By Kim Rossi

Headline is a play on Temple Grandin's Thinking In Pictures book from many years ago. I'm here to make a confession. Bless me readers, for I have been a terrible autism Mom. See that photo above? I'll save you the effort of zooming in. It's thousands of tiny screen shots from Sesame Street, Blues Clues, Spot the Dog, Between the Lions, Arthur and other early 2000s children's television shows. Oh, and a goodly dose of the Sony Wonder CD-Rom Sesame Street series. THOUSANDS.

More than a decade ago, my oldest daughter got that red birthday card. We taped it to a piece of paper. And so it began. She asked me (in her way) to take a screen shot of a YouTube video. I did. And she wanted it on a piece of paper. I thought it would help her get AWAY from the computer if the photo was in her hands. I decided to SHRINK the picture so she could have more than one on a page.

It became an obsession.  The papers grew in number. Her day program laminated them to protect them. We cheered. I grabbed a plastic bag to cover them when it rained. PROTECT THE PAPERS!!! She carried them everywhere. Slept with them carefully laid out across her bed. The only bedmates she would ever have, her old friends from childhood.

Ultimately, the papers became her prison. She couldn't leave the house without them. She couldn't walk on the beach. Go through a store. Take part in daily activities. They were omnipresent in her life.

About six months ago, the prison grew even smaller. She'd beg for ONE MORE PICTURE before she would leave the house. Transitions regressed to a teary nightmare. She'd demand TAPE! TAPE! all day long, to reposition one errant photo.  The papers became raggedy tributes to Scotch tape and mania. She'd wake at night, I'd hear her bed move, "Where is it? Where is it? Under the bed." if a single photo fell off.

I had do do something to help her.  Because I was  the problem. I'd let the papers take over her life. They bought me a few minutes of peace. They let me ignore her when I needed to. I used them as much as she did. Like a Mom whose child wanted a pacifier long after toddlerhood. We had a symbiotic sickness.

So, two weeks ago, I bit the bullet. I THREW AWAY HER PAPERS. That picture is from my driveway. From there, I drove to the town dump It broke my heart.  But? It did NOT break hers! She had a few days of struggle. Her sleep fell apart. She whined and cried.  Her day program helped considerably. And she has been doing pretty well overall. I'm so proud of her.  She's talking more. Bothering her sister to interact. And she's now, "hands free!"

We can get so bogged down in our routine, that we forget that our kids, no matter their age, need to grow forward. And often, we're the ones holding them back. It's a sharp lesson. It hurts a little, but not even as much as a paper cut.

Kim Rossi is Managing Editor for Age of Autism.

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