Store Trip

Liam loves going places. Actually he has to go somewhere, anywhere on a Saturday or Sunday. The weekdays are highly scheduled for Liam, but weekends are different. You can’t just laze around on those days for too long or he will start to melt down. He’s cool for the first couple hours or so but the problem is that he wakes up at about 6:00 so by about 8:00 you better have something planned or life can get unpleasant. It starts out with Liam saying something like “Wanna go to the park? To the park?” and builds from there, “Wanna go to the park? Go to Target? Go to the store? Fred Meyer? Go for a hike?” You can hear it in his voice and see it in his eyes that he is not messing around. What he is really saying is “Look, I have enjoyed eating my gluten free pancakes and watching Thomas The Tank Engine and watching you drink coffee and listening to your morning Paul Simon fest. It’s been a good morning, but if you don’t get me the hell out of this house right now, I can’t promise there won’t be cereal and soy milk all over the kitchen wall.”

This particular Saturday we did have some grocery shopping to do so I agreed to take Liam to Fred Meyer. Liam loves Fred Meyer. Well, he loves this particular Fred Meyer because it has an escalator. He also loves Target for the same reason. Not all Fred Meyers or Targets have escalators. We made the mistake of going to a Target without an escalator once and Liam did not handle that well. It has gotten much better taking Liam out as he’s gotten older but you still have to be ready for anything.

So I said to Liam, “Want to go to the store, buddy?”
“Target?” Said Liam.
“No. Fred Meyer.”
“Fred Meyer.”
“Yeah, do you want to got to Fred Meyer?”
“Go to the park?”
“Well we have to go to Fred Meyer.”
“And then go to the park.”
“I don’t know. We’ll see.”
“We’ll see.”
“Where are your shoes?”
“Shoes.”
I yelled upstairs, “Honey, have you seen Liam’s shoes?”
“I don’t know. Did you look in his cubby?”
“Yes. They are not there!”
“Well I don’t know where else they would be!”
“Well, I’ll look again! I don’t know how I could’ve missed them it’s a very small…found ‘em!”
Incidentally, it was a good thing that it was just Liam and I going. Liam and I can get out the door fast. Angie and Claire are the exact opposite. Claire gets easily distracted just putting her shoes on. Angie also takes forever getting out of the house what with turning off all the lights I left on, and making sure the coffee maker is off, and making sure we have keys, etc. All this waiting is very hard for Liam and when he is ready to go out the door and has to wait for everyone else to get ready he just loses it. He will start screaming, throwing himself to the floor, hitting, and knocking things over. You can’t reason with him. As much as you tell him that we are going and we just have to wait for Claire or Mommy, it doesn’t matter to him. He has to go now!

We were out the door and in the car without incident. Liam really likes being in the car going somewhere he knows. He sometimes has this sort of cheerful babble on the way. It goes something like this: “Gonna go to the store yep escalator trains going through he tunnel go to Fred Meyer ride the escalator okay yep okay go see the train yep over the bridge.” This is like a song for me. He has so many words now and he can put endless sentences together. It has taken a long time for him to get to this point. He still can’t always tell you exactly what’s on his mind but he used to struggle just to say “dog”. I get the feeling when he rambles on like this that he is practicing all his words. I love hearing it.

So, here is how it works at Fred Meyer: The first thing we do is ride the escalator, usually twice. That usually sustains Liam for about three aisles worth of shopping. If he starts asking for the escalator or starts to get agitated we go back to the escalator and repeat as necessary. We don’t have to do this quite so much now that he is a little older, in fact he usually only needs to ride the escalator once now. It used to be much worse.

Another thing that can affect Liam’s behavior is food. He needs to be constantly nourished to keep his blood sugar up. If his blood sugar gets low he can be hard to deal with. This is true of most people but for Liam it is much more intense. He can really lose it. On this day Liam hadn’t eaten since he first got up and I forgot to give him a snack before we left.

