We all of us wish for our lives to have flow ,I would bet that the majority of the working population ,arrive at work within one or two minutes of the same time every working day.If for some reason this routine is interrupted ,for example: bus breaks down or an accident on the road ,our initial reaction is one of panic , tainted with a sprinkle of anger, flavored  with frustration. Now all of these are unsettling feelings and in an autistic person they are greatly heightened .In an autistic child  the emotion is magnified even greater.The trick is to learn to cope with these emotions and go on with our day unruffled.

As my son gets older , he is becoming better able to handle the little upsets life puts in front of us ,but I have also noticed that I have been working hard to make his day go as smoothly as is possible. And not just for his peace of mind .I have become so adept at this that I find I am following routines as much as he is. It was at this realisation that I decided I needed to shake things up a bit .So I have tried from time to time to do the unexpected .Go swimming in the morning instead of afternoon , go on a Saturday instead of Sunday serve pizza on Tuesday (normally pasta night) instead of a Monday, or my god ! As well as a Monday .Not very radical you might think but for my son quite major events to cope with. I have been trying this for some months now and it seems he is learning to better cope with the unexpected. Although when I mentioned  I would like to change the supermarket we visit he actually pleaded with me not to.

Off course we are all very aware of how life does not always go the way we plan , and we all have our own coping strategies, whether we know it or not .Deep breathing helps me I find ,and also trying to find the funny side of a situation that has gone wrong. For my son though I am not entirely sure what goes on in his mind when things don't go to plan .I do know that he is capable of severe panic , but lately I have noticed he responds well when I ask him to calm down and just think for a minute. He has recognised the benefit of thinking through the apparent disaster (the swimming pool is closed; and so on) it improves how he is feeling calms his fast beating heart, he is I think realizing that Dad might actually know what he is talking about.