Chores

Having two autistic kids and no non-autistic kids can be like being stuck in a time warp.  It feels like they're still babies even though they're five and seven and they both go to school.  They barely talk.  They're not learning how to read and write and do basic arithmetic.  They're not into Batman or Spiderman or Ben 10.  The older one, Gaston, seems to be losing his baby teeth quite late (this has nothing to do with autism but it does contribute to the illusion that he's younger than he really is).

We managed to toilet-train Gaston with some difficulties.  It helped that he was interested in Lego, and I managed to make him a little Lego toilet to go inside his little Lego house for his little Lego man to sit on.  I'm not sure how much this contributed, though, because I often caught him putting the little Lego man on a little Lego table to "change his nappy".  I know he was imagining a nappy change because he said "yuck" in the same tone of voice he might have heard that word while having his own nappy change, though I make no admittance that I ever said that while changing his nappy.  (ahem)

The youngest one, Rémi, is proving more difficult.  He is not 100% toilet-trained:  he refuses to do "number two's" on a toilet, so he still wears a nappy (= a diaper) for that purpose.  He has less language than Gaston had at the same age, so he only learned the toileting skills through hard repetitive work.  We also put a nappy on him at bedtime, just to be safe.

On Thursday, after I'd left for work and while Anne was dragging herself out of bed to get the boys dressed for school, Gaston said "Come on Rémi, let's change your nappy".  He took Rémi back to the same spot in his room where we change him, made his little brother lie down and took his nappy off.

If we can teach Gaston to clean up Rémi's "number two's", we might not bother with the rest of the toileting lessons.