Pinch Me
She was a tad late (about 15 minutes) and I started thinking, “It was today right?” I even turned tot he Elder and said, “[The Teacher] is coming here today right?”
“I can’t hear you.”
“You can’t hear me? or You don’t understand what I’m asking you?”
“I don’t understand.”
“Did [The Teacher] tell you that she is coming to your house today?”
“Yes.”
Pause, as doubt was sinking in at the lack of confidence in his response.
“Did [The Teacher] tell you that, or did I tell you that?”
He looks at the ceiling to think, “Oh, YOU tell me that.”
Great, so I still don’t have an answer…
I was getting a little irritated because The Hub came all the way home from work to participate in the meeting. But, alas, the doorbell rings and she has arrived. Yay.
It seemed a bit unorganized but it didn’t take me long to relax and just start asking her all sorts of advice. She is truly a gift from God and I fear the day that The Elder has to enter “Real School” with teachers who are less knowledgeable and less compassionate as The Teacher. She definitely means business when she teaches (and she didn’t hesitate to “bring the classroom into your home” so to speak and set him straight a couple of times). Though I still felt like my every move was being watched and judged, she didn’t lead on to me that she was doing that.
I think the part of the conversation that really just let me put my guard down and trust her was how much passion was in her voice as she was talking about “dedicating years to finding strategies to help her students” (all of whom are HFA). And how she has asked/begged the school board to have the kids for longer days (currently he is finished at 11am) and for 5 days a week (4 half-days is full time, which most of his classmates are not full time, meaning they only go 1, 2, or 3 half-days a week). She gave us tips for the holiday trip coming up and will be sending home a few articles on Monday to help us with that, and she even gave us some help with dealing with The Younger.
Is this too good to be true? Am I dreaming? Between his school situation and the dietary changes, I couldn’t be happier with our situation. I wish everyone had access to The Teacher. I want to spread my joy! So if anyone has questions about a behavior situation with your child, I’ll be glad to pose the question to her and get some answers. I’ll start…
Our Behavior Topic was regarding the meltdowns that end up with a naked Elder and a puddle of pee somewhere (not in the proper receptacle). Her advice was to follow the A,B,C pattern (A=antecedent, B=behavior, C=consequence) and try to stop it at the A. So this is what I did.
The A typically is a situation where he wants something and he wants it NOW.
The B is the taking off clothes and peeing on the floor
The C is making him responsible for the mess and having him clean it up.
“I want a muffin.”
“OK, you can have a muffin, but after you eat your lunch.”
Hopefully that will be the end.
But it wasn’t, so then as he was taking his clothes off I said, “You’ll need to have clothes on to eat your muffin.”
Of course he kept taking the clothes off and then began pointing his stuff to the floor.
“If you choose to pee on the floor, you will have to clean up the mess yourself.”
Sometimes this logic is enough to make him stop. But on this particular occasion he continued to point his stuff. Then I just picked him up and carried him to the bathroom and held him in front of the toilet (while he continued to rip his clothes off).
Once he was emptied and eliminated that threat, I let him calm down until I could reason with him again. We also discovered that the word “lunch” or “dinner” is a trigger for some odd reason, so The AP used the word “food” instead and that seemed to help.
It’s all trial and error huh?
Say Cheese
The Elder got his school pictures back yesterday and I must say they are absolutely adorable. It was worth the extra $6 we paid for the touch-up on his forehead. He has a slight scar there (not seen in the picture) and The Hub calls it his “Harry Potter” scar. Now we are working a scar on The Younger’s nose. The Fantasy of Trees photographers didn’t offer a touch up option.
I also got a picture of him on the bus. I had been meaning to do that for sometime for the scrapbook but kept forgetting but yesterday I grabbed my camera when I saw the bus pull up and was able to get these cutie shots. He was in a quasi-awake state when I boarded the bus. And though it doesn’t look like it, he was still quasi-asleep in the close-up picture by his bus number (he’s infatuated with his bus number).
