The Small Things: Unexpected Item In Bagging Area

Sometimes the small things can turn our day from a potentially “bad” one into a good one.

I try to remember these little snippets whenever the metaphorical cloak of autism and its related anxieties swoop over D, like they have today.

Here is one such snippet, which has made her laugh today and they’re useful conversational tools too:

D didn’t sleep well one night, I was with her for most of the night, she had bad dreams & anxieties relating from them.

I made the decision to keep her off school the following day. She was over-tired, it would have been awful trying to physically get her in the classroom and it would have repercussed throughout the day.

We dropped T off and caught the bus into Reading. Usual stares from fellow passengers as she sits there happily (and quietly) in her SN buggy, but I don’t acknowledge them anymore.

Did a bit of M&S shopping and D much prefers the self service checkouts, she bolts if we go to the staffed checkouts.

She wanted to do the scanning. It took ages as she wanted to find each bar code herself and then the tricky negotiation of scanning the items. We had a couple of “key in code” items too, which again, she insisted on doing. I wonder if she’ll do this sort of thing by herself one day. I feel at the moment, I’ll always be in the background, waiting to swoop in if need be.

Notes produced to pay, we maybe should have turned it into a maths exercise but, at the time, I was relieved that

1) the store wasn’t busy and

2) she was calm and happy.

The machine dispensed a note and some coins as change, D leant over to get them and there was “Unexpected Item In Bagging Area – please remove this item”!

I started laughing and, to my relief, D did to. She was an “item”, she couldn’t wait to tell Daddy when he got home.

Jeanette AM

Sometimes I feel like a brand but I'm me, a commuting career woman in a previous "life", now a stay-at-home Mumma to two wonderful children, who just happen to have autism too. One at each end of the spectrum, one diagnosed at 4.5 years old and the other, very recently at 10.5 years. I blog to raise awareness and acceptance of autism for them and everyone connected with the autistic spectrum (there's an ever-growing number of us!) Very humbled to have been shortlisted in the Brilliance In Blogging awards for my website. That would be me, @AutismMumma aka Jeannette