February 2, 2006 10:26 pm
Groundhog Day
It’s been a difficult few weeks. We make progress. We celebrate. We slip back. We start again.
Tonight I crawled in bed with my youngest for a little nighttime cuddling. I listened to him as he put so much effort to transform thought into speech and finally say “The groundhog saw his shadow.” I asked him how many more weeks winter would last and he responded, “Six, but I don’t care about that.” His mind had already moved onto something else.
But my mind stayed on the groundhog. Something about it lingered on. And then it hit me. I feel like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day. I don’t think any other idea has come closer to how the ups and downs have felt lately.
For those of you that haven’t seen it, Bill Murray plays a weatherman who relives the same day, February 2, over and over again. Every day he tries something different, trying to break the cycle. And every morning he wakes up to the same song on the radio, and starts all over again.
I’ve been trying to help one of my boys break out of a negative cycle. The cycle has had some impact at home and a lot of impact at school. Working with him takes an incredible amount of energy some days. Other days it comes easily. Over time, it can be draining.
In the movie, Murray’s character tries all sorts of things to break the cycle. He goes through days of selfishness and days when he spends his time helping everyone he meets. He spends many days learning to play piano and yet on a day of extreme desperation, he drives his car off a cliff. After each, he wakes up in the same bed and breakfast in Punxsutawney, PA.
Like Murray, I’m trying all sorts of things to break the cycle. Some days are as joyful as learning a new piece of music, regardless of whether or not we make progress. Some days are marked by hope, others by moments of desperation. One of the most poignant aspects of the movie is that every day, despite what happened the day before, Murray’s character gets up and tries again.
I expect the answer to breaking the cycles for my son will have a lot to do with growth, much as in the movie. My son will eventually tap into his own extensive capacity for learning and will make some permanent progress. The adults around him at home and school will also need to grow. We will need to shake off some notions about the meaning of his behavior. We’ll also need to learn more about how he reacts to stimuli in the environment. We will need to learn that his stimuli may be things that we still don’t even recognize. We’ll discover the antecedents to the behavior and will wonder why we didn’t see them earlier. We’ll need to be truly open minded and learn from one another as we identify what environment is “appropriate” for him to learn.
And the most important step will be starting over again tomorrow.
Good going, “AmBA,” with the outbursts—I’ve read a lot of books in bits and pieces while keeping a behavior watch on Charlie. And Groundhog Day (Bill Murray’s) is a perfect metaphor for many of our days here—-trying to change, wanting to change, repeating the cycle.
February 3rd, 2006 at 9:15 pm
What a fantastic analogy. The “Groundhog Day” phenomenon with autism is even more challenging when you consider that so many of our kids crave routine and predictability so much that they would LOVE to know that each day would be just like the last; it often seems like we are working to break the very same cycles that they are working to preserve. It also strikes me that one very important concept in Groundhog Day was that, though Bill Murray woke each day to find himself back where he started, he remembered what had come before, he learned from it, he adapted his approach, he made new mistakes - so, really and truly, though it seemed as though he was back where he started, he was actually in a different place every single time. Sounds familiar, don’t you think?
February 4th, 2006 at 11:21 pm
I love the way you are “looking” at his behaviours differently.
Estee
February 5th, 2006 at 10:21 am
This is one of my favorite movies for the very reason that mom-nos explained.
February 6th, 2006 at 10:19 pm
Thanks all for the added insight and encouragement!
The incremental changes that Bill Murray made every day are indeed very powerful. It can be easy to get discouraged over the limited impact we can have during a day. If instead we look at the cumulative impact that each day can have over a period of weeks, or months, the potential is huge.
I think I need to go buy the movie now. It’s always been a favorite.
February 7th, 2006 at 9:51 pm