The Monster, like a lot of children with Autism, operates better with a schedule.

Granted, most children operate better with a fixed schedule, since it makes for stability and predictability, but for those of us dealing with children with an ASD, it’s just amplified.  So, the last few days where the schools have been closed due to the federal holiday and some in-service days has wrecked havoc with the Monster’s schedule.  We’ve had a five-day weekend (<sarcasm>and boy, was that fun</sarcasm>), followed by two school days, and then two more weekend days.

Of course, let’s take it a logical step further.  It snowed here in Baltimore last night… if you can call little more than a dusting ‘snow’.  Well, to be fair, the street and sidewalks are covered.  Several days of sub-freezing temperatures means that everything sticks.  We woke up to a two-hour school delay, meaning no schoolbus until after 10 AM.

On one hand, this was a good thing – I’ve been under the weather for a few days and working from home, so this let me get up at a slower pace and make sure the Monster was bathed before he had to go to school.  On the other, though, it meant a lot of downtime before the bus arrived, so we had to find things to distract him… and he demanded Sesame Street.  That made it twice as hard to pull him away when the bus arrived on time, and swept him off to school for his much-shortened week there.

And you know that we’re going to have problems when we come back into the weekend and the idle time, followed by having again to get him ready for school at the normal time on Monday.

I do wonder, sometimes, if the school board ever considers the need for stability for these kids when they make decisions about the school year schedule…