We have lots of exceptionalities in our family tree.

LOTS.

I can get lost going down rabbit holes for days when it comes to the DSM-whatever-edition-R. And that’s just the psychiatric branch. Add in medical/physical and oh boy…. I have the educational background to discuss these exceptionalities due to my M.S. Special Education, but I also have the practical in-the-trenches background for most of it.

So what’s this blog post about?

ROUTINE.

Many exceptionalities like routine. Routine is comforting. Routine is predictable. Routine is a good thing when it comes to exceptionalities. I can create routines and charts and schedules for days.

Do I? Nope.

I grew up with routine. Knew a lot of people in my family tree had some peculiarities that I later learned were symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder. Did you know there are many kinds of OCD? My family exhibits many forms of OCD, because what is the fun in finding a lane and sticking to it? Luckily most family members only have one variety, not multiple varieties in one body. This makes it a little more manageable. We let Grandma B cut every piece of paper in her house into 1-inch squares, because it hurts no one. Manageable.

So routine. You could set a watch by my dad’s morning routine. He put his pocket contents in his jeans in a set order–coin pouch, pocket knife, wallet, keys, handkerchief (folded precisely), plier holder on belt. He shaved his face in a set pattern. He stirred his sugar in his coffee a certain amount of times and clinked the spoon on the saucer and set it down facing down on the napkin that he had folded lengthwise. His handwriting was very distinctive because he used a small ruler that he kept in his shirt pocket with his pen–the bottom of every letter was a straight line and he went back and added any necessary downstrokes if he didn’t write in all capital letters. In the evening, we watched the 5 o’clock news, ate supper, watched the 6 o’clock news, and the TV went off at 8 PM. We went to our rooms, and the whole house was in bed and falling asleep at 9 PM. All of my friends were under strict orders to not call after 9 PM or they were going to get scolded by whichever parent answered the phone, because the phone was downstairs and my bedroom was upstairs.

I grew up and went on my merry little way to college and all of the mayhem that ensues from that. There is no routine in college. There is no routine as a young adult. Buckle up, buttercup, and hang on. Luckily, along with routine, my family did raise me to be pretty flexible and adaptable.

Started my own family and my first husband had no routine. My sons learned to switch gears and roll with new plans quite well. It worked for us. My kids were creative and dramatic and intelligent and just had a joy for life, and we ran with it.

Then I married my second husband, and we didn’t know what his son’s official diagnosis was, but we knew he would greatly benefit from routine.

Had to sit my husband down and tell him “sorry, no can do.” If we combined families, his son was going to get thrown into what would feel like sheer chaos; his boundaries and notions of “how it should be” were going to be stretched to the snapping point. But to be perfectly honest, his son needed some boundary redefinition to be a functioning member of society. We now know that the diagnosis is high-functioning autism and schizophrenia. He had grown up for 7 years in a bubble where he was the center of the universe and thought the fireworks on the 4th of July were for his birthday. He thought his new brothers were toys that he could just set on a shelf and walk away from when he was bored and they would stay put until he came back to give them a strict script to follow. There was great angst when they informed him that trains could be played with in ways other than just lining them up by color. No, he didn’t get a $20 toy every time he set foot in Walmart. No, leftover french fries didn’t get shoved into couch cushions. No, McDonalds wasn’t the only restaurant that existed. No, he didn’t have to be the first person to enter a vehicle when we went somewhere and please stop throwing your siblings to the ground to be first. Know what his favorite food is now? Chinese. It worked.

So yeah, routine. Didn’t happen.

But apparently in some ways it did. You don’t realize you have “always done something that way” until you don’t.

Tater tot casserole–toss the tots on there all willy nilly one time when you are in a hurry and you suddenly find out that you have always lined them up in rows and now it just doesn’t taste the same.

Try to treat the family to name brand chicken nuggets and you find out they only want the generic ones because the name brand ones don’t taste right.

Get child C up at 6 AM and suddenly you find out that no, child A and B get up at 6 and child C and D get up at 6:30 AM–geez, get it right, mom.

Every day my husband asks me what my plans are–every day I answer “No idea.” If I know, I tell him, but that is rare. We fly by the seat of our pants around here and flip around on a dime. This is why when our son gave us 3 hours’ warning that he was graduating and walking the stage in college, we dropped everything and got there to watch. This is why some days I take 3-6 trips to town–we live “in town”, but our town has zero amenities where it counts, so “town” is the city 30 minutes north with a grocery store and all of that jazz. This is why I pay for AAA membership for all of our kids, because cars like to throw a monkey wrench in plans without warning.

Does everyone handle changes in plans well? For the most part. More than once, my mom has helped me cover bases when I overbook myself and commented “You weren’t raised this way.” I look at her and say “Yep.” But my kids are adaptable and experts at quickly problem-solving a crisis. They know they can collapse later and regroup. Some of them prefer a plan, and I try to give them one when I can, but sometimes they have to fight through an anxiety attack while we are flipping a u-turn and heading off to put out a fire before returning to our regularly scheduled programming.

So my kids haven’t grown up with a lot of routine. But when I watch them handling whatever life throws at them, I’m very proud. They are awesome.