It's the country life for us

This weekend we visited Allen's relatives living just outside of Bend. Each year on this weekend they have a large family reunion/cook out. I made pie and people loved it. Allen made Derek take a nap and I loved it. The dog ran around like a maniac and we all loved it.

The property out there is a sort of a compound. There's a central single-wide mobile home and several additional trailers, greenhouses, and mysterious buildings. (Tornado shelters?) We slept in one of the RVs. I was mostly grateful that it was horizontal and free, but Derek adored the accomodations. He'd wake up in the morning and chatter on and on about the trailer - the curtain, his bed, the dog's spot, a sink, the light with no light bulb, the mirror, the windows, the doors, the local puppy coming to visit and going in and out and in and out and in and out, oh, oh!! There is not a snooty bone in my kid's body.

Yay for Speech Therapy

I was in a bit of a funk over several things, over a lot of the summer, and was getting a real good funk on when our speech therapists transition from temporary to permanent employee or some such ended and we had our first appointment with her in ages. It brought me out of the funk a bit and helped me re-focus on Derek and get over myself a bit. I saw her be successful interacting with Derek and that gave me some hope that I can also be successful interacting with Derek and not have most of my day consist of yelling "Derek! Bebe!" across the room progressively louder and louder and getting no response whatsoever. I can chase him around the yard with a frog puppet. I can hide toys so he has to ask for them. I can bring a new set of toys in so he can transition from his tired old theme that has me about to stick a fork in my eye to a new and exciting play theme. I have a strategy to respond to him mentioning for the 3,465,987th time that the neighbors cut down their giant tree. (The strategy is to respond like he's sharing a memory - remember that time the neighbor's cut down their tree and it radically changed the shade in and view from and into our yard? Yeah, I do. And it makes me annoyed.)

In other news, my computer is breaking. Today I found the blue screen of death when I came down in the morning. So I'm backing up a lot. Also on our list of new electronic equipment is a digital camera and a printer. They're broken, too.

This weekend we'll be going to my husband's step father's biological father's new wife's family reunion in Bend. Also know as the chase-Derek-in-the-high-desert 10k relay.

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.

Don't make me pull this grocery cart over . . . .

You know what I've about had it up to here with?

Compulsive behavior.

The other night Derek had a complete meltdown in the middle of the grocery store because we couldn't go on checkout 7. And in one of my less proud parenting moments, I nearly joined him. For chrissake, what do you do in that situation? Stand there and unload the groceries at the closed checkstand? Ask a clerk to open it? Leave the groceries? Leave some money on the checkstand to cover it and walk out? Leave him at home to set the house on fire and go grocery shopping by myself? Yell at him to suck it up and go through the checkstand that's open and give anybody who wants to think about criticizing me the death stare? That last one will get the job done, but cleaning up the bodies, and the ensuing indictments and prosecution, is a little messy. Perhaps there is a solution that avoids the rigidity all together?

Other compulsions, so y'all know what I'm dealing with here:

Only wants to ride certain numbered buses at certain times.

Refuses certain types of transportations sometimes, but not others. (For instance, usually okay with the bike, but not always)

Won't go down some aisles in the store.

Refuses to ride yellow or blue line trains. Will only ride the red line.

Will not walk down the street when a light up ahead is green, only when the light is red. Actually getting better about this, but it's still a very slow process to get down a busy street. Downtown Portland is nearly impossible.

Sliding doors. He must be the one who controls them, so we have to wait for them to close completely before we can go, at busy times, that's five minutes or more.

Insists that stove dials be turned to a certain number (not always the number I want) until I yell at him that it's not his job and he runs away crying.

Must control what number of minutes the microwave is set for. Often too much or too little.

How do I convince him it DOESN'T MATTER which checkout we go through, just that we go through one? It DOESN'T MATTER which bus we take, only that we get to speech therapy on time? That the number on the stove dial or the microwave dial DEPENDS on what we're cooking, not on his whim? And how can I get my groceries delivered for free so I don't have to put up with this crap?

(That's lipstick in the picture, by the way)

Autism Tai Chi

In the movie Twin Warriors, Jet Li's character, Junbao discovers the principles of Tai Chi. He tries to push a ball into a barrel of water, but the harder he pushes, the more the ball resists, flying higher and higher into the air. He tries to knock down a punching bag with a weighted bottom. Again, the harder he hits, the more momentum comes back at him, opposing the force and intention that he originally wanted. He discovers that by leveraging the force an object already has, he can be a more effective fighter for less effort.

Today I made a connection with this principle of tai chi and dealing with autistic symptoms with this principle in mind. We had a family outing to Lowe's today to pick up a few things. Derek wanted to go through checkout number 10, but it wasn't open. He was leaning out of the cart and grabbing the racks to resist that checkout aisle. We could have fussed and yelled and forced him to go through the checkout he didn't want to and dealt with an epic meltdown. But instead Allen made a game out of Derek's resistance, rocking back as Derek pushed away, then rocking forward again, back and forth, back and forth. Derek actually started to think this game was kinda fun. But he still didn't want to go through checkout eleven. So we put our things on the counter and I pushed the cart through checkout ten, coming around to pick up the stuff at checkout eleven. That little bit of accommodation and "indulgence" saved us from a lot of misery.

