Comedy Through The Chaos

Hello, hello, hello. Happy Thursday to everyone joining me out there in the Cadre sphere. If you happen to be trying to join us live, it is Thursday. If you're watching in the replay, it is whatever day in the future that you are joining us. I am Ms. Shannon and I am excited to join you on these Thursdays. Hello, additional Shannon. Hello, Shannon. I am Ms. Shannon Paul. I am a comedian, corporate speaker, author, voice actor, a variety of word related things, hubbing out of the great state of Minnesota.

But primarily I am the very proud mother to an adorable 16 year old kiddo that I like to call Cyclone kid who happens to be high supports on the autism spectrum. So welcome to Caregiver Thursdays. My hair is a good example of how my week has been. Yes, yes. Happy Thursday to you as well, Shannon. I like the fact that my hair does what it does, but it shouldn't be doing that where there's just one like, just one, like if it's all gonna do that, it should all do that. So we will worry about that later.

In theory. In theory. It kind of brings me to what I thought I would talk to you about this week because maybe you're having an appropriately frazzled week as well. And I wanted to talk about the concept of is the bag that you're carrying too heavy? And I have to give you a little bit of context for this particular lesson. So my kiddo, he's 16, he's in a really cool program at a school where he gets to do work study stuff now. And so he gets to earn money that he then gets to use in the school store to get provisions that he would like.

And my kiddo is a big fan of a variety of beverages, including all the colors of the rainbow of Gatorade and a bunch of teas because he's fancy like that. So usually what happens is that he'll do his work at school and then he will go to the store and then he gets to make a choice and decide what he wants to buy and then he gets to take that back to class. And I think this is a great lesson for him because it's something that he and I work on a lot. And it had been his favorite place usually for me to take him, surprisingly enough is a holiday gas station store which we have here in the Twin Cities.

And we hadn't been able to go for a while because he was not interested in making choices. He wanted to buy all the things even though we had had a discussion about what it is that he should be buying before we Left. And then we'd get there, and then it would turn into an unfortunate discussion and often a meltdown. And that was no fun for either of us. So we hadn't gone for a while. So I'm glad that they are working on this at school. My kid, like so many of our kiddos, is incredibly smart, but he is not wise.

He is not wise, but he is incredibly smart. So what happened? Because I heard this. This was relayed to me by his favorite para, shout out to Marcus, Hashtag, you're great. His favorite para at school told me that what happened last week is he went to the store and he decided that he was going to pick a soda. He doesn't normally like soda. That's not normally his jam. But he decided to pick a Sprite. So then it's time to leave. And instead of wanting to leave with only the Sprite, he wanted to go back and get a Gatorade as well.

So not instead, but as well. And his para was like, yep, you already picked one. We gotta go. And that turned into, like, a little standoff. But it worked out well. It didn't turn into a meltdown. It turned into a standoff. And my kiddo eventually left. Well, as I said, he's incredibly smart, but not wise. He has a variety of beverages here at home, obviously including a cornucopia of different varieties of Gatorade, which brought us to the day before yesterday. And what he wanted to do was he wanted to take the beverages with him.

So I was like, okay, you could take the beverages, but you can only take two. I told him he could take two bottles of Gatorade because I do not want to take away the currency that they have at school by taking it. Let him take all this stuff to school, because that's what he's doing. Like I said, really smart. He's like, oh, they're trying to, like, challenge me on how many of these things I can have at school. I'll need you. I'll take my own, you know? And you're. He's right in theory. But I see you, you know, I see you.

I understand. We're not doing that. So I'm not gonna set his staff up for having complications by taking away their currency. And he needs to continue to work on the lesson of we can pick, make choices and make good choices. We have to take all the stuff. So I told him he could take two. And then to help him make his selection, what I did is I gave him a paper bag. And I was very intentional on Giving him a paper bag so that there was only so many that he could take. Because if I gave him one of our reusable grocery bags, you can carry a lot of stuff.

Those. The strength of those is mighty. You can throw a bunch of different things in there and then decide, I'm going to just muscle through with way too much stuff in this bag. And so I gave him a paper bag. And then, of course, then the interaction continued. Instead of just putting two in there, then he wanted to put four, five, six. Had gotten to the point that he had a whole one of those. I think it's six or eight. I don't even remember how many are in it. Like, the entire thing that he wanted to put into this bag.

And I was like, well, it's gonna break. And he looked at me like, challenge accepted. So he tried to pick up the bag, and of course he had put too much stuff in it, and the bag broke. And so I'm like, okay, well, now you gotta figure it out. So I gave him another bag, and I. From taking advice from his behaviorist, it, like, just dipped. I just dipped. I just started saying, I'll see you at the car. You figure it out, you know, kind of thing. Because he was trying to turn it into the endorphin rush of arguing with mom over this thing when it's like, you can't figure this out, and the choice is the choice.

So I went out, started putting our stuff in the car, and was really worried that this wasn't going to work. And instead, in a few minutes, he came outside. And not only did he come outside, he came outside without any of the Gatorade. I was really impressed because the answer is, you don't need to take this stuff. You got plenty of this stuff at school. But I didn't expect him to. To pick that answer. I thought that he would figure out or maybe come out with too much stuff in his hands or go get another bag or decide what he's gonna do.

