Back to School Shopping

We did our back-to-school shopping and I have to say, I was totally floored at how well Gus did in the store. I normally dread taking the kids anywhere near a store alone, but school starts next week and we had nothing better to do, so I tried it. I thought it would give me an idea of how Gus is doing with the sugarless diet. Very well, apparently.

Usually taking the kids to a store means constant squirming, trying to run off, whining, crying - everyone knows the drill. Before we left I ran through the two main rules: stay with mommy, stay in the cart. I repeated it just before we got out of the car. Then we struck gold and found one of those double carts - fun carts, my kids call them. They're much more comfortable for he kids and much easier than having to keep one sitting (usually Gus although he's a little big for the front of a shopping cart) and holding the other's hand. He didn't try to get out of the cart once. I even had to unbuckle him to check the length on some pants and I left him unbuckled for a few seconds while I looked for a different size, and he still didn't go anywhere. That is a MAJOR accomplishment on his part.

His MM started getting antsy before Gus did, but when she started whining and having a fit about not getting something or other that she wanted, he didn't react much. In the past, I would have had a double meltdown on my hands - a triple meltdown once I started to lose it.

As it worked out, she calmed down relatively quickly and we got out of the store without incident.

It's kind of funny that I was reading Whitterer on Autism (another blog and one I highly recommend) earlier and she posted about feeling like her son was a different person after he started taking medication. I'm feeling something similar with Gus. It's odd not to have him running around like a lunatic, not having to struggle with him in a store until my arms want to snap off, or to see him so calm I have to keep asking if he's okay. It's quite surreal. If just removing the sugar from his diet can keep him this level, I sort of wonder what he'd be like on medication. I'm not quite ready to find out, but these have all been very interesting developments.