The same principle applies to dealing with self-stimulatory behaviors. For Derek this is stuff like humming, pushing buttons, and flicking light switches. I've learned, slowly but well, that these things satisfy a need for him, not a want, and can't be forced into submission. They need to be recognized and worked through, not against. I try to make them into an opportunity for connection and social interaction. For instance, when he's humming, I hum along with him and then change something about it—hum higher or lower, faster or slower, change the tune, add words, put his hand on my lips to feel the vibration, etc. When he flicks light switches I'll pretend to be scared of the dark, or try to scare him with a playful "Boo!" when he switches on the light. And from there I try to move into an interaction, leveraging the "undesirable" behavior into desirable.

Patience, grasshopper.

A lovely moment between Derek and Iguana, when I finally stopped using the flash and got a picture in which Derek doesn't look quite so stoned.

One of Derek's favorite interactive games is the Iguana-Pig Feud. Iguana is usually going along minding his own business when Pig comes along and tries to eat Iguana's body parts. Hilarity ensues. Sometimes Iguana makes a compromise with Pig, offering a different body part instead of the one he would like. Iguana often runs away and Pig gives chase. Iguana's newest trick is to hide on top of Pig. That's a pretty fancy trick for somebody who has a hard time taking someone else's perspective. Sometimes Lizard gets into the act. (Lizard is the puppet in the set that is actually an iguana. Iguana is actually a gecko, I believe.) Lizard says "Lizard, Lizard" and also enjoys Iguana's tail and chases and Iguana sometimes hides from Lizard by hopping on Lizard's back. Iguana is also sometimes a transition object or cuddly guy. Once I thought we lost Iguana. We retraced our steps from our last walk, looked all over the house, and told the neighbors about our terrible loss in case they saw anything. A few days later the neighbors inquired about Iguana and I told them about how you can find anything on EBay and how Iguana may soon be miraculously found.

New keyboard, new conversation, new pictures, new sickness

Sorry about not writing more often. My keyboard was slowly breaking as the space bar and the w key gradually needed more and more pressure and bangs before they would work. This week it took four or five hard slams before I could get a space or a w, and you just don't realize how much you use those keys until you can't. Like straining your neck.

Here's me and Derek's best conversation yet:

Derek: (hands me a pretend something)
Me: What's this?
Derek: Ladybugs!
Me: (pretend to eat ladybugs)
Derek: No!
Me: Okay. (Dumped ladybugs in his juice)
Derek: Oh! Swimming!

I thought of two solutions for the hitting and pushing at preschool. The first was some cards with pictures of the rules drawn in my own fine artistic hand. No hitting! No pushing! His preschool teacher told the kid he'd been bugging on Friday that when Derek started hitting or pushing him, he could tell Derek to stop and then go get these cards. For the second, I realized that a more socially appropriate way to get the same sensory input for Derek is a high-five game. Gimme five! On the other side! Through the hole! Break the stick! Up high! Down low! Too slow, Joe! Break the pickle! Little tickle! So I suggested that the other kids can try to engage Derek in a game like that. (Anybody watch that Family Guy episode where Peter pretends to be retarded and gets an aide at home who offer high fives all the time?) The tactics actually worked really well on Monday. The teacher has a fire truck tent set up in one of the rooms as part of community helpers week, and Derek and this kid played together in the tent for about twenty minutes. I think this is another personal Guinness record for Derek.

The hitting and pushing in crowded situations is a different animal, I believe, after some insight from Jennifer. She saw Derek do some pushing at a charter school information night. She thought it looked like a "get away from me now, I'm overwhelmed" sort of push. It was a loud, noisy, small room with lots of children and twice as many adults. Music Together is also overwhelming to his senses. I used to be able to prep him with the brushing technique that the Occupational Therapist taught us, but he hasn't let me do it to him at all for several weeks.

Unfortunately, the Bebe is sick again. It was only two weeks ago that he recovered from his last fever and now he has another. While Derek's laid out on the couch, I'm cleaning and cooking like mad. It's the only chance I'll have to do it, and if I get sick I don't want to be wallowing in my own filth with no supplies for a week again. I'm also getting very familiar with all the kid's TV theme songs and they are stuck in my head and come out at weird moments at work. I tried to explain this one show, apparently one of Jim Henson's last hallucinations to a co-worker the other day. See, there's this psychedelic bus with a engine that sings during transitions and these Hoobs have come to Earth to find out all about life here. They have their own hoobety-doop sayings and whenever they see each other they say "Hooble-doop, hooble-doop, gooooooo Hooble-doops." It's groovy, baby. Allen and I are looking for an herbal supplement or something to strengthen Derek's immune system so we don't have to be subjected to so many theme songs anymore.