Jacob's Journey

how 'bout an update?

2010-08-19T11:00:00.002-05:00

I thought it might be nice if I posted a yearly update here on this blog, for anyone who is not bothering to read about us over at my active blog, Along The Crooked Path. That way I actually physically look at this blog once a year, and anyone who is just interested in the Autism Remediation stuff can get a yearly glimpse into what Autism post-remediation looks like, at least for one family.

Jacob will turn 10 in October of this year, and it's been almost a year since his Autism diagnosis was officially dropped. Of course, that doesn't mean there aren't still things that we work on, or that he doesn't still have challenges, so it's nice to have a place to think about that stuff and put it down in writing. And it's nice to get to showcase his strengths and achievements!

The biggest change in Jacob's life over the past year has been his involvement with dance. I allowed him to watch So You Think You Can Dance last fall (during their season 6) as I found the show very enjoyable and thought he might like it, too, since he'd expressed an interest in dance at a very young age (about 4), before I felt he was old enough to decide he wanted to do it. Well, he absolutely fell in love and insisted that I sign him up for dance classes right away. Right after the winter holidays, he participated in a try-it dance class at a local children's museum, and afterwards the teachers begged me to get him started in classes.

So I brought him to a local dance school and turned him over to the folks there. They got him started in Ballet and Jazz/Hip-Hop and Musical Theater. And I watched as the child who usually cooperatively got in the back of the line to wait his turn in every other situation turned into a take-charge, self-assured child who always volunteered to go first and readily asked questions about dance theory and methods. Despite only having danced for 3 months, he was given a solo part in the spring recital and performed the role of The Big Bad Wolf in the Sleeping Beauty ballet, opposite a girl who had been dancing for 6 years.

This summer he participated in 2 weeks of all-day dance camp, easily keeping up with students several years older and vastly more experienced, and took a short 5-week class in Modern, from which he was promoted to the next level for the fall, and received an invitation to audition with a Modern dance company. This fall he'll start dancing ballet at a school specializing in that, as well as continuing Jazz and starting Tap with his former instructor.

For a child that continues to have problems expressing himself verbally, he certainly has no problem expressing himself through dance, and he's already started dabbling a bit in choreography. And he gave me my very first dance lesson, and I couldn't believe how good a lesson he pulled together for me. His dance teachers are very excited about him, and I'm so happy we chose homeschooling for him so that we can easily arrange his schooling schedule around his dance schedule.

He also auditioned for his first Musical this summer and landed the leading role of Oliver Twist in the musical Oliver! He loved every minute of the rehearsals and performance, but afterwards decided to put acting on hold for awhile so he can concentrate on dance this year.

The homeschooling is going very well. We'll be starting 3rd grade with him this year, which means he's only a year behind where he would have been if we'd kept him moving at the pace for his age. And that extra time has allowed him to become very solid in his areas of difficulties, including comprehension, language arts skills and creative writing. This past year he began writing in cursive and working on story summaries. His drawing skills are really wonderful. He's very advanced with science, his understanding and abilities somewhere in the high school range, so I'm not doing a thing to purposely work on that, I just allow him a lot of access to science museums and written materials to keep him happy. He also has an aptitude for math, but I'm keeping him more on pace with his grade level so that I can make sure he's getting a solid base that is related to real-life situations with that.

Socially, he gets together with other homeschoolers almost daily, taking classes, participating in co-ops, or going on field trips. He gets along great with everyone, although he's yet to develop a close personal friendship with anyone other than his brother. Other than dancing and science, his interests include singing, building with various sets and materials designed for that sort of thing, spending time in nature, and reading anything he can get his hands on (although I limit his fiction reading to those books designed for kids of his emotional developmental level).

In this photos he's doing one of his chores, using one of our Collies to move the sheep to another pasture. In addition to doing farm chores for us, he also works for a neighbor taking care of his chicken flock.

