The Great Midnight Coffee Heist

A Mother’s Day “Happy Mother’s Day” song should be simple, but when you’re parenting severe autism, even the sweetest moment can sit right next to exhaustion you can’t quite explain. I’m sharing what’s been going on in my house lately, including the quiet fear that your family is holding together on the outside while things feel shaky underneath. If you’ve ever thought, “I’m the only one living like this,” I say the part out loud that we all need to hear: you’re not alone.

Then I get into the behaviors, because the patterns changed in a way I didn’t expect. The picture smashing and frame breaking took on a new meaning when I realized which photos were being targeted, and it made me question what my son might be feeling but can’t say. From there, the story turns into a full-on midnight mystery: coffee, milk, a dragged blanket, and the slow realization that the “mess” was a routine aimed straight at Grandpa’s stuff. It’s gross, it’s maddening, and honestly it’s also weirdly funny once you finally see what’s happening. We also talk about the reality of living with locks, padlocks, and home safety setups that other people don’t understand.

I share an update on self-injurious behavior like arm biting, what helped reduce it for us, and what popped up next when the biting got harder to do. If you’re dealing with headbanging, biting, property destruction, or sleep-disrupting routines, you’ll hear the unfiltered version of how it looks in real life, plus the small communication wins that make everything feel worth it again.

If this connected with you, subscribe, share the episode with another autism caregiver, and leave a review so more families can find this support. And I’d love to hear your stories, what’s working, and what you’re stuck on right now.

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Transcript

Welcome And Ways To Support

SHANNON CHAMBERLIN 0:18

Hello and welcome to the Parenting Severe Autism Podcast. I am your host, Shannon Chamberlin. I'm so happy that you're here with me today. Please remember you can support this podcast in many different ways. Of course, you can always buy me a coffee by clicking the little support icon on your podcast player. You're also able to visit my storefront by following the link in my show notes. You can find t-shirts and tote bags, pillows, coffee mugs and wine tumblers, water bottles and phone cases, etc., with my closing line and the podcast artwork. Also, any products that you're looking for, if you've heard me mention them, I usually will have a link, and it doesn't cost you any extra, but it does help me a little bit with an affiliate code, such as the Angel Sense device or a TV protector, or some of the clean ingredient sunblocks and summer supplies and nervous system support products, the fingerprint locks, and anything else that I may have mentioned throughout my episodes. If you just click those, you can buy as normal. It doesn't cost you anything additional, but it does help me a little bit. I'd also love to hear from you. You can always email me at contact.parenting severe autism at gmail.com. Today is Sunday. I usually record on Saturdays, to be honest. I've just been going through some stuff personally, and I haven't even had the motivation to speak. So I was not able to record Saturday, but today is Sunday, it's Mother's Day. I was upstairs this morning getting my coffee cup, and our son was outside with the Tweedles and his dad, and he came into the kitchen and stood behind me at the countertop and started singing. And I couldn't understand what he was saying, but the tune was happy birthday. And I was confused because I do have a birthday. My spouse's birthday is this month, then our wedding anniversary, and then my birthday, and I will be half a century old this year. So I'm sitting there thinking, why is he singing happy birthday to me? It's weeks away. I don't understand what's happening. And then I realized he was singing happy Mother's Day to you. I said, Oh, it just got to me right away. I was so emotional. He's such a sweet boy. And of course, you know, daddy has to put him up to it. He doesn't do that on his own, but it did get to me. He's such a sweet boy. So, on a personal note, if you ever feel like your family is just falling apart, you're not alone. I've been feeling that way for a little while. And I mean everything is intact. There's a lot going on under the layers, but everything is intact and my kid is safe and everything's fine. But I have been kind of grappling with that lately, so I just wanted to throw that out there and be real with you and let you know if that happens to you, you're not alone, even if it hasn't happened yet. When it does, remember that you are not alone. There's probably a handful of people going through it at the same time as you, and I hang on to that thought as well. Because unfortunately, you know, there is no real support group in my area for stuff like this. This podcast is my support group. So sometimes I just have to hang on to these grand ideas that there is a community out there suffering and celebrating and doing all of the things just like me, and it helps. So I want to get into some of this stuff. I was gonna split it up into different episodes with different stories, but I'm just not in the mood for that right now. I may regret it later, but I'm gonna