Our elf on the shelf experience encapsulates a lot about my son Jesse’s journey with autism.
When her was around four, my sister bought Jesse a boy Elf on the Shelf. She’d gotten one for my nephew and wanted to spread the magic to our family too.
I wasn’t a big fan. I’ve always been of the snitches get stitches mindset when it comes to these little overpriced spies. But it was a thoughtful gesture, so I went along with it.
It’s funny how the typical things you never even wanted can still make you sad with autism in the picture.
That elf could’ve come to life, danced on Jesse’s head, and he wouldn’t have cared.
Most nights, I forgot to move it—not only because I’m lazy but also because he barely noticed its existence.
He wasn’t interested in finding it perched in silly spots or concerned about its supposed reports to Santa. At the time, we were lucky if we could get him to open his gifts, let alone engage with holiday traditions.
The elf became a sad reminder that our Christmases, like much of our lives, didn’t look like everyone else’s. Joy didn’t come easy. It couldn’t be bought or orchestrated.
Eventually, I gave the elf away to a family member and moved on.
Fast-forward a few years to last Christmas, when we decided to try the elf again. This time, it was for my daughter, who wanted one because her pal—my nephew—still had his.
And so, Isabelle the elf entered our lives.
But things are different now. Jesse is more aware. He loves Christmas. And, like with so many other parts of our lives, that awareness has brought a new layer of rigidity, exactness, and obsession.
He slowly became more and more excited about the elf last year. He stored everything about it in his mind, sitting there, waiting for this year.
The last few weeks leading up to December were filled with Jesse’s looping questions:
“Is the Elf on the Shelf coming in December?”
“Is the elf in the North Pole?”
“Where’s Isabelle?”
He couldn’t let it go.
Now that Isabelle is here, he watches the Elf on the Shelf movies and videos, got her a pet, and flips through the book constantly. Last night, he insisted we go to the store to look at all the different elves. We’ve been practicing going out, and I want to honor his interests, so we went.
So there we were—just a mom and her cute, curly-haired boy, standing in the same aisle at Target for an hour while he examined each elf over and over again. He lined them up, checked to make sure they all had their books, inspected each one, and repeated the process. He made sure to show me the boy elf, which I know he now actually wants.
This is our new normal with autism the last year or so.
Jesse’s growth in awareness and communication has been incredible, and I’m deeply grateful for it.
But with that awareness comes anxiety and perseveration. We jump from one obsession to the next, never knowing when one will resurface and take over our lives again. It feels like we are always on edge.
We do our best to always join him in his interests, using them as opportunities to teach and explore something new within their realm. Like his passion for It’s a Small World which has spread to maps and travel. Which has opened so many doors, but getting through those doors it complicated. Nothing is simple with ASD for us.
Some of our most beautiful moments of joy and growth come from these pockets of obsession.
But it can also be exhausting when he can’t let go.
When the questions repeat endlessly, and the fixation spirals into all-consuming anxiety and sadness. On the hardest days, it’s heartbreaking to see him struggle with things that aren’t available or possible and feel unable to move past them.
It’s hard to describe, but this is where we often find ourselves. I’m so grateful to know what he loves and to have him share it with me now, but it’s also hard to navigate. Most of all, it’s heartbreaking to watch the things he loves sometimes take over.
