High Functioning

When you have a child with high functioning autism and you leave him home alone for seven and a half days for the first time, you wonder and perhaps worry about how he's going to do. When this child is a young adult at age eighteen who has been home alone for three days at a time several times in the past and made it to the point where he remembered both to feed and bathe himself without his mother calling to make sure he managed to do both, you have confidence that he'll be ok. 

But when you are the mother of said child and you have OCD that sometimes takes the form of obsessive compulsive worst case scenario thoughts, you stress out a lot before you leave and do your best not to call every hour of every day to make sure your child is still breathing. 

We left our oldest home alone...alone for 7.5 days and then with his slightly younger brother for nine days. He has a cell phone to take with him when he leaves the house. He has keys to the house, which hopefully he'll remember to take with him when he walks to whatever store in which he's interested in or to which he needs to go. There's a key hidden in case he locks himself out of the house. 

In preparation, I took this child to the grocery store. The food he's chosen to survive on for seventeen days includes: chicken fingers, bread, peanut butter, coco loco bars, oatmeal cream pies, golden delicious apples, cheese, yogurt, cookies, potato chips, and pizza. Oh, and ice cream...a lot of ice cream. I guess it could be worse. He also money to spend and he's within walking distance of two grocery stores, a dozen restaurants, and two Game Stop stores. It's those Game Stops that worry me. If I were an eighteen year old gamer, I'm not sure I'd be able to resist spending my food money on a video game. 

I have made this child a list of things to do daily, as needed, and on specific days...empty the dehumidifier in the basement, bring in the mail, water plants, put the garbage and recycling bins on the curb (and don't forget to put them back when they've been emptied), do laundry, bake bread.  I'm fairly sure he doesn't need the list, but I need him to have the list. And I need him to keep a phone next to his bed when he's sleeping so that if he sleeps in and I call, I don't freak out because he didn't answer the phone.

While going over the list and the you shoulds and such, Alex just smiled, nodded, and humored his high functioning OCD mother.

I'm sure he'll be fine. Me, on the other hand ...