try to get it all squeezed into one episode here. Our child's target changed. He was targeting, you know, he was doing the fixtures in the house, he was doing the bathroom, the bathroom sink, trying to destroy that, trying to destroy the light fixtures, and of course, always breaking pictures and frames. And I thought he was doing the pictures to piss off his grandfather, or because he was pissed off at his grandfather and he was trying to mess with him until the day that I found him with his half-sister's picture shredded into little pieces in his room that had been removed from one of those frames. And then I got to looking at those frames and I realized it was really pictures of him and the half-brother and the half-sister, for the most part, in all of those collages. And that's when I realized that maybe he feels abandoned, forgotten, let down, you know. Um, it's hard sometimes because a lot of our kids don't show that they are very emotional or that they have any kind of grasp on loyalty or betrayal or anything like that. Sometimes I wonder it's a tough one, you know. I had always heard that kids like ours are not emotionally intelligent. They probably don't really experience emotions the way that the rest of us do. They're detached, more robotic, and stuff like that. I had heard that, but I hadn't heard that before I started teaching my son about feelings. I don't know. I don't think it's a bad thing to be aware of feelings, but sometimes I wonder, you know, if I hadn't taught him about feelings and loyalty and honor and stuff like that, would he feel as hurt now as he does by other people's actions? It's just one of those things you'll never know. And when you can't get an answer, it's easy to beat yourself up about stuff. But I remember that story I told you. Well, first I tried to teach him excitement, happiness, and love, teaching him who daddy was and what that means when daddy gets home and all of that. And then the next memory I have of teaching him about feelings was when our neighbor was rude to him, that guy, and he was just like, Yeah, I don't want you around right now. And I whisked Jacob down the sidewalk, down to our townhouse on the way there. Of course, I was loudly educating him about you don't need to let people treat you like that, people don't need to talk to you that way. And ever since then, I've been a real pit bull about it, because I don't care. I after that, after that incident with that guy, a couple years later, I think is when I started hearing that kids like ours don't really have emotions and feelings and stuff. And I don't care. I still think that human decency goes a long way. And I don't care if you run into someone who clinically has been proven to not experience emotion. I don't I don't think that gives you the right to be a dick. You know? What kind of human are you? Just to, oh, well, this one over here doesn't feel anything, so I'm gonna drop all the decency, all the considerations, and just go over to this person and abuse them verbally because I know that they won't feel it. Well, if that's the way you're gonna be, then you should be that way to everybody, not just to my kid. Anyway, I don't know, that was a little tangent. I didn't mean to go on that. It was the pictures on the wall that got me there because he was doing that because he was hurting and he couldn't express it. And then I started wondering if he was hurting because I taught him how to feel. I taught him to feel that stuff, you know. I don't know. I I hope that me teaching him that isn't causing him more pain, but I mean it it is possible, I guess, right? So anyway, he moved away from the pictures and and all that stuff, right? And his new target, in my opinion, was his grandfather. I was very intrigued by his infatuation with the welcome mats. I thought that was really, really something, but this was different. So one night I woke up. Now, remember, all the other stuff I've already talked about still goes on every day. All of that stuff. But I came upstairs into the kitchen and I saw liquid all over the center of the kitchen floor. The tile in the kitchen is dark green. So at the time I couldn't really identify what this liquid was, but there was a big puddle in the floor. So I begin cleaning that up and I find that the liquid is brown. So I'm like, okay, what is happening? I I couldn't figure it out. Well, that went on for several days, and each time it got more revealing, I guess. Like the next time I found in that liquid there were some coffee grounds in there as well. So now, oh, okay, so this is coffee. Who in the world dropped a bunch of coffee on the kitchen floor? Well, the Tweedles love to make coffee at, you know, seven, eight o'clock at night. Sometimes ten o'clock at night, they'll be making a pot of coffee. So it was not beyond the realm of possibility that perhaps they were emptying the coffee filter basket and they didn't notice and they slopped a bunch of it on the floor. I don't know. So I just cleaned it up. And then the next time, not only was there brown liquid on the floor and a little bit of coffee grounds in it, but then I noticed that the grandfather's travel mug that he uses every day was misplaced. It was in a different area. And I'm like, what is wrong with this old man? What is he doing? First, he's making coffee in the middle of the night, spilling it all over