Minivan

For the past several months we have been researching a new car to buy to replace our VW Tiguan.  The Tiguan was nice, but it was getting a little small for our family and the warranty was up on it so of course little things started to go wrong with it.  SO, the research began.  At first, I was REALLY anti minivan.  NO WAY was I going to be the type of mom that drove a minivan.  NO WAY, NO HOW, JUST NO!  But as I started to research it, I started finding that many of my Autism mom friends had minivans and then I started to realize how Autism friendly minivans are!  First of all, let's start with the fact that they have sliding doors so that my child does not open doors into other cars, or walls, or any other place you can bang a car door.  Many of the minivans now come with dual or triple zone climate control, so my sensory overload child can have the temperature to his liking in his specific area of the van, and we can make sure that the vents are not making too much noise in that area.  Many of the models have sunshades on the back windows so that my child can adjust the brightness to his liking in his area of the car.  These, plus many other nifty features make minivans very Autism friendly.  So the search began for the perfect minivan for our family.
Franklin found out we had decided on a minivan, and I am telling you, I have never seen a person more excited about getting a minivan than him!  Every minivan catalog we collected he studied carefully, absorbing all the details from every page.  He watched YouTube videos on the different minivans.  He would tell us over and over again the different stats on each of the minivans he had learned about.  He would draw pictures of minivans, build minivans out of legos,  "play minivan" by building one out of pillows and putting his stuffed dogs in it.  He even merged some of his other obsessions with the new obsession of the minivan- like, Jesus going for a ride in the minivan, Franklin the turtle going for a ride in the  minivan.  And of course, the minivan HAD to be blue, which he reminded me of, like, every 10 seconds.  "Mommy, don't forget, I want a blue one!" Generally driving David and I nuts over the minivan and obsessing over it every waking minute of his day.   (Blue is Franklin's "calm" color.  He loves blue.  Everything in his life has to be blue). So anyway, the Tiguan did something weird for the millionth time (the parking brake kept engaging while I was driving it) so David and I

decided we had better go trade it in.  So, we made a plan and decided to go on David's next day off.  That day was yesterday.  I was nervous because our
wonderful babysitter was going to have to stay with the boys for the ENTIRE day.  I'd never left the baby more than two hours before, he's 1, but I was still nervous.  We picked our top three and went and test drove them and decided on the Honda Odyssey.
  Unfortunately, the dealership did not have a blue one, and it would cost us more for them to find us a blue one.  We loved the car and fearing a meltdown I sent a text to the babysitter asking her to tell Franklin the van was going to be red instead and seeing his reaction.  Fortunately he was way too excited about getting the minivan to really care that the color was red.  Still, had we shown up with a red minivan when he was expecting a blue one, it would have been trouble...so I wanted to check first, just to make sure he was going to be ok with that.  Red is his second favorite color, so I figured that was the next best choice.  Of course, I had to explain all this to the salesman before we finalized the deal, because obviously I wasn't going to cause a meltdown over the color of the car.  We would have waited otherwise.  Fortunately the salesman was very understanding, and Franklin was ok with the red. 
As soon as we got home and Franklin heard the garage door open, he came running out and said, "DID YOU GET THE MINIVAN?"  He wanted to immediately take a ride in it!  He was SO excited! We took him for a ride in it, showing him all the cool features it has like the backup camera and the turn signal camera.  He called it the "car movie" and wanted to watch it the entire ride.  He also talked our ear off about all the different seat configurations he could think of during the ride.  When we got home, Franklin was so tired after the day of playing with his babysitter and the excitement of the new car, that he crashed on the couch before he had the chance to eat dinner.   It's rare that he gets so tired like that.  It's rare and it is wonderful when it happens because it means that he actually sleeps!
Today, Franklin's been begging for long rides in the new van, drawing pictures of it again, building it out of Legos.   I guess I should be happy that he loves the new car so much.  I mean, such a change can be hard for a child with Autism.  I could tell that Franklin was having anxiety about it, even

though he was super excited.  I am glad we took our time finding the car because it gave Franklin a chance to process the change and work through it in his own way.  I can tell that he's still having some anxiety since we brought it home because he's still drawing pictures and building it with Legos.  He's still reading the owner's manual cover to cover.  I think it will take some time for it to settle down, but I am grateful that he's having a positive reaction to it despite the anxiety from the change.   When you have a child with Autism it's so hard to make changes like that because it can cause MAJOR meltdowns.  The process of change is slow going usually, but I feel like we're getting better at helping Franklin work through the anxiety of change and helping him see the excitement in new things.  He's never been a very apprehensive kid, he just likes to know what is happening all the time.  He doesn't like the unknown.  I feel like this is a situation in which we had success and I feel like the sudden change in color without a meltdown was HUGE progress.  So while getting a new car may not seem like a big, scary change to normally developing people, this kind of change can be a HUGE deal to a person with Autism.  I feel like David and I helped Franklin handle this change with success and for that I am pretty pleased :).