Eating Salad at the Table

One advantage of autism can be the lack of imitation. When I was a kid I wanted to be like my mom, so I decided that I did not like tomatoes. Years later as an adult I ate a fresh tomato and loved it. Think of all the delicious fresh garden tomatoes I missed out on for twenty years.

Neither Allen nor I like melon or raisins. If our kid were typical, we'd probably have a completely melon and raisin free house, missing out on all that iron my mom goes on and on about every time I say I don't like raisins. Our child would go places and be rude not eating other peoples melon and raisin fruit salads. But lucky for us, he cares naught for what we like and decides whether he likes or dislikes something all on his own and will eat raisins, melons and peas with abandon where ever they are served.

Since I introduced the idea to him, three years ago or more, Derek hasn't liked anything leafy - green salad, collard greens, beet greens, mustard greens, kale, creamed spinach. Barely a bite. This has resulted in a lot of brocolli and cauliflower consumption at our house outside of green bean and asparagus season. But suddenly this last weekend Derek got excited about salad.

I was going through the vegetable drawer and found some spinach. Derek wandered by and exclaimed "Salad!" He tore off a bite and ate a bit of raw spinach. Who is this? Who stole my child and replaced him with this changeling?

Yesterday we're in the produce section walking toward the wall of salad. "Salad!" he exclaims again and runs over to choose a bag. He even chooses one of the larger bags of your basic green salad mix. I'm still a bit suspicious, so I suggest he choose the smaller bag.

This is where the other part of the title comes in. For the last couple years, Derek hasn't liked to eat at a table. He'll eat while wandering or while watching TV or while playing, but hardly ever at the table and it's a losing battle to get him to sit at one. Last week after school, he ordering me around a pretend school day. He'd pretend to hand me a colored ticket and insist I go to that station. It occurs to me that I can hijack this system school has drilled into his head and make our kitchen table like a station at school. I made a little purple envelope and two purple tickets. Now I give him that ticket and say "Go to purple" and he will go sit at the table.

The potential flaw in the plan is not in the system, but in the person implementing the system. I've made countless resolutions to get Derek to sit at the table, to eat real meals, and so on. I'll get enthusiastic for a week and then slack off and things are back to the status quo. And the guilt and self-berating begins. However, I think I have a new perspective on this. For the last five years I've been pretty consistent about bedtime. I take him through almost the same routine almost every night. So if I can do that, I can establish and consistently take him through a dinnertime routine. School has established this ticket system for me, so I don't have to train him on that. It's good for both of us to sit down together for dinner, so it will reinforce itself soon, like bedtime does. And now I've got both of you gentle readers to remind me. Yay!

So yesterday I implemented the new system. He sat down to dinner. I served salad. He ate some. A flake of snow fell in hell.

Throwing

Derek's been using throwing lately as a way to express that he's upset with something, cleaning up especially, sometimes if the dog eats his food, or I don't understand him. It's not okay and we tell him so, but the behavior continues. I was looking into social stories the other day for Allen and his cousin, and it occured to me that this would be a good way to explain to Derek that it's okay to throw sometimes, playing catch and so forth, but not when you're angry. (Here's a link to the site, if you have no idea what a social story is)

So here is the draft of his story:

Derek Throws: The Pleasure and the Peril

Sometimes throwing is good and fun to do. Sometimes throwing is not okay.

Catch is a fun game. I like to play catch. I know that someone is ready to play catch when they are looking at me and have their arms out, ready to catch. Then it's best to throw the ball right to the person. Then they will throw the ball back and we are playing a fun game of catch!

Sometimes I have to put some garbage in the garbage can or some clothes in a laundry basket. It can be fun to throw the clothes or the garbage in their place. I might even practice making baskets by throwing beanbags into a basket.

It is not okay to throw things when I am angry, sad, or frustrated. I might break the thing I throw or hurt another person. Instead of throwing, I could cry, say "I'm mad!", hit the floor or a pillow with my hands, or take a break.

Throwing things can be lots of fun, if I do the kinds of throwing that are okay.


Ta-da! What do you think, y'all?

Hey guess what!

One of the contestants on America's Next Top Model has Aspergers! Off to bed early, Bebe, Mommy's ogt an addiction to feed.

Gender

I talked before about how we are working on getting Derek to use "me" and "you" properly. And we have seen improvements. Hooray! (Did I tell you about the weird sentences that this would produce? The strangest of all was "I use your penis.")

Our next challenge is getting him to use gendered third person pronouns properly. Right now it's pretty random. He, she, it, is all mixed up and rather arbitrary.

At the crux of using the right gender to refer to people is realizing what gender they are. And I don't think Derek really gets it. He's seen Allen and I naked and has noticed that Allen has a penis and I don't. The old school way to explain gender is the "boys have a penis and girls have a vagina." However, though that is how people tend to get put in gender categories, it's not how we know that people we meet on the street are girls or boys. It's all those secondary sex characteristics that people display. In this day and age they are such subtle cues, too. I'm having trouble figuring out what "rules" for gender to present to Derek. Girls wear skirts, but not all the time. Men have beards, but not all of them. Long or short hair gives you no clue these days. Girls just kinda look like girls and boys just kinda look like boys.

Perhaps we should go be Amish. Oh wait, no Homestar Runner.

Word Wall

This is the time when I wish I had a digital camera that worked.

Derek's teacher has a "Word Wall": a place where she posts words that the whole class knows how to read - two are added every week. (He's starting to read. Have I mentioned that this blows my mind?) Derek made his own "Word Wall" at home this weekend. It has the words "I", "am" "the" and "little." I is quite clear. Am is almost legible. But the other two are pretty much jibberish. Eh. It's fun that he's taking things home.

He's also very excited about lunch. He's playing at packing a lunch and reinacting the school routine at home. He sets his lunch out and puts his lunch box in a laundry basket. He'll pack a lunch for me and make me sit down too. He tells me to "Eat your sandwich." (Notice correct pronoun!)

Other things from school showing up at home: telling the dog to say the months of the year, pretending to hand me pennies and dimes and telling me how much they're worth, "Sit on chairs, not under tables," a new clean up song. Perhaps they sing "Allouette" at school because he's often humming the tune. He doesn't tell me directly, rather he'll reinact things or say seemingly random echolalic phrases and that's how I know something about what's happening. I need to be a bit of a detective. I'm not sure how he feels about the things he is reinacting at home. Are these things he enjoys or things that cause him anxiety?

At home, he's decided that The Blow's "Bonus Album" is his favorite CD and insists on having it playing whenever we drive somewhere. He's also displaying some new play scenarios, like his figures going to the Harley store. He's added motorcycles to his list of things he can/will draw. We stand the drawings up and there's your Harley store. He also loves going on motorcycle rides with Allen. A couple weeks ago they went to the park together on the motorcycle while I was working and when I came home Derek was very talkative and engaged.

That's all for now, but I got a list at home of blog topics, including a reaction to the book "George and Sam" and some thoughts about Derek's diagnosis on the year and a half aniversary.