My son Max and I spent the weekend at Battleship Cove with the Cub Scouts.  As its name implies it has a number of exhibits including a battleship, submarine, and destroyer on display in the water near the ocean.  And like a lot of museums nowadays you can schedule groups to sleep overnight to get the experience of living aboard them.

This is our third year doing it but Max still gets just as excited as the first time.  When he gets excited it can be expressed in many different ways.  For example:

• He can get excited when running.  Like other children that have Asperger’s this can be manifested by flapping his arms.  I used to try to teach him to hold them close to his body and pump them the way that regular kids do it.  Since I have learned about the syndrome I have backed off doing this.  However, I have noticed he will switch back and forth between flapping and pumping his arms depending on the mood he is in.

• He can get very excited when he is wrestling with his friends.  But as his anxiety levels increase it can turn to upset.  When this happens his face gets red and he looks like he is going to cry.  Then he becomes violent.  His excitement transforms into anger and he is ready to beat the other person down.  This is when we have to step in and separate them.

• At other times when he discovers things that really interest him he really, and I mean really wants to show people what he has found.  And he will harass them until they come to look.  Interestingly enough he doesn’t care how excited they get; they can even be annoyed, but at least they have witnessed what he has found.  At the Cove no one was safe.  Every time he turned around there was something else to cause excitement and there were 600 people to badger.

Through trial and error my wife and I have figured out some of the triggers for his excitement and the results to expect.  But there is always something new.  Right now he is building a ship in the backyard with his advocate.  This is his project du jour.  And as he works he keeps thinking of something new to add to it.

First was the saw.  He came running in talking very quickly.  His words fell over each other as he tried to ask if he could use it.  Why?  After much prompting I discovered that he found a long piece of wood that he wants to make into a gang plank for the ship.  Well, it is okay with me if his advocate is willing to supervise.  Upset.  He heard a “No” when I said that.  In the end she said yes and he got the saw.

After he cut the wood he wanted the drill.  What could he possibly want the drill for?  Screws.  Um, I can’t work with just one word.  What is he going to use the screws for?  To make a long story short I never really found out but we didn’t have any.  Upset.  But he finally settled for nails so I listened to hammering for quite some time.

Next he wanted our wooden flag pole.  I can’t get a straight answer why he wants it.  This time I said “No”.  Of course there was more upset.  Finally, when all was said and done he got the pole.  It turns out he wasn’t going to cut it, hammer it, or damage it in any way.  There is a hole in the center of the table on the back deck.  It holds the umbrella we use during the summer months.  This is where he put the pole after attaching the flag to it.

One thing about Max though.  Once he has completed a project or shown other people the things that excite him he forgets about them and moves on to something else.  But unfortunately, in the meantime, we can get upset or annoyed or frustrated especially if he is handling his excitement in a new way.

Asperger’s is a whole new world for us, as it is for a lot of other people.  Every time we think we understand what is going on with Max, something else appears and we learn yet a new lesson.  It can be exhausting but it is also nice when we figure out another way to help him through his excitements and upsets.

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