Halloween Tales

The last half of the year is by far Jake's favorite. Halloween and Christmas are his two favorite holidays, and he talks about them all year long. Since many people with Autism don't have a concept of time, it can be a challenge to explain to Jake in February why we can't put up Halloween decorations.

I think one of the reasons that Halloween is so important to Jake is because it's always been the holiday that he shares with his daddy. It their special day, and they carve pumpkins and get costumes on and then go out to trick-0r-treat.

To help Jake understand days and months and the passing of time, I have two special calendars up on the bulletin board at all times. One is of the current month, and the other is of the month to come. Each day that something is happening has an appropriate symbol, like a school bus for school days and a birthday cake for birthdays and last month, a jack-0-lantern for Halloween, and at the end of each day, before Jake goes to bed, we cross off the day so he can visually see that time has passed.

Around the middle of September, Jake started to get very upset when he would look at the calendars. After a few days I asked him what was wrong and he said, "Daddy home for Halloween? Daddy pumkins?" Randy's deployment has been hard on all of us, so when I talked to Randy I told him what a rough time Jake was having and how he wanted daddy home for "their" holiday. A few days later Randy called me back and told me that he had gotten leave and would be home for Halloween.

When I told Jake he lit up like the jack-0-lanterns he loves so much. "Daddy home for trick-or-treat? Daddy home for pumkins," he asked over and over. When he would talk to Randy on the phone, every conversation ended with "Daddy and Jake trick-or-treat? Daddy and Jake Big Music Show (the movie theater) and Olive Garden (Jake's favorite restaurant)?" And Randy always replied, "Yes Jakey, when I come home we'll go to the big music show, the olive garden and trick-or-treating."

Randy got here a week before Halloween. A few days after he got home, Jake came down with the worst cold he's ever had in his life. He was in bed for three days, and as Halloween approached it looked like there would be no trick-or-treating after all. Three days before the big night, Jake asked us if we were going to carve the pumpkins. He was too sick to participate, but he did pick out the designs that he wanted and Randy and I carved them. I carved four this year, and Randy carved one - but oh boy, was his one something else! A flaming horse head of incredible detail brought squeals of delight from Jake - and all the kids who came to the door on Halloween!

Two days before Halloween Randy had a talk with Jake and told him that he might be too sick to go trick-or-treating, and if he didn't get well in the next day they wouldn't be able to go. Jake looked at Randy and said, "I will be OK. Yes trick-or-treat!" And by Halloween night, he had pulled him self together enough that we decided to take him out. He got dressed up in his Home Depot Race Car Driver costume, grabbed his Sponge Bob bucket, and we headed out the door.

Trick-or-treat is very different to Jake then it is for the other kids. Where other kids are running around screaming and yelling and laughing and desperately trying to get the largest amount of candy they can in the shortest amount of time, Jake approaches it quietly and with a sense of wonder. With a few exceptions he doesn't eat candy, and the biggest thrill for him is looking into people's houses when they open the door. This year he only tried to walk into one person's house so we thought he was doing pretty good!

Usually Jake would trick-or-treat all night if we would let him. He loves "talking to the people" and looking in peoples' homes, and ringing their door bells. This year we made it around a block and a half and he looked at us and said "All done. Go home now." The cold had gotten the better of him and he had made it as far as he could. Randy looked at me and said, "He told me he'd be OK. He told me we were going to trick-or-treat, and we did." Yes he did - and Jake is a man of his word. Happy Halloween!