Instead of releasing Calder from the doorstep, I've taken to sending him to the bus stop. Well, not exactly. I let him climb the overhead bridge himself and watch him from the opposite bus stop. This is to discourage him from going to the lifts instead of waiting patiently at the bus stop. (We saw from his visual tracker that he'd missed a few buses before while he was "visiting" the lifts.) In case he gets lost (and I need to use his picture to ask people if they've seen him), I take a quick picture of him in his current dressing.
When I did that 2 days ago. I didn't realize that he was without his bus card again (2nd time this happens since he started travelling to work independently). So I was surprised to see him giving up the bus that had stopped in front of him, and crossing the bridge over to my side. Ah, then I noticed what's missing, and followed him home to retrieve his bus card. I must have interrupted his preparation routine somehow to have distracted him from putting on his lanyard. On my side, it's so easy to forget things these days. (Today I forgot to share his WhatsApp location with his job coach.) So I decided to use a checklist, which includes steps like checking for train disruption on
https://www.sgtrains.com/guide-status .
On Monday night, I noticed that instead of coming straight home, he allowed the train to bring him to Punggol Coast and back to Hougang. So I took the hard copy MRT map that I got from the control station, and used an erasable pen to trace his correct journey. Told him he's not supposed to go one round. When he was typing his journal, I also got him to insert the sentence "I must alight after Kovan station".
The other thing that might have helped was the reassurance that he can remove his watch after sending me his selfie upon reaching St Andrew's. I'm assuming the watch reminds him that he should be heading for St Andrew's Autism Centre.
In this way, he has been travelling smoothly to and from work, for the past 3 days. Thank Lord!
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