Gaining independence with autism

Now I’m doing independence training all the time because I would like to become more independent and have the ability to do stuff on my own. I am learning the important parts of independence such as road crossing, shopping, planting, cooking and doing house jobs.

Every day I plan my own day routine. I can make coffee and tea in the mornings for breakfast. After breakfast I go outside to check the mail. During the COVID 19 pandemic I wear gloves to handle the mail and I wash my hands afterwards. I decide when I want to do things each day such as playing with my cats, gaming, photography, watching movies and colouring in. I plan to take a shower on Wednesday and Sunday every week. I help out a lot with house jobs such as the washing up and gardening.

I decide what to cook for breakfast, lunch and dinner. I can cook somethings without supervision because I’m very careful with knives and the stove. I usually cook very nice meals. I don’t panic when the smoke alarm goes off and I just turn it off. I’m hoping to have an kitchen extractor fan sometime so I don’t have to deal with the smoke alarm every day. Our smoke alarm is very sensitive and it goes off all though I’m not burning anything.

A few months ago when my stepdad’s old home stereo was malfunctioning I decided to look for a new home stereo for him online. I looked at different stereos until I found the right one. It took me a couple of weeks to find the right stereo as I had to think about the components and check if they have very good sound quality. I did all that work for my stepdad to help myself with my independence training.

When we decided to get a Chinese takeaway for dinner a couple of times I wrote a list of the food that everyone wanted and I phoned the Chinese restaurant called Yu Garden in Ballaghaderreen to make the order for collection. I did that so I would be able to phone restaurants to make orders in the future.

To help myself understand the value of money I always plan a monthly budget to see how much I spend each month. I write in all the stuff that I pay for such as food, insurance, transport, Spotify and online orders.

I have recently learnt how to tie my own shoelaces by looking up a video on YouTube about tying shoelaces in an easy way. I tie my shoelaces by making two loops and crossing them over to make a knot. I find the standard way of tying shoes very complicated. For many years someone else had to tie my shoes for me.

For years I found road crossing difficult as I kept getting distracted. I’m practicing on getting better at road crossing by concentrating on what I’m doing and looking both ways for cars before I cross the road.

I still have a long way to go to become more independent but I’m working towards that.