What will 2020 hold for the Square Peg?

One thing about autism that I struggle with is the unpredictability. One day Edward will be happy to eat something or do something and the next day he’s not, but I have no way of knowing which way he’ll go. It is impossible to predict how Edward will react to certain situations, even ones that he’s encountered before, so I couldn’t possibly make any assumptions as to what 2020 might hold for the Square Peg.

Toilet Training

One thing that I hope for in 2020 is that Edward will be toilet trained. I have written about this issue before, so check it out here. At the moment he wears pull ups, but at no point does he ever tell me that he’s wet or soiled his nappy. Every time we go out we need to remember to take spare nappies with us. I try as much as I can not to change him when we’re out in public because it’s too stressful to find somewhere. We do get advice from the continence team so hopefully that will start to work soon.

Getting dressed

Another thing I’d like Edward to do is to be able to dress himself. He can do a few things, he can put his shoes on and take them off. Edward can also pull up his trousers but is unable to get them over his bottom. This is still progress from last year, you can read about it here. He is more than happy to spend the whole day in just his pants so he has no inclination to even want to get dressed.

Food

I would love for Edward to eat a wider variety of food. You can read my previous post about his limited diet from last year here. His current diet consists of weetabix, porridge, beans & mash, Wildlife yoghurts, fruit slurpers, Maltesers and Milky Ways. As far as beverages go, he will only drink water. There has been an improvement with regards to this recently. Previously, when he ate something that he didn’t like he would urge and be sick, now he just urges. I call that progress!

Conversation

Finally, I would love to be able to have a proper conversation with Edward. During this last year he has been talking more and more. He has become much better at communicating his needs to us, for example, he will say ‘Can I have a drink of water please?’ For me, the main progress is that he now responds to a question with either yes or no, but only when he wants to answer. If you read my previous post about this here you will be able to see the progress he has already made.

So who knows if any of these things will actually happen this year. If they don’t then I won’t stress over them, I will tell myself that he will get there in his own time and not when I want him to. However, if he does achieve any one of these during 2020 then I will be singing it from the rooftops.