Anxiety

Sometimes the strangest things will set off Bambam's anxiety. And I don't know why. Recently we were at a sports festival at the fun house. And Bambam was having a great weekend. He tolerated crowds much better than in the past. We attended the small concert on Friday night where he had fun dancing with the other kids and listening to the music. We spent Saturday at the pool which was very crowded and he handled it just like a pro.

Encouraged by Friday night's success, we then went to the amphitheater for Saturday's concert. He was immediately tense. It was louder, there were more people, seating was at a premium. We finally found seating on the outskirts, which was better for him anyway. 

There were several vender booths around, one being a "stuffed banana" booth. I'm not really sure what you have to do to a banana to stuff it, nor do I want to know. I like my bananas in there natural state, thank you very much. But sitting in a chair in front of this booth was a HUGE toy banana with a face including a big, red nose. Bambam was intrigued by this banana and especially the nose which he took to "tweaking". He would run over, tweek the nose, then run back to where we were sitting. He wasn't really bothering anyone, lots of kids were running around. So we simply watched him and let it go.  

After about half a dozen trips, we could see the vender say something to him. We couldn't here him. But he was smiling, didn't appear to be raising his voice or have any concerning body language so we weren't too worried about it. Bambam came back to his chair and said "don't touch nose". I'm sure he was echoing what the vendor had said to him. Which is totally fine. If every kid tweaked the banana nose, it would probably fall off. And perhaps we were a bit too lenient in letting Bambam do it over and over. Seems we are much more accepting of borderline behavior from our special needs kid than we are of our typical kids. But that is really a topic for another post. 

Anyway...its now a couple of weeks later. And Bambam is still showing signs of anxiety about the "banana man". Anywhere we go he asks "Banana man be there?" At night he asks "Banana man went home?" For whatever reason, this exchange bothered him greatly and is now a source of anxiety. And I can't really figure out why. The man was not angry or threatening. It seemed like a benign interaction. The only thing I can piece together is that he was already stressed by the crowds, noise, music and the banana man is what he is associating with that stress and anxiety. But that is just my guess. Parts of that boy are still a puzzle to me.