13-year-old Jay speaks
from experience when
he talks about how
easy it is to get upset in
the morning and what
helps him not to lose his
cool. “Have a structured
routine and try not to
stray from it. When things change, I can
get confused, and that is why I get upset.
And whatever you do, don’t let your child
play video games in the morning because
he can easily get engrossed and then not
want to stop. Believe me, I know!”
Since many autistic
individuals think in
pictures, Lydia says to
use visuals. “Make a
visual schedule for each
task in your morning.
Move each task from a
‘to do’ column to a ‘done’ column. Knowing what to expect will ease your kiddo’s
stress.”
Kate says that many
autistics are just not
MORNING PEOPLE.
“For me, mornings go
more smoothly if I have
a routine that I can follow and not much stress
put on me the first few
hours after I get up. Anything stressful I
put off until later in the day. I don’t even
look at any emails that might be emotional until nighttime because my emotional
regulation takes several hours to get up
and running, and I overreact a lot more
when I first get up. I am highly verbal
most of the time but often can be almost
nonverbal when I first get up—my brain
is just not on yet, which frustrates me. It
makes it hard to be on time to anything
that actually happens in the morning. I
have to accept this and schedule things for
the afternoon when I can.”
MAYBE TRY THIS…
Besides having a structured routine in the morning, many of our experts have suggested the
use of some sort of Visual Timer. Visual timers can come in many forms such as a physical
clock that can hang on a wall, a wrist watch and now even an app on your phone or IPad. The
timer displays time as a red disk that quietly gets smaller as time elapses. No more vague
concepts of what 5 minutes feels like because the autistic individual can see that when the
red is gone, time is up! There are even apps that have a professional look with lots of features
that can help autistic adults in the working world make every moment count.
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Zoom Autism Through Many Lenses