ponchos.
Down: Snotty security guard incident #1
Up: Heart-to-heart with AR results in her staying in to rest.
Down: Snotty security guard incident #2. Ed upset through dinner.
Up: Really excellent food and service at Artist Point.
Down: Billy got evicted from the Cubs Den for hitting Tricia.
Perhaps this should have been called the
Rock & Roller Coaster Trip! Up and down, up and down all week long! Uggh. And tomorrow would be our last full day in WDW.
I put the kids to bed and finished off the
romantic evening by doing laundry. Ed got a little head start on his packing and watched some TV. He never did get a call back that night and was feeling a bit disgusted. Im glad we hadnt accepted that wine; I might have drunk the whole bottle!
I hoped that the next day.
his
highly anticipated day off
.would put him in a better mood.
Ahhh! West and wewaxation! ~ Elmer Fudd
Little did I know that the tables would soon be turned
.
Kathy
OK - I've been lurking all the way from the UK - but other posters always say what I want to before me!!! (I blame the time difference...)
. I hope your last day at WDW is a little bit better! 
).
)--she'd probably get kicked out for hissing at someone or yelling in their face 
