Of all the things that we do have trouble with at home, the least stressful of them is bedtime.
I remember, as a child, putting up plenty of fights about bedtime – wanting to stay up later to watch TV, or to read, or to just do anything besides go to sleep, which was boring. (Those were the days.) And inevitably, I had ways to get around those problems, but in the end, my parents won. Continue reading
There’s a lot in the news lately about wandering with autistic kids. A few of the tweet feeds I follow (such as @NationalAutism) work very hard to raise awareness of this issue, since we’re talking about kids who don’t communicate very well and don’t seem to realize that what they’re doing is dangerous. Continue reading
The Monster loves the water.
I’ve heard this as a common refrain with a good number of parents of children with ASDs, that their kids love the water – I’m sure it’s something to do with the sensations that come from being surrounded by liquid. As it is, it’s one of his favorite things in the summer, being told that he can go play with water in some form, be it the inflatable pool in our backyard, the water table we have here, water tables at various museums or the large pool at the JCC. Continue reading
I mentioned a short while ago that I’ve been tempted to set the Monster up with an account on my Mac (see Boys and Their Toys). I decided yesterday that it was time for me to do it, and went about getting it put into place.
When I hear the phrase ‘support group’, for some reason, I always picture a circle of chairs in some conference room or social hall, name-tags with first names on them, and awkward introductions of the format, “Hi, I’m [so-and-so], and [yada-yada-yada].” Followed, of course, by “Hi, [so-and-so].”
Last night, for the first time, I went to a meeting of a support group for dads with children who have developmental disabilities. Continue reading
Like most children, the Monster probably watches just a wee bit too much television.
Both of us know that we shouldn’t let our kids watch as much television as they do. It is, though, an easy solution to the problem of a reward and a distraction when other things are going on – the television is always there, especially in the age of cable where favorite shows are little more than a click away with On Demand and 500 stations blaring constantly. Continue reading
We had always planned on having multiple children.
Neither my wife nor I are only children – she’s the middle child of three, I’m the eldest of four. Both of us had felt that having siblings had helped with our growth when we were little, and gave us someone to relate to as we’ve grown older. So it was a no-brainer, after the Monster was born, that we’d at some point have a second child, even if we were going to wait a bit between them. Continue reading
When dealing with your children – be it summer camp, recreational activities, or whathaveyou, it all comes down in the end to how you have to pay for whatever it is. The same goes for autism related medical expenses. Continue reading
I spent a good deal of the weekend on childcare duty by myself, so between the baby and the Monster, I had my hands full.
One thing I’ve noticed is that the Monster is getting over his fear of the toilet, which in itself is a step forward. Continue reading
There’s days where I’m not quite sure what’s going through the Monster’s head. As I’ve mentioned previously, he’s very good with literal use of language, with descriptive phrases about his environment or his immediate needs. The part where we get frustrated – one of the places where he needs a lot of improvement and where speech therapy can hopefully do some good sooner rather than later – is when it’s narrative.
Language has always been one of the stumbling blocks. When we were midway through his 2’s, we were having problems related to his using one-word phrases at most to describe moods and wants – it made it very hard to deal with him without his getting upset. What little sign language we could get through with him wasn’t having any effect of improving his communication. PIEs, as I mentioned, did a lot of good with twice-weekly speech therapy to get him to the point that he now uses canned phrases which he improvises on so he can express himself.
Since the end of his speech therapy in May, as predicted by his speech therapist (because getting alternative services in absence of ESY has been taking a while – we won’t, in fact, have them before he starts his special summer camp in two weeks), we’ve noticed regression in his verbal skills. I’m frequently getting phrases like, “Can I have small, please?” or “brown!” in lieu of something more meaningful. As far as I can figure, “Can I have small” is his asking for a small, normal-style cup of juice (as opposed to ‘juice box’, which is his straw cup or a literal juice box), and “brown” is “brownie”. The latter, we only figured out because my wife heard him asking for “cook” instead of “cookie”.
But none of this tells us what he does and doesn’t really recall. The Monster’s never had a good grasp on tense in his language – he tends to stick to the present active tense for when he’s interacting with his environment.
Saturday, though, I had to run some errands, and to give the wife a break (so she could rest and spend some solo time with the baby), I took the Monster with me. For the most part, errands went fine and he behaved, albeit with the bribe of allowing him to have a brownie if he behaved for the two stops I had to make. On our way back, I swung through a shopping plaza near our house to check in on Foursquare at the Starbucks because of their offer to donate $1 per check-in between the 1st and 10th to (RED) Rush to Zero. It was when we were leaving that shopping plaza that he started to act up.
Monster: That way!
Me: What way?
Monster: THAT WAY!! *pointing behind with both hands over his car seat*
And then it dawned on me. I’ve taken him to Starbucks there perhaps thrice in the last year for a treat – usually a brownie – when we’re out on boys’-time. He has enough recall of it to remember that a) he’d been promised a brownie, b) that Starbucks is in the plaza, and c) that Starbucks == brownie. We’ve had circumstances before where he’s shown awareness of historical patterns, but usually on ques – recognizing that he’s at school or home, leading us through the school to his classroom, telling us who he sees at school… but it was nice to see him having a more expanded awareness of where he was and what he expected to happen.
(And no, I didn’t buy him another brownie.)
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On a very positive note, while we were walking to the classroom this morning when I dropped him off for pre-school, another of his classmates came up to him to say hello. Rather than ignoring the little boy, he actually turned, made decent eye contact, and said hello back. It’s progress.