But instead he's like, okay, maybe I don't need it that much. It's not worth the hassle. Fine answer. So I got him set up in the car, and before we left, I went back in and followed through on what I had said, which was, I got him two bottles of Gather Gatorade. I put him in the paper bag appropriately, and I brought it out to the car, and I put it in the back seat with him, and we went to school. And he got out of the car, I gave him the bag. He took the bag. And he went in. And from the reports that I got from his staff, the day went along fine.

Even though there were probably moments in the lead up. Hey, Jules. Moments in the lead up where it didn't seem like it was going to go fine. It didn't seem like it was going to go fine from his perspective because he wasn't getting what he thought he wanted. And I did wasn't sure that if it was gonna go fine because I'm like, great. Instead of starting off the morning with a nice, easy interaction, we're starting off with what could have been a meltdown moment. But thankfully we were both able to figure out how to self regulate and get through the information, the whole interaction.

Which brings me back to what I started the story with. Is the bag that you're carrying too heavy? Are you spending a lot of time with one? A bag like a paper bag, and you're putting way too much in it where you know that it's not going to be able to hold it all? Maybe the answer is, okay, I'm going to take what makes sense right now and I'll come back for the rest. You know, I'm going to take what it makes sense right now. And maybe I really don't need to put those other things in the bag. It just felt like I needed to have them right now.

Maybe like in the case of my kiddo and the beginning of this story, those things will be there when he gets home and he can just partake of them then in his leisure time while he's sitting comfortable on his couch. Maybe he didn't need to take them with him. The other way that your bag might be too heavy is, are you using a bag that can carry a lot? Maybe the strength of the bag that you have is really, really great. Maybe you could load it full of things, but then are you stuck with a bag that is very difficult for you to carry?

The burden that you have loaded it with? Maybe we've all done that where we're like, okay, I can put one more thing in this bag and maybe the straps don't break, maybe the bottom doesn't fall out, but you're weighed down and sweaty in this whole situation because you still put too much stuff into it. Maybe you put a lot of stuff in that you can get on the next trip. Maybe it'll be there when you come back. Maybe you thought that it needed to be a priority on this particular trick when you were packing, but it really doesn't need to, and you just need to make A choice that seems really difficult at the time, but maybe it's worth putting the effort into the choice at the moment instead of weighing yourself down with things that you darn sure that you need.

That's a hard thing for me, too. It's always like, do I want to make another trip? Is it going to take more energy for me to go inside and come back outside? Maybe you live in a climate like we do, where it's super cold. You're like, oh, I only want to go outside once. I don't want to go ahead and deal with it. But in the grand, grand scheme of things, isn't it going to be worse if you end up trying to load everything to this bag and avoid that extra trip and then everything breaks? I mean, that's happened to me in my life before when it's like, oh, yeah, I think I can do it.

And it usually ends up being more work. Like something dumb happens, like the bag breaks, and then whatever it is that I bought ended up spilling it into my, into my driveway. That's happened before. There's been times where I thought I could be one of those people where my arms are too full and I could use the elbow or sometimes like my forehead or, I don't know, Kung Fu Panda, the door shut in the car because I don't want to do another trip. And it didn't work. It ended up being more work. So it's those moments where I think back and I remind myself, hey, you didn't end up saving yourself any time.

You didn't saving yourself any headache. Sometimes you just made more work for yourself. You actually made it worse than if you would have just taken the extra step to go, do I really need this? So maybe those are some moments in your life that you can go, do I really need to be bothered about this right now or can I just take it on the next pass through? So I encourage you to look at those moments in your life this week. Good news, everybody. If you are available this evening, I see that we are going to have another live Q and A courtesy of our friends for the Minnesota Autism center and my good friend Shannon, who are going to do that.

I mean, what a great resource if you are somewhere on the care spectrum with some folks in your life and you could just look for. It is great information that you can use as you are along the journey if you happen to be an autism caregiver. But a lot of the information, and I learned this from experience when I'm talking to friends and they're like, oh, how do you know this information about self regulation? What do you know about this mindfulness? You know, a lot of the information that I learned that I was looking up because of the situation I have with my kiddo is actually broad spectrum information that can help all of us in a lot of our areas.

So I encourage you to just kind of dip in, see what they have going on. And as usual, if there is anything that we can support you with here throughout the Cadre sphere, if there's something you'd like us to cover, please let us know. If there's something that you're like, oh, my gosh, you guys talk all the time, but you never talk about this. Amen. I feel you. Let me know. You can always let us know in the chat. We have a variety of different communities that we have here going on throughout the week that we would love to have you be a part of.

And that's mostly what we do here, is we want to make sure that we are a resource for everybody. So if there's something that we are not resourcing that you need, let us know. We always will appreciate it. So I will see you back here next Thursday. I will hopefully have some more stories about how I save all of my weightlifting for the gym. So I encourage you to do that as well. And maybe we'll see you guys tonight during the live stream with Shannon and the Minnesota Autism Center. So everyone be safe out there.

Do your best to take a breath throughout the day and make sure that you are not carrying all of these things and all of that load. We appreciate all of you. So we'll see you soon. Thank you, Jules. Thank you, Shannon. Thank you to everybody that watches us in the replay and I'll talk to you again very soon.