Church Goer's

We don't always go to church and I wouldn't say it's a number one top priority given Wes can't handle all the sights and sounds, so we go very little. We'd like to go more, but again, Wes has a really hard time. Yesterday we wanted to go to see family and make an effort, but Wes came up again. What could we do to make it easier on him and us. Then it hit me! I have Jerry Grasso over at My Autistic Boy and Other Adventures in Fatherhood to thank. I remember reading that his son Demetrius has an MP3 player that he uses at school to get through the lunch period. Maybe, just maybe that would work for Wes in church. I was 95% sure that it was the organist and the singing that threw him into a tizzy. So we set off to church with bags of snacks, fidget toys, and the CD player with Laurie Berkner thrown inside. When we pulled up to Church, Wes started to get upset. We managed to get him into a pew and threw the headphones on. As soon as the Laurie started belting out her folksy tunes, he immediately quieted down and remained that way for about 45 minutes. Once the CD had gone through it's rotation, he took off the headphones and did a bit of echoing, but was great!
We finally found a trick that we'll keep in our bag. The boy (only being 3) might be spoiled with his own MP3 player filled with his songs. It's smaller and easier to carry around. We'll have to get him used to smaller headphones I think because we used the ones that went with the Therapeutic Listening CD and they are huge.
Autism is such a learning curve for everyone involved.