I am giving a lot of thought to the home environment
Is it too complex for Matt, does it have things that drive anxiety or do these behaviors create a sense of accomplishment for him?
Take this rug as an example
It runs down the hall from our bedroom to the kitchen
He has decided to roll it up numerous times, atleast a dozen times
Why? I asked him once and he said “ you told me too”
Yeah, no, I didn’t….but should I have granted him a sense of accomplishment by saying, “yes, thank you so much, this is so helpful”…..
Of course that is not what I did….. I said in that moment “no I didn’t say that, can you unroll it and put it back?”
Why or why is literal me so hard to retrain, retool?
Or this rug, which is in the entry hallway
When I came home Saturday from my regatta day, this rug was completely upside down
The white backing was showing
Was it the pattern, did that cause some need to flip it over?
Sometimes these things happen while the caregivers are on
Generally I might comment upon entering the house “oh, looks like some redecorating happened” to which they smile, nod and agree
Now that I take a moment to think about this, perhaps I should be asking questions of the caregiver as to how they observed him in the moments before and after this happened
Was he agitated before, did the interaction with the rug calm him, satisfy anything perhaps?
Or was it just one of many things he fiddled with in the environment?
This rug, my rooster, my farm house rooster
I so thought it was fun, the colors, the image
Totally appropriate for the farmhouse vibe
He’s had a bit of a relationship with the rooster
When it was in the kitchen, one of our live-ins thought he might have been afraid of it
(I guess its a good thing I didn’t get the larger 8-10′ version for the kitchen!)
Saturday, he relocated the rooster, albeit face up, into the living room
Is it just the presence of something that stimulates action? If it’s not this thing it would be another thing?
Or is it a specific thing? What are the attributes of things that draw his attention, call out to him to “touch me” “move me” “interact with me”?
Do I simply tolerate that behavior, letting the mystery of what drives him to do a particular thing be a source of entertainment, wonder?
Should I stealthily remove things that are fragile, that have some sort of a value to me and lower my stress so this isn’t such a thing
(That’s easy to answer: yes, a complete no brainer–so like when am I going to take that task on?)
The bigger question looms: how best to think about this behavior?
How do I think about these rugs? Object of change, harmless (except for the fact it could create a trip hazard and has) but better that than pictures on the wall?
To which I can give an example: last night he decided to take a Karen Barbour watercolor off the wall
I caught him in mid-act
It’s a large framed piece of beautiful art with a rich, deep story that goes with it
The glass was just replaced after it fell off the wall because a hook failed and it wasn’t cheap to replace the glass (that move, that hook disaster was on me)
So do activities with the rugs keep him busy enough he doesn’t mess with the art?
Who knows the answers to these questions? Or am I left simply with nothing better than experimentation?
I do worry about the trip hazard risk if he keeps messing with the rugs, but if I do that, do I need to take the art down too?
This is just like that onion Shrek and Donkey talked about “layers, Donkey, onions have layers”
To which Donkey answered “so do parfaits, and everyone loves a parfait”
Uncle Lewy 
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