Aside from meeting my four autistic children, I gave them a tour of the house and a general rundown of what they'd be required to do. Despite my efforts to keep it brief and avoid information overload, I was struck by how difficult it was to succinctly convey the bare-essential household needs, even for a babysitting session that would only be about two hours long before the children would be in bed for the evening.
I'm currently studying a Graduate Diploma of Library & Information Science, and one of the topics I'm covering is "Knowledge Management". Explicit knowledge is something that can easily be expressed, written down or stored, and passed on to someone - such as mealtimes, favourite toys etc. Intrinsic knowledge are things that you just... know. In my case, this might be the ability to determine from a kids posture that they need to go to the toilet. This is closely linked to Tacit knowledge - which is the knowledge that people have that can not be readily or easily written down, usually because it is based in skills. Tacit knowledge is extremely difficult to pass on to others, without them spending time with you and observing/learning hands on.
DS1 needs to wee. At the moment, I'm the only person who can notice, and read his subtle clues and come to that conclusion. How can I explain the sequence of events that lead to my understanding of his needs, to another person? Even if I could articulate all this sort of information, what about the endless and 'odd' needs for each of the other three children? If some of their foibles are misread or ignored, an autistic meltdown is assured.
What's IMPORTANT? So, I began a bullet list note of major points. The order they receive their dinner. The chairs they sit at. The colour of everyone's plates. The amount of food on their plates. Washing hands after dinner. No TV/Computer. The process of getting everyone upstairs. The order they use the toilet. The order they undress. The order they enter the shower, wash, leave the shower. Who needs help getting dressed. The process of teeth brushing. And so on...
My bullet list spanned two pages by this point. I realised how unrealistic this was for someone else to deal with, and also how much routine and endless individual requirements I was tacitly catering for each day! So, I kept the entire list to three short paragraphs with key times, and hoped that the older DS1 and DS2 would fill in the blanks without too much drama.
Off I went, into the night - I can't remember the last time I left the house alone, in the evening! It was 30 minutes before I got my first phone call from a frustrated Nanny.
Overall, the Nannies did cope well - however I was surprised by the amount of difficulty they had. And there were two of them - I am but one. My children are able to adjust to having strangers around, however are highly dependent on routine and have many obsessive quirks, and autistic likes/aversions spanning sounds to textures and order which I've identified and catered for, generally without concious planning, it's just WHAT WORKS WHEN IT'S NEEDED.
I briefly considered making a Family Manual - perhaps a Wiki? Time and motivation is against me, however it would certainly make a good essay topic for my Library degree. Better solution: make that clone of myself I've always longed for!