the floor and not cleaning it up. That's so out of character for him. I mean, he can't stand to see one little drop of water on the countertop in front of the sink. Even while you're still using it, he'll come in there and get in your way and clean it up. So I'm like, what is happening? And then now he's leaving his coffee cup here out of its normal spot. The lid is not on it. What in the world is happening to this old man? And then I get up there another day, and the entire pot of coffee that was made is in the sink, coffee and milk on the floor, and the grandfather's cup, I believe I found it in the refrigerator. I'm like, I'm just, what? What is this? You know? And then I started realizing I don't think it's him, you know, and I uh I don't know. I hadn't been mentioning it to him because I didn't want to make him mad or seem like I was accusing him, the grandfather, of, you know, losing his mind or being silly or being sloppy. I just, I didn't, I don't know, you know. Like, hey, maybe he's going through a thing. I I don't want to make it any worse than what it is. So I'm just gonna go on with my day. He is the only one in the house that drinks milk. And so now every day I'm waking up finding, and this is the middle of the night. I don't know if I'm getting up in the middle of the night or if I'm getting ready to go to bed, but it's be I some of it actually was between the time we would put Jacob to bed and then the time that I would go to sleep. Somewhere in there, the grandfather's already in bed, the house is quiet, I'll get up and I'll find this weirdness. And then other times it was in the middle of the night. There was never any trace or any proof of what was actually happening. And then one night I come upstairs and I can see as I'm climbing the stairs that there's just stuff all over the floor. And I'm like, fuck, I gotta clean this up again. I'm so tired of cleaning up this floor every night. And I see the red tip of our son's bedspread trailing through this puddle of milk and coffee, going out of the kitchen and heading towards the stairs to go up to our son's room. So I see that and I'm like, oh my gosh. So I go up there, I'm like, hey, what are you doing? But I got a hold of his blanket. He was trying to shut me out, and I grabbed his blanket and I pulled it, and it was sop and wet, and it was so gross. I started inspecting it, and I came to believe very quickly that this is his routine. He has been dragging his bedspread around the house in the middle of the night. As soon as his grandfather goes to bed, he'll get up. That's that's the pattern I figured out. He was getting up, dragging his blanket around like Linus, raiding the refrigerator of anything that belonged to his grandfather and dumping it on the floor. Like, what the fuck, kid? It didn't stop. He didn't, he would not stop, but I didn't know how disgusting his blanket was because it was the corners. And when I tuck him in at night, I don't see the corners. Like, I don't know. I d you know, he is so gross, and I feel like the world's worst mother not noticing this stuff. But in my own defense, he puts me through the ringer every day. So I mean it's gonna slip. But this happens a lot. You might remember other stories where I'm like totally grossed out once I realize the buildup of something that's been going on that is unsanitary for a while that I didn't notice before. So I'm starting to wonder, like, geez, am I that unaware? No, I can't be. I'm watching everything he does. I'm constantly making sure his hands are clean, everything about him is clean. Um, what? You know, it just really starts to mess with my head when I realize that, oh my gosh, this has been going on exactly this way. Um, gross, you know. Like, I don't know. I just felt terrible. And I got down on myself really badly when I realized what was happening, but it was hilarious. It was very entertaining. There were so many different things going on. And I caught him another night in the middle of a dump in the kitchen. He had the coffee cup and the milk jug in his hands, and he was actively dumping them on the floor. And when he saw me coming, he went to the sink and he starts dumping them in the sink. And I'm like, why it's a little better, but why is that better? What are you doing? Stop. I couldn't figure out why he was targeting him. I never did figure it out, but it was hilarious. I started finding food of his grandfather's in this mixture that he would make on the floor. The worst part was me having to clean it up, and that was what I got most mad about. It was just so entertaining. And that went on for weeks and weeks. He just got really nuts about really messing up his grandfather's day. It got so bad that the grandfather went and bought more locks. You might remember that story when I was bitching at our son about having locks on the refrigerator, and this is why the grandfather went to like Lowe's or something, and he got these locks, and they're kind of cool. You screw one part of it to the body of the refrigerator, you screw the other part of it to the door, and he got one for the freezer door and one for the refrigerator door. It's got a big swinging latch type thing on it, so it swings and it goes over this nubby thing that's the part that's screwed to the body of the refrigerator, and then you put a padlock through it. That's what we ended up with. And