An amusing part about having an Autistic child is you never know what's going to happen from day to day. I can spend the whole day cleaning up mess while having Vincent grunt at me and Alex running around copying him. While I'm ready to pull my hair out and cry in the corner. Some days are awesome Vincent actually says something to me, remembers to throw his trash away and destroys very little. And there are days that are extremely frustrating to deal with but some funny story comes from it and I just have to laugh about it later. This is one of those stories.
For Easter my in-laws came out to visit. The weather has been so nice lately John and his dad went outside to play catch, so we all went out to watch. Vincent was being Vincent and Alex was running around pretending to mow the lawn when all of a sudden Vincent runs inside the house I get up to go after him , because he's not aloud in the house alone, and that's when he slams the door shut and locks it .
This has happened before and usually there's an unlocked window we hop through. We checked all the windows and they are all locked( even the tiny shower window.) So we have to get Vincent to come to the door and unlock it, but why would he do that when all the things he's not aloud to do he can cause there's no one to stop him. We start yelling:
"VINCENT, VINCENT, UNLOCK THE DOOR."
He just stares at us goes into John's mom's purse and pulls out the gum lays on the floor and scoots around it for a while. We continue to try to get his attention to no avail. Eventually he rolls himself in a blanket and goes and lays in the landury room for 20 minutes. Completely ignoring us. I'm about to go nuts and so I put on my angry mom voice and yell:
" VINCENT! GET UP! GET UP RIGHT NOW!"
He hears me! Starts stamping his feet and walks over to the dining room table, slumps down in
a chair and starts staring out the window at me . He does this for about 10 minutes. So I do what any practical mother would do in situation like this I start bribing him:
" Vincent I'll give you more gum, if you open the door.Vincent you want some candy? Vincent
come here your not in trouble, just open the door."
He's not fooled. So I pick up a piece of side walk chalk and write his name on the sliding glass door hoping he will see it and get excited and come over nope doesn't fool the kid. So Finally we decide to do something really fun and exciting to lure him outside. What do we do? We bring out the big guns. That's right The Bounce House. We blow it up right on the patio directly in front of the door, put Alex in it and start jumping around it making a big to do about how much fun we're having. He stands up amused and does his I'm really excited scream and runs to the door.....and starts jumping up and down in front of it... then John and I walk over and say:
" Come outside Vincent we're having so much fun."
He continues to jump up and down. Then we pull on the door and show him we can't open it and ask if he can. He pull on the door just like we did ( leaving the lock in place)and then continues jumping up and down. Grrrrrr...So then I start hitting where the lock would be with my hand like I was trying to unlock it from the outside, hoping he copies me and unlocks the door....he does copy me but limp wristed so the door doesn't get unlocked, and continues to jump up and down. John and I continue to try and coax Vincent into unlocking the door switching off pulling on the door, asking him to unlock the door, and pretending to hit the lock from he outside.....we do this for about a half hour. We are ready to give up and annoyed to no end. I sit in a chair and John starts looking for a good rock to break a window with so we're not stuck in the backyard
all night.
During this time Jon's dad had gone up to the door and starting trying the exact same methods we we're using and low and behold Vincent opens the door! It's a miracle! We spent over an hour locked outside and took all the coaxing, bribing, yelling we could muster but it still wasn't enough to get him to open the freaking door nope it took the power of grandparents to get him to do it. The all powerful beings that tell your parents what to do and never yell at you. Well lesson learned. Te first thing we did was unlocked a window that will remain for always the unlocked window, cause I can't call people up that live 6 hours away every time I get locked out which after how much fun Vincent had for that extremely long hour will probably be occurring more frequently. And for now I'm just happy to be back inside :)
This is his buddy/ hero of the day Trina she helped me find Vincent when he was missing and helped him figure out the water slide.
