Kindergarten

Derek started Kindergarten this year in a special class. It’s the middle ground between the life skills classroom and general education. The class is made up of autistic children from Kindergarten to third grade and there is one adult for every two children, the material and class time is highly structured, and everybody knows how to deal with and reach children with communication disorders like this.

Reports have been good. The teacher’s mostly write “Nice dayJ” in the communication log. He doesn’t have much to say about school once he gets home, but he responds well when I tell him it’s time to get dressed for school and comes home tired every day. So I think he enjoys it.

Last night was back to school night. I started the night feeling a bit creeped out being in a school and with lots of upscale parents, continued to feel rather out of place as the school foundation talked about their fundraising projects, like flipping a house in the neighborhood and holding a $50/ticket auction, but the presentation from the teacher was good and she said that working in a school like this has been really great. The teachers in general are supported well. There’s a music teacher, a PE teacher, and a librarian all on staff, which is unusual in any public school these days, apparently, let alone the cash-strapped Portland Public Schools.

(And just that afternoon I was bitching to a friend about how my librarian duties have a lower priority than my janitorial duties on a daily basis and how that makes me cranky about my job. So I know the teachers there are happier in their jobs than I am in mine. But that’s another story.)

The special ed classrooms are integrated into the school and the children there are the school’s children, not just special ed’s kids. They get exactly the same curriculum as the general ed classrooms, not ten year old hand-me-downs. This is fantastic because the idea of these classrooms is that the children in them need behavior and communication accommodations, there is no need for them to be behind their peers academically or have ancient books. They can step right into the general ed classrooms, they’re in the same place in the same books. One of my biggest concerns placing Derek in this classroom was that he wouldn’t get much contact with typical children, like he did in his preschool, that he’d be shut away, separate from the rest of school. I’m still a little worried, but hopeful overall. I was also glad that the classroom has toys and colorful bulletin boards and art hanging from the ceiling. It’s not dreary and bleak.

I also learned that Derek has picked out a few kids in the class that he favors. He wants to sit by them in circle time and pokes them to get their attention. This is good news! Last year in preschool he didn’t seem to have much preference or desire for playmates. I’d ask about who to invite for a playdate or over for a birthday and his teacher would have a hard time coming up with anybody.

And it’s for free! (Well, except for the fundraising and selling and donating and auctioning and appealing and flipping the neighborhood house.)

Baby's First Pun

Derek’s had a bit of an obsession with lights and light bulbs lately. He keeps moving the light bulbs to different sockets around the house, so we’ll find the refrigerator light bulb in the hanging lamp downstairs, or he’ll insist we put the burned out bulbs back in the sockets in the basement. He’ll turn the lamps sideways to get at the bulbs and carry them around the house. And since we are trying to save the world one three-dollar energy efficient tiny twisted florescent tube bulb at a time, Allen and I get a little cranky when we find broken ones stuffed in odd corners.

So Allen and I were nearly comatose Saturday while Derek’s jumping around being silly. He gets one sock from his sock pile – just one, he makes a note of – and then starts jumping around on our bed and messing with the lamp. And then it comes onto me all at once – sock, socket!

Me: “No socks in the socket! Are you crazy?!”

Derek: [Manic giggle] “No socks in the socket!”

[Hilarity ensues]

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.