My motivation to work is still low but I have been managing to get things accomplished that “absolutely have to be done.” The “have to be done” tasks have been postponed to the very last minute (or delegated) and the “nice to do” tasks don’t have a chance in hades of getting done anytime soon. The Executive Function is lacking severely these days. I’ve decided to take The Big Bro’s advice and going to cut to half a pill a day to see how that works. I’ve been taking one whole one every other day and that seems to have helped in the sleepy/snacky department. Of course time for all the fun stuff, like online Christmas Shopping, Pictures for the scrapbook and eating cookies and brownies with The Kiddos, have taken high priority. The Super Doc would be proud. The bank account not so much….
Tomorrow is another trip from The Elder’s teacher. I think I should prepare for her visit but really don’t know what to expect. Even though this is her second in-home visitation. I didn’t know what to expect then either. Has anyone had in-home visitations and might have some advice for me? I’d really like to get the most out of all of our services. Don’t assume I know anything. =o) She does strike me as the kind of teacher that truly understands him and wants the best for him. I’m eating that up now, as I know I’m not guaranteed that in the future just based on everyone’s experiences I’ve read about AND local stories too. But I don’t want to be naive and not ask for something that I should (and deserve to) ask for.
I feel like he has made a lot of progress. His speaking skills have greatly increased and he plays quite a bit with his brother. Just about a half hour ago we were pretending to go through a typical day….”Time for bed (pretended to sleep); morning time; time to eat breakfast (pretended to eat); time to get ready for school…etc” and even though it was a very Aspergian topic to be pretending, it was pretending. But I thought it was impressive when The Younger went to get “ice cream” from the “refrigerator” and came back to give it to The Elder who “spit” it out and said, “That’s Yucky! I want white-flavored ice cream.” That’s some pretty good pretending right there, though I can’t personally pretend that white-flavored ice cream could be all that great.
Yesterday morning he actually went to go brush his teeth by himself *shock* – He went running down the hall after we put his socks on and I thought that he went to find his shoes, but I went to chase after him to redirect him to the bathroom and he was already in there with (God knows how much) toothpaste and toothbrush in hand and scrubbing away. This morning it wasn’t as easy of a task, but once I got him in there he was fine. I wonder if my new “mellow” attitude has anything to do with this? I certainly have been able to muster up a lot more patience in the past week. Ho Hum. I’m wavering on whether or not this is a good thing….
On a different note, I was actually admiring The Younger as he was taking care of a baby doll (he waved to the UPS man with it in hand and you could see the guy snickering) and truly relaxing in the fact that he has natural empathy (he was shushing me because she was sleeping). You can tell it is his own intuition and probably has been a Great Teacher to the Elder for lessons in neurotypicalism.
Traveling to see family
I thought I would link to this post on Elissa’s site for reference and for those wanting to know the how, what, and why of aggression in an ASD child. Since we are traveling for the holidays to my parents’ home this year and will be seeing lots of family who haven’t seen the kids (at all or in a very long time and definitely not since The Elder’s diagnosis), I have been a little nervous about the trip. Entitled “How To Cope With Aggressive And Violent Behavior In Your Child With Aspergers,” it helped me categorize everything in order to explain it to someone else (and hopefully family will read this before we arrive!). Thanks, Elissa, for that post.
I think my biggest fear about the trip is the out of control feeling I get when he does something that we’ve worked on for months. We can make so much progress with him in a particular environment, but it only takes one unfamiliar trigger for it to come crashing back to square one. That’s when I feel like people are burning holes into my skin staring at me and I feel like my every move is being watched and scrutinized. It doesn’t matter how many times I’m told to let that roll off my back or that they aren’t really thinking that, it still feels that way. Maybe with the new prescription I won’t be too anxious about it all, but I don’t want to be aloof about it either. Ho Hum.
On a different note, I also found this video on Elissa’s site and fell in love with the excitement I felt watching it.
(I had to change the link because MySpaceTV changed the URL)
Jason McElwain autistic athlete
