THE RULE BOOK

It’s 8:30 a.m. Screaming. Brittle, teeth-rattling screaming. It’s too early for this! I’m not ready! Gawd! I don’t have a choice. My feet are moving toward Miss Harmon's room. My brain (and my coffee) are back in my classroom.

Justin is in the doorway. An audience has formed in the hall: teachers, aides, and parents of children arriving late. Justin is howling and won’t let go of his lunchbox. Louisa tries to coax him to deposit his lunchbox in the lunchbox basket. This is something he does every single day without a blip.

Not today! He swings the lunchbox and yells. I can’t understand a word. I’m not sure if there are intelligible words amid his pandemonium. I take Justin across the hall to an empty room. He’s out of control. It takes longer than usual to lower his volume enough for me to open the door and question Louisa. She has no clue about what might have prompted the tantrum. 

It is hours before we recognize the trigger. Miss Harmon had replaced the green basket normally used for lunch boxes with a white basket. A simple, innocuous move. Except it isn’t. To anyone walking by, and even to some involved in the chaos, it looks like the simple case of a spoiled child.

Teaching an autistic child is like living inside an intriguing novel. We just need to figure out how to open the cover. I analyze Justin with every waking and sleeping moment. When I’m in bed I dream about his mishaps. I drink them with my morning coffee and step with them when I take my nightly power walks. It’s always when I’m away from school that significant answers strike me. I think about the “Mysterious Case of the Green Basket.” That leads me to think about routines and rules—safe, comforting rules.

The more I ponder, the more I believe I’m getting close to something important. I invent a hypothesis and even give it a name, “The Rule Book Theory.” What if Justin is carrying around an internal rule book? The adults in his life helped to construct that book. Now it’s biting us in the butt. 

Justin’s rule book was created by the routines we established for him. The first pages were written by his parents years earlier. The routines were set in place to give him the comfort of consistency. A change in his routine is a violation of the rules, rules that are a part of his identity. Violation is a strong word. But I think Justin “owns” a belief that his rule book represents right and wrong, so rule book violations are personal. To Justin, being asked to change a rule is the same as being asked to do something bad. Justin is a good kid. So changes in his rule book go against his nature.

Previous questions begin to make sense. Now what do I do with the theory? I approach Miss Harmon and Louisa. I offer the idea that Justin has an internalized rule book. I give them an analogy. 

“Cara, how would you feel if I told you to steal Louisa’s purse when she goes to the restroom?” 

She looks at me indulgently. “I wouldn’t do it.”

“Of course you wouldn’t, because you know it’s wrong. You probably weren’t ever specifically told not to steal a purse. But as you were growing up, your own internal rule book was written. And that book tells you it’s fundamentally wrong to take Louisa’s purse. Even if I coax, you won’t steal her purse because you know it’s morally wrong. 

“So maybe that’s how Justin feels when we ask him to change something that’s part of his regular routine. And the thing is, tiny things that we don’t even notice are part of his internal routine. I think he absolutely believes we are telling him to do something wrong. What if that’s why he reacts so violently?”

Each of us has duties and we don’t have time to discuss the idea. But Justin gives evidence to prove the theory the very next morning. I couldn’t have scripted it more eloquently.