Major Breakthrough

Change is bad. That is one of the things that Alan says frequently. We keep pointing out the changes that he has enjoyed and some he has tolerated and some that after some difficulty, he has had to accept.

Alan likes eleven television channels. He recites them to anyone who will listen. Today, he declared that he is adding HGTV after the holidays.

This morning, during math, a time when I try not to distract him if I am thinking clearly, I told him that I noticed in the newspaper that there was a new table of Time Warner's channel line-ups with our area included. Yesterday, as a matter of fact, I got a recorded telephone call that informed me that today all the channel line-up would be different. Previously, this would have sent Alan spinning. He would have rushed from the room in anguish. If I had been thinking clearly, I certainly would not have mentioned it during math.

So what happened today that was a breakthrough? First, he was able to finish the math assignment without stopping to see what had happened to the channels he likes to watch. Second, he did go upstairs for a minute when he was getting the next book to study. He did look at the t. v., but when I called him to come back to the table, he came. He was not fazed. There was no meltdown. There was not even any discussion of the situation.

Later, when he was through, he told his visiting uncle that Animal Planet had moved to channel two hundred and something. He was exact. I just can't recall which one it was. He was simply being helpful because he knew that Uncle John also likes Animal Planet.

Alan didn't get to watch t. v. until nearly suppertime with all that we were doing today. That didn't bother him at all. He didn't have to rush to see where his channels were because he had the channel line-up printed in the newspaper and he was content to refer to it as needed.

Does this mean he doesn't fuss about other things? No, not at all. There were a couple of relatively uncomfortable fusses today, along with a lot of irritating talk on his favorite subject, politics. It just means that in this one instance, he was able to display emerging flexibility and maturity.