We started back with OT (Occupational Therapy) this summer after taking a couple of years off to work on our own at home. He has lingering issues with trying to put his thoughts into words, and struggles with constructing verbal sentences. We all agreed that it isn't a speech issue, but more of an Autistic brain issue, and we're hoping that working on some Sensory Integration stuff, along with the Therapeutic Listening program, will help cause a bit of reorganization of those brain patterns that are holding him back. Besides his food issues, this is really the only recognizably lingering remnant of his Autism. Otherwise he's living a very full, social life.

In starting back with OT, I was surprised with how many challenges the therapists are finding with him. Little things, that I'm either just not recognizing at home, or that I've just gotten so used to as "him" that I haven't given it any real thought. I'm happy to have outside folks looking at what he's doing and giving me feedback. It's the only drawback I've found with homeschooling -- since I'm not comparing him in an ongoing basis with his peers, I don't necessarily pick up on things he's doing (or, more to the point, not doing) that are not typical. I'd be getting that sort of feedback from teachers if he was in the school system. But all things considered, he's much better off at home, and it's easy enough for me to pay for someone to give me that type of feedback.

Food is still an issue. He still eats about 4 basic meals and a handful of snack type items and that's it. He'll try pretty much anything I put in front of him, but it has yet to translate into new foods in his repertoire. The OT is going to start some work with him on that at some point, but I'm not holding out much hope. Fact of the matter is, he eats a pretty well-balanced diet and gets everything he needs to stay happy and active. And that's the most important thing. At some point (or so I assume) he'll take more of an interest in what he's eating and will make changes if he feels it is appropriate. In the meantime, it's just not worth spending my time worrying about too excessively.

And I think that pretty much catches us up with what's been happening around here the past year! Thanks to everyone who reads here and continues to give me feedback -- it blows me away that people are still finding this blog pertinent despite the fact that I've not really posted anything of any substance here in 3 years!

update

2009-09-18T10:19:00.002-05:00

I'm not even sure anyone is reading here anymore, but wanted to update anyone that happens to stumble across this blog that Jacob's Autism Diagnosis was officially removed by his Developmental Pediatrician yesterday. You can read about the details on my current blog, Along the Crooked Path.

For the rest of our journey, just start reading below! :)

moving on

2007-07-13T20:38:00.000-05:00

It has come to my attention that the amazing "firsts" and incredible progress stories have turned into a regular thing for us lately. Small bits of development has become the norm, things that we used to consider amazing developmental leaps are now just ordinary daily occurances.

Jacob's taking swimming lessons. I didn't tell the instructor (or anyone when I signed him up) that he has Autism or any special needs at all. It's been one full week into a four week set of classes, and the instructor hasn't said a word to me about him. Just the same smile and hello that every other parent gets, the same wave across the beach to acknowledge I'm there waiting for him at the end of class. I've stopped expecting her to accompany him across the sands to chat with me about concerns or ask for strategies. It's obviously just not going to happen. So I signed him up for a couple of museum classes, with no intention of saying anything to them either.

He's become mobile in the water, comfortable now to lie across his boogie board and paddle. Today he fell off and into the water completely, head and all. He came up panicked, then realized he was intact and smiled and said "That was easy!" got back on and paddled off.

He's trying at least one new food a week. He doesn't like most of them, but he's giving me the benefit of the doubt now when I say that he might like something. He's tolerating peanutbutter sitting next to him.

We went underwear shopping today because he's outgrown the size we started fiddling around with, and, well, he needs underwear. Because he's potty trained. 100% no accidents, not even at night, in 20 days. Probably longer. We have a 50-day sticker chart set up, but as soon as his reward (the coveted Jaba The Hut Sail Barge lego set) comes in, we'll fill that chart with the rest of the stars, hand out the prize, and be done with sticker charts and potty training schemes. We're out of pullups and we don't care. We've even gone so far as to discontinue the Glycolax he's been on for the past couple of years. He just doesn't seem to need it anymore.

Today I walked into a hairdresser with my kids, and BOTH of them had their hair washed by her, and then cut by her. Jacob had his hair washed. At the hairdresser's. And then she offered to cut his hair. And he said YES. And let her do it. And I stood by in shock and amazement and awe and numbness. There were no tears (well not from him! I was a little misty), there was no trauma, there was no resistance. There was just this really cute kid getting his hair cut, chatting with the hairdresser, flinching a bit at the "hard parts" (like around his ear), but patting himself on the back for getting through it.

