Yesterday was my son’s 2nd birthday, and I had a day off work, so we had a full day together as a family of three.

Things started off great, we went out for breakfast, then to a park to burn off a bit of energy.
Note (if you are not a parent): this burns your energy too, but it is worth it.

Then the rain picked up, so we headed into town to kill time window shopping before his annual checkup.

This is where I started having trouble.

We wanted to go to a second-hand sport store to look at balance bikes, but they didn’t open for another 15 minutes, so we hit the toy store across the parking lot first.

I followed my son around as navigated the store, having fun watching him just take everything.
But after 10 minutes, I had taken in the everything too, and I started to feel a little overwhelmed.
But it was ok… he had gravitated to a play table and was engaged with trucks so I could stand in one spot and conserve spoons.

Then the sport store was open so we went back over there.
Another 10 minutes of going in and out looking at the bikes outside and chatting with the clerks about prices.
Oh and also helping my wife manage my toddler so he doesn’t knock anything too expensive over…

I didn’t feel too bad, but definitely not a lot of energy as we left the store and headed up the street to the pediatrician’s office.
I got a brief break as we sat in the waiting room and veg’d out watching Moana.
Then we got called back to the exam room to wait. And wait.

Now, my son doesn’t like the doctor’s office on account of all the lights and pokes and prods and needles.
So we are stuck in this room basically alternating between soothing him and letting him explore the space to build up a tolerance.
This is another high energy activity for a parent, and visits have routinely left me exhausted.
This was no exception in that respect, though my son actually did admirably with the visit once it started.

So, energy levels draining, naturally the next thing to do was… go to the mall.
Fun wrinkle: kids were out of school for the day, so this place was a zoo, easily as busy as Christmas season.
We walked through that chaos to a much calmer destination: Build a Bear Workshop.

Build a Bear Workshop

If you have never been, this is every bit as riotous of an experience as the toy store earlier was.
But I was in parent mode, managing my son as we very slowly made our way through the line.

After the bear was stuffed, we discovered a small tear in the fabric.
My wife, quite reasonably asked me to take it to get mended by one of the workers.

But along the way somewhere, I had hit my limit.
My mind recoiled at the simple request.
I could not possibly handle interacting with a stranger in that moment.

My wife (saint that she is) saw me freeze and took over.
The bear was fixed, crisis averted.

Then we had to find an outfit for the bear.
I was very little help here, as all the micro-decisions exhausted my already minimal remaining executive function.

We eventually, mercifully, purchased the bear and left the store.
At this point, I was running on emergency brain power.
We needed to get lunch and split up to snag a table and order food at the food court.
I took the food ordering, because I could do it mostly on autopilot, but it still took an unexpectedly large amount of energy.

We sat down and I basically just ate mechanically until my brain recovered enough to have somewhat normal interactions.

Physical energy restored, we headed home to put our son down for a nap.
But I was buzzing with anxious energy at this point, a common symptom of this level of overwhelm for me.
Literally my body goes into fight-or-flight mode and I feel like my skin is vibrating.
It’s very hard to focus, even if I have the requisite mental energy, which is unlikely in these cases.

So while my son slept and my wife had some down-time, I went for a walk.

This is a trick I have only recently learned about: exercise as a way to dampen the adrenaline response.
After a 40 minute walk, I got home as physically exhausted as I was mentally exhausted, but importantly not buzzing anymore.

I was able to spend the rest of nap time recuperating my energy reserves, and was back to a functional state in time for dinner.
Even in a crowded, loud restaurant environment, I was able to make it through 2 hours of small talk with no issues (our food took forever to come).

Thus concluded an unfortunately not all that atypical of a day for this Autistic person.
On Monday I will go back to my job as a senior engineer, and people will be shocked that someone as high-functioning as me could ever be #ActuallyAutistic.


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