Books and Business

"Mom, did you know...."

This was the beginning of a very, very long sentence in which Chef attempted to explain to me everything that happened in "The Rise and Fall of the British Empire" by Lawrence James. The next day, he started reading "Sarum" by Edward Rutherfurd. Chef's also been reading cookbooks and books about autism.

Chef is also making "pictures to sell" in hopes of starting his own business. He's generally spending a couple of minutes on each picture. In the past, Chef has done some very nice, simple watercolour pieces, and agrees that he wants to have a website to sell some, but when it comes down to doing the base-work for them (drawing the shapes before painting), it's back to mass-producing very basic pictures in very short order.

Chef is frequently talking about wanting to sell items at the local farmers' market. Last week, while at the market for our first time, he suddenly pulled out from his binder of papers a loose piece of canvas he'd painted months ago and announced to me that he was going to sell it. I reminded him that we weren't there as vendors (just playing music for now) and didn't have a sales table set up, and that he could gladly sell some items sometime when we've made plans together regarding what would be reasonable items to sell. Then he realized a lot of baked goods were being sold. This week, there have been many many lists of recipe names, with frequent verbal reminders of the additional need for cookbook names and page numbers. There's also been one long list of necessary ingredients proudly presented to me one day just as we were walking out the door to shop for groceries. Excellent planning! Unfortunately the list only contained the names of the items needed - no amounts, no reference back to the recipe, etc. Chef seemed very disappointed when he realized his ingredient-list was for naught and seemed deflated at the suggestion that he could still use the list and try to figure out the recipes that matched the ingredients, or try again with a new list and let me know when he was working on it so I could help him.

Everything new is step-by-step. It's nice to know there's a degree of motivation that's starting to surface. Hopefully that will stay long enough to smooth out the bits that Chef is finding to be challenging/disappointing.

Shifting Mornings

May 31, 2011

Today is Day #2 of the new chore plan: Wake Chef up early to take care of his responsibilities/chores because he doesn't want to do any at all in the evenings or on the weekends.

This morning's task was to wash/dry 10 dishes and put items from the fridge/table into a lunchbag. I woke Chef 45 minutes early to allow for plenty of time.

Chef washed/dried 1 item, attempted whining when reminded that a dish needs to be placed into the sink to be washed, and didn't put any food into a lunch bag.

Of course, this morning plan isn't going to "work" in the sense that Chef is going to be in good spirits to accomplish any tasks, and it certainly isn't going to help his already-challenged mornings (though last week I switched the morning plan to Chef getting up and dressed and out the door with his lunch and a piece of fruit for breakfast waiting for him on the front porch - that "worked" well), but the hope/goal is that Chef will learn/realize that all these attempts he makes at doing everything he can think of to avoid anything he views as being connected to work just aren't worthwhile, and that all the effort and time he puts into avoiding is more effort and time than would have been needed to just do the work.

Some view this area as Chef continually trying to power struggle. I view it as an area that is challenging for Chef for many reasons but that is a basic part of successful, healthy living, and a life lesson that will serve Chef well in various areas. What has "worked" for Chef is letting him live with and learn from his choices and for me to be open to living outside the box to allow Chef to learn those life lessons.