After a few bumps in the road, the boys are in a pretty good place. Things got a bit out of hand when I tried to surprise the boys with going to a movie tonight. I thought it was going to be something everyone would be excited about but I wasn’t even kinda right. I’m about 17 years into this journey and I’m still learning new things everyday.

As soon as I told Emmett that we were going to go see the new Justice League movie, he freaked out, and not in a good way. Elliott wasn’t too excited either but he didn’t have the extreme reaction Emmett did.

It hadn’t occurred to be that Emmett might not do well with being surprised. I was caught up in trying to do something nice for everyone that I didn’t think it all the way through. I won’t make that mistake again, but honestly, I probably will.

It took about an hour to calm Emmett down but once we did, he and I watched the trailers for Justice League. Now he’s super excited to go and I learned that it’s not always a good idea to surprise m y kids with Autism.

Apparently, Emmett was upset because he didn’t know what to expect and it was a change to his routine for tonight. I thought, and I still do, that we’d watched the trailers over the last few months and he wanted to go. He doesn’t remember that and so he was afraid that it would be something he wouldn’t like. That was something he didn’t know how to deal with. Then he felt bad and that only made t hinges worse or him.

The only way for us to help him work through it is by giving him time, space and addressing the source or trigger of the stress. In this case, he needed reminded what the movie was about and after that, he was fine.

Lesson learned.