Sometimes we're happy

Sometimes we're sad. Sometimes we don't wear pants. Sometimes we're bored to tears and want to stick our heads in the oven. Yay summer!

I know I haven't blogged in forever. Oy. Sorry about that. So here's some brief updates:

Sucky things:

I had big plans for the summer: new health insurance that would get us access to new therapists who would teach me things about how to set up a home therapy program, make realistic, challenging, meaningful goals and then achieve them. Then I ran into an insurance catch-22 and couldn't go through with those plans.

Over the summer Derek seems to have regressed a bit. He's better off than he was this time last year, but not doing some of the things that he was doing in June. I think the change from the familiar routine to practically no structure or routine has him a little disoriented. I was chatting with another mom who has two typical kids experiencing the same disorientation and crankiness, so it's not just Derek, but it has impacted his social and verbal skill gains. Bleh.

Playground pushing. More of it and harder. He pushed a toddler down some concrete steps the other day. And today pushed an older kid over so hard he knocked the wind out of her.

Good things:

Derek is interested in playing catch. We've been tossing a ball and balloons back and forth for several turns, much more than previously!

I've been going to therapy on my own, which has been really helpful, shockingly enough to me. It's useful for me to sit back and look at my own patterns of behavior and the reasons behind them. Then I can remedy the situation.

I've also investigated some support groups of other parents dealing with autistic children in the area, and it looks like that will be a positive experience.

I've been working on Derek's pronoun confusion and it's starting to show. He thinks one of my names is "me" and one of his names is "you". So if he says "Fire on me!" he means that I'm the one on fire, not himself. If he says "It's mine!" he means it's for me, not himself. See how this can get a bit confusing? And it's worse to explain it or correct him. It turns into a "Who's on first?" routine. So the speech therapist and I concocted a strategy to try to show him what he means. When he says "Fire on me!", even though he makes a gesture to throw the fire on me I act like the fire is on him. When he says "Come get me!" and tries to chase me, I act like he asked me to chase him. See? And I've noticed him using the correct pronoun more often, even in interactions where it's just him and me.

The car is fixed.