The Boy imagines himself as an Outdoorsman and being Aspergian this is his passion and what he lives and breathes. The trouble with him being 12 AND an Aspergian is that he thinks he knows everything there is to know about the outdoors. Granted he has a lot of knowledge gained from reading as many books as he can get his hands on and watching Youtube's collection of videos. The trouble is he's a little short on practical experience.
When we finally fell out of the car after 3 1/2 long hours he was raring to go and spend some time in the great outdoors. After strapping on 25 lbs of survival gear and struggling into snowshoes (because of the 25lbs of gear meant to save him weighing him down) he set off into the great white north. He left with orders from us to please just stay on the pile of snow on the side of the road and to please not go bush-wacking and please not get lost. I went inside, His Lordship set to work clearing the 4 feet of snow off my parents' roof and the Em-ster wandered off to play on a tree.
45 minutes later The Boy comes huffing and puffing back into the yard, covered in snow demanding to know why no one came to his whistles of SOS and did no one hear him and WHAT was the point of whistling SOS when NO ONE came to his rescue! Most of us said we hadn't heard him and then His Lordship says he heard him but decided there wasn't really that much trouble he could get into if he could be heard whistling. You'll notice this "relaxed" method of parenting from His Lordship as a bit of theme here.
It seems The Boy did do a bit of bushwacking and managed to end up up to his waist in snow and couldn't get out. You have to understand that he is not a great problem solver and often calls on us to fix things that he should be able to figure out. Things such as sorting out his blankets at night when he's gotten up to pee, getting his gloves from the other side of the room after he's put on his boots etc. Executive Functioning is not his strong suit and when he was first diagnosed I didn't quite understand what it meant and how it could be part of his diagnosis but as he gets older I am beginning to understand. It puts a name to his difficulty figuring out what comes first in solving a problem or how to get out of a sticky situation.
The point of my story is that while the exercise of snowshoeing and getting out to see and be in nature is important he probably learned more from being waist deep in snow and having to figure out for himself how to get out (without help) than anything else we did this weekend. I'm hoping it also showed him that being an Outdoorsman is about more than having 25lbs of survival gear on your back and involves common sense, problem-solving skills and a bit of experience. But I digress...
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