shopping

Shopping – Redux

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About a year ago I wrote about my experiences in shopping. I still struggle with this, but I thought I would write again about this difficulty after this weekend’s attempts to shop.

Since we moved to ShenZhen we have been mostly getting our groceries at the local Walmart. I am glad that we have one here. Are there other options? Yes. Have we found or experienced many? Not yet.

During the summer, we were able to go shopping mostly during the week. If you are not aware, weekend shopping can be a bit of a nightmare.

Since work is starting up again, we have to get back into the routine of shopping on the weekend, and slow down on the food delivery. In order to limit difficulties, My wife and I put our youngest into a playground nearby, and had our older daughter watch her while she drew. This way we would only have 2 of us to try to push through the crowds.

Walmart was busy. Back to school sales drew in a lot of extra people, yes. But a lot of extra on top of the regular chaos that is the weekend shopping.

I am lucky that they do not test their air fresheners or other perfumes. The entire upper floor, filled with household goods, was mostly scent free. But once we moved down to the food floor, My brain went on high alert. Loud noise and crowds do not a friend make with the autistic brain.

My wife was able to slide through the crowds easily, and I would get cut off, or have people move way to close for comfort. Aisles were filled with people, and hard to navigate. Often times I would just stand in the main Aisle, while my wife grabbed things. Unfortunately that meant I moved slowly, to not run into people and to keep distance, and stopped a lot. This meant I was prime prey for the food samplers.

I know a lot of people love the food samples at supermarkets. And I do periodically, but not often. I have texture issues with food, smell issues with food, and tast issues with food. So it is rare that I find a sample I am willing to try. On top of that, in a crowded market, all my senses are in overdrive. So for an employee to tap me on the shoulder to offer food, or to push a random thing on a stick or a cup of odd liquid into my face as I am trying to maneuver away from people can be extremely frustrating.

We had an employee rush up to my cart, and put 2 packs of shrimp right in my cart so she could take a picture. No asking, just boom there she was with things pushed into my cart. She then removed them from the cart after the photo, but it was startling.

Clear Headed issues.

Luckily, my wife was happy to lead the way through sections and Checked that I was ok multiple times. She could see it on my face. But in crowds like that, another issue that happens, is I cannot think straight.

Normally If I am shopping, I can look at products, check the expiration date, or the price and spend a bit of time deciding which one I need. If I am overstimulated, I will often grab the first thing that matches my needs. We need bacon? Great, there it is, done, I can rush out of this section. Is it our brand? is it the right amount? is it a good price? I don’t know, but I escaped that crowd for now.

Cost of groceries can be as much as 50% higher than normal because of this.

Arm space.

One of the reason My wife and I enjoy Walmart and other wester style shops, is not just number of customers. I like to have space to move around. If the aisles are too narrow, I don’t feel comfortable going down them. Even if there is no other person in the aisle, I feel like a bull in a pottery shop. I know if I turn, or look around, I will knock something off the shelf. So I have to shuffle sideways into the aisle, or head directly through.

This is especially hard since I am usually carrying a backpack that has our shopping bags and other essentials in it. (Motion sickness things for my family, tissues, etc.)

Smells

I mentioned earlier that I am glad that Walmart doesn’t spray their perfumes and things into the air. There are, however many shops that burn incense, and spray perfumes or fresheners into the air. These smells often give me headaches, but the stronger ones will actually cause my eyes to burn. A few times I had to avoid people who were wearing a lot of scents while shopping. (And sometimes at work) because I just cannot breathe, or see, and need headache meds.

Solutions vs reality.

Some of my difficulties have possible solutions, but they are not always practical.

Headphones: For my sound sensitivity, I could wear my headphones. They block out a lot of the sound. If I was alone, I would do this. But I was raised with the following “etiquette” It is rude to wear headphones when out with people. If I am with my family, or friends, it is rude to wear headphones. They need to communicate with me too, and it is difficult to do that with headphones on.

Weekday Shopping: For my spacial awareness, i could shop with my wife after school. So there will be less people. There are days I may have the energy to do this. But typically after school I have been needed to help my daughter with her homework. I also need my down time to process the day or i will not be able to fall asleep at night.

Wife Shop during weekdays: Some people have suggested that My wife shop during weekdays on her own. I am not the only one in my family with developmental difficulties. My wife suffers from extreme anxiety when she has to go out or do things on her own. She needs a comfort person with her just to leave the house. She has not found someone outside the family yet that she is that comfortable with.

Shopping List: I have several apps on my phone that keep me organized. 1 is a shopping list app. I can and often do use it to keep trak of the things I have to buy. this can include product names, and values. Yes, I may have to stand in the crowd to ge the right stuff, but having it easily visible, helps remove some processing power from me, and I can focus on staying safe.

