https://fivedotoh.com/2021/10/19/fowc-with-fandango-remnant/

Remnants of my son’s lego were littered on the floor like little land mines. I stared down at the kaleidoscope of colours, and side stepped all the way around them. I was so pleased at myself that I nearly missed the row of cars in the middle of the room. Each car, placed neatly before the other, was in perfect co-ordination.

I bent down to pick them up, when my son toddled into the room. If I moved just one of them, he would scream the house down. Thinking strategically, I aimed to get the bricks cleared up first.

‘Sam, you need to pick your bricks up, if you’re not playing with them,’ I say.

‘But I’m not finished,’ he says.

I lift my secret weapon from the kitchen side, ‘If you don’t pick them up, I will, and they’ll all go in the bin.’

He looks at the black bag, then to me, and hurries to put them in their box.

I step over his line of cars, and one moves out of line, just a few centimetres. He rushes over and instantly replaces it. Change, of any sort, is frightening to someone on the autistic spectrum.

We only found out a few months ago, and it was on his eighteen month check they told us he wasn’t using enough words. They observed him playing, talked to him, and talked to us.

‘I tell you what after the appointment, we’ll come back and tidy up. We had better pick up your cars though, Daddy might trip over them.’

‘Okay Mummy,’ he says.

I cried at first, but now I wouldn’t change him for the world.