He was doing fairly well in the store with the frequent escalator trips but I could tell he was getting more and more agitated. His asking for the escalator became non-stop and had more of a sense of urgency to it. He began trying to knock over soup cans or grabbing bags of rice and trying to throw them. We were almost done shopping but we still had to go through the check out.
“Escalator?!” Said Liam
“Yes.” I said. “One more time on the escalator and then we gotta go, okay?
“Go on the escalator.”
We made one last escalator ride and then headed for the check out.
“Escalator?!”
“We have to check out buddy. We have to pay.”
Liam dropped to his knees and let out a quick loud shriek. He began hitting me.
“Stand up.” I tried to remain calm and neutral. It’s really hard not to care at times like this that people are now looking. I start to wonder what they are thinking. They don’t know Liam has autism. I wonder if they think I have spoiled my kid to where he acts like a brat in public. I wonder if they think I’m a weak parent who can’t discipline his kid. If I put my hands on Liam right now, I wonder if they think I’m an abusive parent. I put those thoughts out of my head because that wouldn’t help Liam right now. I held Liam’s hand and helped him to his feet. He was still hitting me and trying to grab stuff out of the cart to throw. I was thinking that we just had to get through the checkout and get to the car. The checkout lady was trying to make nice comments as she rung me up. I’m sure she was uncomfortable. Liam kept hitting me and periodically shrieking and I was getting more and more agitated. I tried to remind myself that my job is to stay calm.
“Liam, we’re almost done.” I said
“Escalator?!”
“We’re almost done okay?”

We finished paying and headed for the exit. Liam was pulling my arm toward the escalator. “Escalator?!” He said
“No, buddy. We’re all done.”
He started shrieking and hitting me again as we went out the door and into the parking lot. We just needed to make it to the car. Liam was hysterical by this time and I was barely holding it together. He was really pissing me off.
“Stop it, Liam. Knock it off.” He shrieked and hit me all the way to the car.
We got to the car and I got him in his seat. As I buckled him in he continued to hit me and shriek in my ear. I said, “Knock it off, Liam. You sit there.” And slammed the door, probably harder than I should have. I went to the back to put the groceries in the car. Liam was still crying. “Calm down, Liam. Stop it.” As I put the groceries in, I started to notice that he wasn’t just crying. He was trying to say something. I went around to the other side door away from Liam so he couldn’t hit me any more and looked in. He looked at me with big wet pleading eyes and said, “Stuck?”
“What, stuck?” I said
“Stuck?”
I looked down and saw that his fingers were shut in the door. I ran around and opened the door. “Oh buddy.” I said. I looked at his fingers. It turns out they were stuck between the rubber weather strip in the door and the doorjamb so there was no serious damage but I’m sure it still hurt. Liam looked at me with the same big wet eyes with fear and relief. In that moment I thought how he couldn’t tell me what was wrong. He used the only word he could find and said it with such a desperate and pleading tone hoping I would understand. I thought about how I was so mad that I could have just ignored his crying and dismissed it as part of his tantrum and drove all the way home with his hand shut in the door. I really hated myself right then.

I pulled Liam out of his seat and held him in my arms.
“Liam, I am so sorry, buddy.” I said.
He clung hard to me quietly sobbing.
“I’m so sorry….I’m so sorry…I’m sorry.”
“Sorry.” Said Liam as the sobs became softer.
I stood there and held him as he clung to me in the middle of the Fred Meyer parking lot for as long as it took for Liam to stop crying. As he got quieter we held each other tighter as I swayed side to side with him. “It’s okay buddy. I’m sorry. It’s okay.”
“Okay.” Said Liam.
“Are you okay?”
“Okay. Go home.”
“You want to go home?”
“Go home.”

I got him back in his seat and wiped his nose and the tears from his face and we drove home.

At home I made him some lunch. He was tired and so was I but he really needed to eat. He ate most of his lunch. And his demeanor slowly changed. He was calm and together again. I was calm and still sorry.
“Feel better buddy?” I said.
“Better.” Said Liam.
“Do you want more food?”
“Go to the park?”
“Yes. Let’s go to the park.”