Chef Boyar-Matt

Over the past couple of years, many of you have read the stories and updates about how great my son is doing with his struggles with Autism. From his advances in speech to kicking ass on (most of) his sight-word tests he just seems to be moving forward all of the time. We’re proud of his progress and eagerly await for what lies ahead.

However, just because I brag about how well he’s doing in school or how much better he’s listening or how he’s socializing with his peers more and more – keep in mind that he’s still just five years old. As such, he knows how to get in trouble, be mischievous, and push his parent’s buttons just as well as any other 5-year old kid can do.

Therefore, I feel it’s only right to present a different side of Matt that doesn’t often get talked about here. I am, after all, just trying to be fair and balanced. (Yeah. I still snicker at that phrase too.)

Yesterday morning, young Matt woke up just before 5:00 am. My wife was still sleeping in bed and somehow both myself and Matt’s twin brother were sleeping on the couch.

Matt played a bit with his toys in the living room area, went to the basement to kill some time down there, and eventually made his way back up to the kitchen where, apparently, he decided to make himself some breakfast.

Let me just say here that Matt doesn’t do things small. He’s a “big picture” kinda kid and he didn’t want just a bowl of cereal and milk. Lately he’s been somewhat obsessed with “chocolate bananas”. He also asks for pancakes several times a week.

Perhaps his end goal was a combination of both…

What woke me up was the sound of an egg cracking on the kitchen floor. What I awoke to was, well, watch the video…

From what I can tell, he used butter, peanut butter, milk, eggs, cinnamon, protein powder, bananas, Nutella, bread, two small bowls, a mixing bowl, and for whatever reason, Lawry’s Seasoning Salt. And if you look closely, around the 0:27 second mark, you’ll also see a small train car packed with something and a Thomas the Tank Engine train covered in a slurry mixture of some sort.

Now here’s where my parenting skills need to be called into question. I know that had his brother done that, I would’ve flipped out. And don’t get me wrong, I was pretty pissed. Yet knowing Matt, his mannerisms, his quirks, and just how staunchly self-focused he can be (which is absolutely a result of his autism and not to be confused with being ‘selfish’) – I didn’t say or do much other than start the process of cleaning it up and reminding Matt that he MUST talk to mommy or daddy before doing anything like that again.

The kid was attempting to make his own breakfast. He was imitating steps he sees his mother take when making stuff in the kitchen. He was trying to be independent. I can’t really fault him for that. (Can I?)

In retrospect, though, I probably shouldn’t have used the Dyson hand-held to suck-up the globs of goo that might’ve eventually became “banana, peanut butter, protein powder, Lawrys seasoning salt, cinnamon toast”. That could come back to bite me…