Health Apps: Another solution I have been known to use is my Health App’s Breathing excercise. I can stand away from people and focus on the breathing, either by closing my eyes, or by focusing on the expanding and contracting bubble in the app.

The problem with moving.

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As I think forward to the concept of moving again, I reflect upon the difficulties this will present. I also think about the difficulties it has presented in the past.

My wife and I do not enjoy moving, in fact we detest it. Even if our living arrangement is not ideal, the idea of packing everything to move is more frightful. We would rather repair, and disinfect a place ourselves than to move out of an unhealthy situation. We have done exactly that in the past.

While living in ChaoYang, I had some serious difficulty with a coworker at that time. We had a mold issue near the living-room window, the apartment only had 2 bedrooms and a large living room. When we moved in there was a broken kitchen counter, and the gas range fan was caked with an inch of grease.

We repaired the counter using my tools, fixed the toilet flush. And spent nearly a whole day scrubbing the grease off the kitchen exhaust fan.

We had our routines that we loved though. There was a wet market around the corner that we could get almost anything we needed. They had seamstresses for clothing repair. There was fruit and vegetables and fresh meat on the first floor. They sold basic furniture, electronics, blankets, curtains, and everything you needed for a home. They had a pet store, and seafood. There was gardening equipment, and home-repair tools. A whole floor of stationary and decorations for festivals. We loved going there all the time.

There was a supermarket across the street. That building had food booths, and restaurants. every Canadian Thanksgiving we used to go to a certain restaurant we called “The Red Restaurant” because of the sign. They had a Tailor, and pharmacies there. We knew exactly where everything was. Unfortunately the supermarket itself shrank twice while we were there. It began as a 2 floor market, then it shrank to just the first floor. Then our last year there, it shrank to half the first floor. Piano schools, dance schools, and science academies moved in upstairs.

There were two malls that were a short walk away, and we enjoyed walking there as a family. These malls, had movie theaters, and cat-cafe’s. You could sit with your drink and pet a cat. There was a lot of things to do there, including eating, board games, VR games, a couple large playgrounds for the kids and more.

Just around the corner was a great street food culture in the evenings. If we didn’t feel like cooking, we could just walk down the street and buy a large variety of food. All of these little food carts would appear in the early evening, and some of the foods were amazing, and cheap.

After moving to the ShunYi area, we have gone to visit the malls and the wet market in ChaoYang a couple of times. But we have tried to build new routines here. It has been hard, however. ShunYi, while more spread out and suburban, has less things like home repair and tools shops. It took us a while to find good green grocers, and there isn’t a large mall nearby. Instead there is a cosmopolitan shopping plaza.

This area is more expensive than ChaoYang, and it took us a while to get used to it. There is a lot more variety in restaurants and coffee shops. The plaza has more things for the children as well. They can buy birdseed and feed pigeons at “Pigeon Plaza”. There is an outside playground surrounded by a permanent farmer’s market. The plaza has 2 trains for families to ride around on.

Unfortunately some of the difficulties in our routines that arose is change. For the first couple of years we would find a coffee shop, grocery store or restaurant we liked, and it would disappear, or get down-sized and moved. For example there was a great restaurant / cafe next to a fountain plaza. They had an amazing bakery, and excellent fried chicken. after we had been patrons for about 7 months, (Bare minimum to make it a routine), it closed and moved practically next door. Now it is 1/4 the size, has no bakery, and no restaurant. They sell coffee, ice-cream, and sandwiches now.

Our second favorite cafe did the same a few months after that, and moved to the far side of the plaza, a good 20 minutes walk through the compound.

Now My wife and I consistently go to a cafe attached to a book store. It has survived.

But now, we have given notice to our school that we plan to move after this school year. My son has graduated, and we wish to get out of Beijing. While this is exciting, it has already begun to cause fear in my family. We don’t know where we are going yet. We don’t know what type of place it will be. We don’t know how long we will be needing to get acclimate to the new area.

My wife and I are both quite nervous about this, and I we still have 6 months left at this house and school. We have both lost sleep over this, but we made a promise to ourselves that we would leave Beijing.

I feel that even if we stayed, our family dynamic is changing as my son will be a legal adult. And this in itself is a very scary point for us. While he plans to have a gap year to focus on language learning, things are different.

Can we get him a visa to stay with us next year? Can we find a language school for him? Will he have to move out to another country? Is he ready to go out on his own? Have we taught him how to handle himself and his difficulties well enough? What support will he have if he’s out on his own?

If I’m still having trouble setting up and managing myself and my difficulties, how is he going to do?

And this all causes other issues. The more I worry about things, the more I get distracted, disorganized, and lost. I have been needing my personal space, and my huggables more often.

