Concepts of time and money

Taylor has no concept of time or money. Plain simple, no other words for it. It can be in terms of months, weeks, days, or simply, five minutes. He can say, how many minutes can I play this game? We will give him a time limit of let's say 30 minutes. When 30 minutes is up, he simply will not believe that 30 minutes has gone by and has a melt down over the fact it is time to stop playing the game. It is odd. He can look at the clock and it will clearly tell him that it is factual, yet, he still does not believe it.

As for money. $1 and $1,000,000 are the same. The one million dollars does not have a significant value to it. One time this last fall, he took out his savings of $1,200 and he spent it on his friends within two days. Pretty incredible. His friends took advantage of him. After doing so, Taylor had done this on a run away spree, he had gotten in a bike wreck with these friends. He was pretty torn up and bloody, the friends left him downtown as Taylor didn't have enough money to ride the bus back to their house. (This is the same house where the parents were harboring him). He walked about 5 miles to his sister's apartment. He hadn't eaten since breakfast, it was now 1am. He hadn't taken his meds in a couple of days. Things were not good. He had bought them hoodies, video games, jeans. He didn't buy himself one single thing. That is someone preying on his disability. It was not considered theft of course, as Taylor willingly bought it for them. It was just so sad. We live in a middle class neighborhood. We have a nice home we work hard for. If you ask Taylor how much our house payments are, he will say, $5 or $150. There is just no value of the dollar for him.

If we talk directions however, Taylor could be rented out as a GPS tracking device. When Amanda Taylor and I drove to Iowa to live, he was busy in the back playing game boy. Yet, months later when we had to drive back home, to plan the wedding. Taylor could tell us every turn to take from Iowa to Spokane Washington. His mind is like a trap with directions.

Autism Tip of the Day! A lot of times Autistic kids have issues with sleep patterns. They may be awake when others in your home sleep. Due to this they may wander, some staying in the house and leaving the house. It is very important at a young age, to let your child know about his/her disability and be able to communicate to the police that they have autism. We have our son telling police, if he is out, His name and that he has autism which is a form of autism. He knows his dad's cell number by heart, but can't remember our home phone number or address. He can direct you how to get to our house, but can't memorize our address. Also in the sleep patterns, a lot of kids with autism will have night terrors, and yell and scream in their sleep.