I think he actually ended up chaining it as well. I mean, he went overboard, making sure that his milk and cookies did not get ruined every night. I would love to elaborate on that, but I think it would get old fast. It's probably more entertaining to me than it would be to you. But anything you can imagine, he was throwing it. If it belonged to his grandfather, it was going in that pile every single day. And I think he started actually throwing things in the garbage as well. We still have the locks on there. We don't use them anymore. He's grown out of that, but that was a phase he went through and I was so mad about everything being locked. I mean, it's one thing to lock up your personal area, but to lock up your front door, your back door, and your refrigerator with padlocks. I mean, I just like how can we survive this? What is what kind of life is this? I hate this so much. And I had complained to him one time, like, look at this. Nobody lives like this. Nobody has locks on their refrigerator. And then, you know, shortly after that, I took him to the doctor and they walked us down this hallway. You might remember that, and there was a couple brown refrigerators behind the ladies at the counter. He was freaking out doing his his thing, you know, and he violently pointed at those refrigerators on the way down the hall. And I knew exactly what he was saying because I had just done this whole big bitch session on him about it. It was so funny. I mean, of all the things, you know, nobody has these. Oh, yeah, look. So, update on the arm. The lotion is working quite well. It doesn't help it heal or anything, it just helps him not do it. It's called Stop It. I'll put a link to it if you have any need for it. You can click my link at the end of the show notes. I imagine it tastes pretty bad. It smells like it tastes pretty bad, but he believes that I'm helping him. And sometimes he'll say, Oh, thank you. Sometimes he'll be reluctant to give me his arm, and that's when I know he's already bitten it. So this is the thing we've been dealing with. Like I'll wake up in the morning, I give him his meds, and I put the lotion on the skin. And then at night we give him his meds and put the lotion on the skin. And somewhere in between, when he goes to bed and wakes up, that's when he bites himself. So sometimes he wakes up before I have a chance to get ready with his medicine and everything, and that's the time. And I was getting so mad because he wasn't biting it the whole time, and then he was doing it when I wasn't around or when he wasn't treated with the lotion. I was getting so mad. And I was like, why are you doing that? Why don't you bite it now? Bite it now. I dare you, bite it now. And he's like, No, you know. Well, one day we put a layer of lotion on his arms, and then I saw him within a few hours, and I think it was at night. Yeah, it was at night. So we put the lotion on the skin and it goes to bed, and then it wakes up. And I find him freaking out, being totally mad. And I was like, okay, I'm gonna put more lotion on your skin. And there were fresh bite marks. I was like, oh, oh, you bit your arm already? He's like, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I was like, did it taste good? He says, No. I just thought that was hilarious. I'm like, you want to do it again? He says, no. But I had been getting so mad. I mean, because he's biting harder and harder every time, and he has punctured his skin twice now in between the lotion applications. But when it's on there, he actually is grateful, relieved, and and says thank you. Sometimes he'll try to say, Oh, I feel good. And he'll also show me his arm, and he's feeling a sense of accomplishment now that the teeth marks and the bruises and the bumps are going away, because it was constantly there, with him not eating himself all the time, he's healing. And then other times he'll be off the wagon and he's chomping on himself again. And this one day I was totally grossed out. I don't know what was going on with this kid, but his teeth, he's really placky and real, like you gotta have him cleaned up a lot off like every four to six months, he's gotta go in and get his teeth cleaned and stuff. He's just he's just gross. Anyway, he had this puncture in his arm, and I was horrified. And then I looked at his teeth, and I was even more horrified. They were so y gross, and he had like chunks of food on the front of his teeth. I was horrified. I'm like, dude, you are so unclean right now. You cannot bite holes in your arm. And we're trying to teach him you're gonna go to the hospital. You're you know, he just doesn't care. I don't know. Now he's back to banging his head on the wall. He started that recently because the lotion's working so well that he doesn't want to taste it. So now I have not gotten the house remodeled enough yet to where I can put the mats on the wall to prevent him from opening his head up the way that he does on the on the wall the way it is now. He does it so fast. Do you guys have that? Like the head banging. Have you ever heard the speed of it? Because my kid sounds like a woodpecker. It's so fast. I can't believe that it can be so fast. I don't understand what he's doing, but he's busting his head open when he does it. It's so fast. I can't mimic that with I I just I don't understand. It's almost like he's gotta be using his foot