Most people don’t realize this, but it causes me to have more indigestion and heartburn. It also causes me to have more balance issues. (Both of these will be discusses in other articles.)

So as I look forward to the next school year, I need to sit down to put on my shoes more, and rely on my akla-seltzer tablets more. I also get lost in my classroom as I move from my desk at the back to the front of the room. I tend to head back to my desk 2 or 3 times now to get papers and material I prepared and forgot about. I need my alarms more to remind me when I have to finish class, or go get the children. And I need to sit down more when I am on duty watching the children outside.

At home I feel more sluggish in making decisions, and just want to find that next job so I have an idea of where we will be going to.

Wish me luck.

Understanding the Shopping Experience for Autism

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Shopping can be hard. It is hard when we break routine. Certain shopping centers terrify me, others are just uncomfortable enough that I avoid them. Below are things I like and dislike about shopping.

Crowds

Large groups of people in small spaces suffocate me. I become highly aware of how much space is between myself and everyone else. While my wife is able to walk freely between people to grab things, I end up navigating around busy aisles to that I have enough personal space. I end up getting cut off by people running in front of me, which gives me a min-panic attack, and I end up backing up away from people to make space.

There is a shopping center nearby that is 100% below ground, and has tiny aisles so that they can fit everything in. Just the thought of going there is exhausting.

Sound

Often due to the crowds, the noise in these places is pretty intense. I cannot discuss with my wife what we need, or where she is heading off to. I hear a wall of sound, and it is overwhelming. To combat this we use a shopping list app that I can focus on. I just do my best to follow my wife and look at the list.

Many shopping centers have music playing from different departments, the Electronics department will have shows playing, the food department has “Calming” music, the hawkers try to get your attention to buy things or introduce samples. The people talk very loud, the lights buzz, the shopping trolley wheels squeak. all of this gives me a massive headache, and makes it really hard to focus on things. What I need, do I need this extra thing not on my list? I don’t know because I cannot think.

Samples

I like my space. I like being left to do my shopping. So when a lady, or gentleman comes over to offer me samples, that I was moving away from, they invade my space I was trying to keep. Or when there is a sampling that involves cooking, there is invariably a line up for the samples, that block off entire sections of the store. I now have to move back, and reanalyze the lay out of the store to find a safe way to get to where I need to go.

On top of these, if I am shopping with my children, often a sample-provider will walk right up to the kids and give them a sample, no asking permission. I mean what if the child (Who doesn’t speak the language) was allergic to their food? they didn’t check, they just gave, and sometimes I have to bat the food away, or intercept it, and then I look like the bad guy…

I understand that providing samples is an essential part of the business, and I appreciate that. But really…

Re-Arranging or Products, or replacing products.

There are certain products that my wife and I have been buying for years, and when they disappear it is frustrating. Both of us are very particular about the brands and products we buy. Brand C is not a replacement for Brand A. I’m sorry, no. It looks different, it costs different, it tastes different. No.

Its bad enough when a product is moved for a special, and you now have to run around the whole store into aisles you never go into for various reasons, just to find it. But when a Brand or product stops being available all together, and often with no warning. We often go without our favorite dishes when this happens. It may take 2 or three months before we try again. There are dishes that we used to eat all the time, but we have not made in 5 years now because of this issue.

People

Not the same as crowds. If I have had a good experience with the people who work at a place I will shop there, if not I wont. I had an experience at a shop nearby that keeps me from buying food there ever again. One of the meat counter employees asked me for my personal contact information so that he could practice his English. This action caused him to get into a fist fight with another employee.

I have not returned to that meat department in 2 years.

My Favorite Places to Shop

There are two places I enjoy shopping. The reasons are simple, and maybe you can spot them.

Place one is a small shop. think local green grocer. They have a lot of produce and a limited supply of meat. The people are polite, the aisle are narrow, but are organized in a very logical way, so i can easily get to what I need. Products don’t move out of their area. If it is not there, they are out of stock, I can try next time. There is very soft music, but since there are not a lot of people inside at a time, due to it’s narrow aisles, it is quiet.

Place two is a large warehouse style store, but only for food. It has a lot of space in the aisles. There is a lot of variety. Rarely do things move. It is underground, but it doesn’t feel claustrophobic because the aisles are wide enough. The employees don’t approach you, you approach them for help, and they are very nice about this. It is very bright and clean looking, and the entire atmosphere is relaxing.

Around the corner from place two is one of my favorite coffee shops, which is connected to a book store, so it is a nice quiet place to relax.

But of course the best way to shop, for me is online delivery. I don’t need to leave my home, and 95% of the time I get exactly what I ask for.

All of these factors lead to an exhausting experience that unfortunately must be repeated if I wish to survive.