We were driving to my parents house yesterday and I took a slightly different route than usual. Dylan had asked me the last time we went there if we could start going the alternate route from now on. It’s not much of a difference as far as time or distance is concerned so I was happy to follow his request.

As I started taking this different route, I confirmed with him that this was still the way he wanted to go. He then said he wants to take the normal route when driving to my parents house, but wants the alternate route on the way home. I made the mental note and then started thinking about a few years ago and how much our driving routes dictated our lives at times!

I know this is going to sound strange but it’s very common for ASD kiddos to be very particular about what driving routes you take. They are very insistent about going certain ways and will get extremely agitated and upset if their desired route isn’t taken.

In Dylan’s case, he also had certain roads he liked to travel down because of the property number signs that were on the side of the road! (Dylan has hyperlexia and is obsessed with letters, numbers and space!) I spent a lot of time driving up and down these roads so he could look at the signs.

We would leave early to go places so we could drive down these roads before we actually headed to our destination. Other times we traveled down them on our way home. Sometimes we drove down the road once and other times we drove up and down the road a few times.

There were times when we needed to get to where we were going ASAP. We didn’t have the time to do any extra driving if we wanted to be on time. Sometimes Dylan was ok with this but other times, he would get really upset. I usually had to promise him that we could drive down the road later that day. This was the only way to calm him.

I’ve always loved to drive so the extra time in the car rarely bothered me. When I think about it now, I think it would be interesting to know how much extra time I’ve spent in the car taking alternate routes or just driving up and down Dylan’s favorite roads that he dubbed, “The many signs”.

I assumed Dylan’s preference for specific driving routes ended quite a while ago but I guess I was wrong. Part of me wonders how long it will last. It doesn’t matter to me though. I’m happy to oblige!