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Using Household Items To Help With Issues Of Partiality... Pretty well anything around the house, I could use in some way for therapy...as long as it provided an opportunity to "break order", "do the unusual", or "mix things up", thereby creating "parts" to a whole. For example, I would put a bandages (a very colorful one that I knew Zachary would notice) on my face. I used to put bandages on my hands and fingers, but, I found Zachary could get to those too easily. To Zachary, a "bandage" was "not part of the skin"... it "did not belong there" and as such, that "part" had to be removed... so, he tried to rip these off my body (that was the reason I placed them on my face... they were harder for him to get to). When he was very young, Zachary had actually ripped a mole off my skin...now, I understood why... the mole, to him, did not "belong" there... it was a "part" that did not belong with the whole (the skin) and as such it had to be removed. In place of bandages, I could also use a piece of duct tape and place that on my face. Creativity, I found, was a definite plus. :o) Or, I could simply put rubber bands in my hair...or barrettes...or clips... or clothes pins... anything that Zachary was not used to seeing on me was fair game. These were all "parts" that to him made no sense - until labeled! Once labeled, he could much more easily deal with these things. I found even laundry to be useful in working with Zachary. His need for "order" made him think that "clothes are clothes and as such, they all belonged together"... the clean with the dirty. Now, I purposely left my pajamas on the bed in the morning...kind of hanging over the edge. I made sure there was a laundry basket somewhere nearby in the bedroom...and made sure there were a few pieces in there. Within seconds of noticing the "lack of order" or the "creation of a partial" by physically separating "clothes" and putting them in "different places", Zachary would try to put them "all together" again. . I then made sure I explained to him that the some clothes were "dirty" or "stinky"... and I show him that those needed to go in the washing machine. Of course, Zachary then tried to put all clothing in the washing machine... so, I had to explain to him, over and over, that some clothes smell good, and are clean and so they do not need to be washed. Just "telling" Zachary the difference between clean and dirty, however, I found not to be enough. I actually had to show him the difference. I actually made Zachary smell the "stinky" clothes and then smell the clean clothes , as I labeled each type, in order to help solidify the difference in his mind. Even in this simple exercise, the inability to cope with partiality was so evident. Everything had to be "all or nothing"... for Zachary, integrating the parts into the whole was indeed a difficult task... one that had to be done consciously in each situation as opposed to the "automatic" integration of parts into a whole that was how his brain "should" have been working. This was the same for pretty well anything... clean vs. dirty dishes, toys in the sandbox or the bathtub (they had to be in or out of the sandbox or bathtub...not some in and some out), piles of wood, sticks, rocks, acorns, etc. Zachary needed to learn that "mixing things" was ok ...like having both rocks and acorns in the same pocket...something he absolutely refused to do. He had to be taught that life need not consist only of the "all or nothing" - and in fact did not - only then could he truly come to cope with the world all about him. Note: One of the beautiful things about doing this with Zachary was that I no longer need to have the "perfect home"... for Zachary, some lack of order was actually a good thing and something he needed to adjust to/cope with because that was part of the "real world"! Imagine being able to tell a social worker that your house is in a slight mess "for a reason"... that it was therapy!! What a wonderful twist! :o) Of course, there are limits to "disorder"... too much was NOT good. I found Zachary needed to be able to "perceive things as belonging together", or else the "disorder did not bother him". If things were just "one big mess", then he "could not spot those things that should belong together" and the "lack of order" in these "like things" was not bothersome to him. He has to be able to "perceive" that some things should probably "be together" (for more on this issue, see sections on Plastic Eggs and Wooden blocks to fully understand what I mean).
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