in between headbangs. It's just too freaking fast to be completely all headbanging, but it it has to it has to be because there's no foot damage on the wall. It has to be straight headbanging, but it's amazing how fast it is. By the time you hear this, it'll be a few days after Mother's Day. I just want to say happy belated Mother's Day. Even if you're a dad or a grandmother, you're doing the work. You're probably not feeling very appreciated, and I am sure that if your child could say it, they would say you're the best mom ever, and that they love you very much. A couple weeks ago I recorded some of the stories that I didn't want to lose sight of, so I'm going to attach one here. So if it doesn't flow from this clip into that clip, I apologize, but it's worth it for the story. So he's standing in the dining room. The Tweedles are causing a bottleneck. The grandfather is there by the back door, he just decides he needs to blow his nose at the dining room table now. The uncle comes up behind him. So Tweedledum doesn't know that Tweedledee is standing behind him. So I said, We got a bottleneck going on in the dining room, and Tweedledum turns around and sees Tweedledee at the same time that I said that. They began to move out. And I hear our son say, The force is strong with this one. They went outside. And I just, I don't know, it was so funny. And then he doesn't miss a beat. He goes, Shenadal. I said, What? He says, I'm your daddy. I said, You're not my daddy. He says, I'm your daddy. And two days ago, his grandmother came by for a visit. She was in town for a wedding, and instead of bringing him more junk toys, she actually brought him to the house. Brought a check to help him with his day camp fees. Really awesome. And she's sitting on the couch. She's here for him. He's just walking around the house, not paying her any mind at this moment. And he comes up to me as I come up the stairs into the kitchen. He comes through the dining room and he says plain as day to me, I've been looking for you. I couldn't believe it. I don't even know what happened after that. I was just trying to tell him. Good talking, good words, that's amazing. I couldn't believe it. It just it was so clear and well pronounced. And he's not on anything other than everything I've already told you about. I I really think it's the B complex that he's on, but I was so impressed. He said that that wasn't normal. He doesn't normally say that so clearly to me. And ever since she left, he's been crying ever since. I mean, just sobbing and really, really out of sorts. So I I swear to God, it is when she comes over that this happens to him. I have some really cute video that I took of me and Jacob going through his toys and stuff, and I'm gonna be posting it on my socials. I'm just it was a really long video, and I thought I would just shoot for some b-roll and use it as posts, and now I can't get it out of my phone into my Dropbox because it's so damn long. And the part that I want when he's being real goofy, I'm just dead set on getting it clipped from there. So I'm having a little bit of trouble right now, but I've got some really cute stuff, and I'm going to be uh recording video when we do the remodeling for him. I'm painting the dining room just to cheer him up, and I'm gonna patch the walls in his bedroom and paint his bedroom. He's chosen some really whacked out colors, and I'm gonna let him do it. But somehow, when we narrowed it down out of the eight colors that he chose, we chose two. He told me he wanted this one color on one wall and this other color on the other three walls, and then the color that he wanted on the one wall, he also wanted on the trim. And I thought that was pretty cool. Um, of course, he didn't speak it like that. This was all done through charades. And all of a sudden, after we placed those paint sample stickers in the areas where he wanted them, they disappeared. The other ones that did not get chosen in the final round are still on the wall, but the final round choices are gone, and I can't get him to answer any kind of questions about their whereabouts. We have to take him back to the store and let him do it all over again. And this time I will have to just pocket the samples instead of leaving them in his room. I don't know what happened, but I'm gonna have him help me with a lot of stuff, and I mean I don't know how helpful he'll be, but it'll be cute, and I'm gonna record it and try to get some footage out there about that. And hey, thank you for being here. Thank you for your support. Don't forget to send your comments, questions, and stories to me at contact.parentingsevereautism at gmail.com. Okay, tiny little update. I just had a little bit of a rude awakening from Amazon. My little associate's account is in danger and they're not allowing me to post affiliate links anymore. So the lotion that I'm using is actually called Control It, and I am using a spray called Active Skin Repair First Aid Healing Skin Hydrogel. It's like an antimicrobial thing for cuts, wounds, scrapes, rashes, sunburns, and more. And I found those on Amazon, but I cannot provide you with a link. But every product that I get for our child is healthy and as non toxic as possible. So you might just go search for it if you're looking for something like that. Thank you so much for listening. You hang in there. You're a superhero.