A hundred moments in autism - Bathtime for the cuddly toys

It’s bathtime for the cuddly toys. Ingredients: bucket of soapy water, a toothbrush, a sponge, an anteater (Anthony), a stoat (Stoaty), a leopard (Keenan) and a deckchair. 

I scrub each of the toys in turn with the toothbrush, rinse them with a sponge, then place them on a deckchair in the back-garden-sun to dry out.   

Many adult autists  turn to objects such as stuffed animals for comfort and to regulate our emotions, particularly anxiety. Stuffed animals often provide a sense of security and sensory regulation, which helps many autistic adults feel grounded. Stuffed animals can fulfill this role particularly well since they can be held, cuddled, and some stuffed animals are even weighted, which provides autistic individuals with a sense of calm. 

After the great washday, Mrs Oblong’s autistic friend ‘R’ asked me to wash half a dozen cuddly toy dinosaurs for them.  There is consequently a pink stain on the deckchair from drying the pink brontosaurus.  

My childhood cuddly toys were burnt in a fire when I was eleven, at an age when I was ‘too old for soft toys’, so I never replaced them.   As a child I frequently found myself culturally lagging the other children, I ran enthusiastically into to class to talk about the weekend’s TV, only to find that the programmes I’d watched were ‘childish’. Everyone else had moved on.  I had learnt to cover up my childish enjoyments and pretend I was more grown up than I was.  Which is why, when my cuddly toys were all burned, I felt no desire to buy new cuddly toys. I would only get teased about them.  

Then, at university, I found a new level of confidence. Several of my friends still had cuddly toy or toys with them. Okay, they were all women, but still.  I would sit on the bed with the first Mrs Oblong’s cuddly toy cat (Rover) on my lap. Then Bertrand Russel arrived (I don’t mean that the long-dead philosopher walked in on us, I mean of course Bertrand Russel badger, my first cuddly toy of adulthood).  

My wife (autist/ADHD) and myself now have a whole host of cuddly toys.  It’s not so much that I like to cuddle them, they’re more a reassuring presence and a statement that I'm willing to stand out as difference.  I even have a cuddly toy at work now, Sir Reginald, the office boar.

When my wife goes away for a few days she usually ‘leaves the stoat in charge’.  The newly cleaned and dried stoat, that is.