I think we're there. I mean, I don't think he's "recovered" (whatever that means). But I think we're back on the proper developmental path. He hasn't "caught up" to his same-aged peers, and there's plenty of development left to happen, but I think we can start letting it happen on it's own, in a natural manner. No more video tapes and constant monitoring and checking off objectives. Let's just give the boy a chance and see what he can do on his own.

I take this step with the full confidence of knowing that we're supported by a really great curriculum. The Enki Education homeschooling plan fits our needs perfectly -- a nourishing, sensory-rich curriculum with an empahsis on comprehension and natural child development. It's a curriculum that promotes letting kids "mess around" with just being a kid, which is exactly what he needs. He's had too many of his years unable to do that, now that he can, I want to give him the time and the space to explore that. I don't want to rush him through something that I strongly feel is so important.

So, with our consultant's approval, we're putting RDI to rest for the coming school year. Next summer, I'll pick up the phone and give her a call. We can take a look at the objectives, figure out where he's at, see where he's come on his own, determine if he needs any help to progress with what's left. If the answer is yes, then we'll pick up again and focus for awhile longer on guiding his development step-by-step, nudging him back onto that natural developmental trail that we've now blazed for him. If the answer is no, that he's obviously moving along on his own at a natural rate, we'll close the book entirely and continue onward.

And I'm moving on myself, to only blogging over at Along The Crooked Path. I'm leaving this blog intact, as a resource if anyone should need it, and as a scrapbook of how far we've come. But I'm done posting here. If you want to see what we're up to, you know where to find us.

I want to thank each and every one of you who has ever read this blog, left a comment, or sent a word of encouragement. I wish the very best for all of you on your own journeys, and hope that sunshine lights the path ahead of you.

We may be done with this leg of our adventure, but really, our journey has just begun.

"I love it!"

2007-07-02T08:40:00.000-05:00

Words that are music to my ears! Jacob tried a new kind of ice cream treat from the ice cream truck at the lake, and declared victory. A red letter day for us!

Some day I'm going to look back on posts like this and laugh that I was so excited about him agreeing to eat junk food...but for now I'll take what little victories I can and slowly build the memories of trying and liking new foods.

sensory updates

2007-06-27T19:16:00.000-05:00

This is one of those feel-good, look-how-far-we've-come sort of posts. I LOVE those types of posts! And I'm thrilled when I can write one.

Two years ago, Jacob would only stand on the shore of the lake and would not even set a toe in the water -- he would allow us to carry him in and hold him (while he clung tightly to us), but the sensation of wet sand/earth beneath his feet was too overwhelming for him. Last year he would reluctantly creep into the water on his own, but only if the bank surface was adequately sandy and firm enough. This year, he's bounding into the water regardless of the surface, and is actually spending time making muddy puddles to stomp around in with his bare feet.

Last year Jacob made sand castles by carefully shoveling sand into a bucket of water (making sure not to splash, running in terror if it did accidentally splash), gently turning over the bucket, and stepping back as he removed the bucket from the pile of sand. This year, he digs and scoops the sand into the bucket with his hands, splashing and slopping it as he goes, then delights in jumping into the middle of his sand creation after removing the bucket. Note the sand all over his feet -- last year he would have immediately come in search of a towel to wipe it off. Now he doesn't even notice.

Last year Jacob would not turn upside down -- the inverted position was too uncomfortable and frightening for him. Just look at our little monkey now! Not only will he happily hang upside down, but will do flips as well.

As for our SOS feeding program, he is now able to tolerate a variety of foods in close proximity to his plate. We have even started playing around with putting some of the less offensive foods ON his plate. Slow but steady progress!

And, in the biggest news to date, here he is trying a new food! This icecream pop captured his attention because it was shaped like spiderman. He had a lot of difficulty bringing himself to take that lick (although it dripped on his hands several times and he was able to calmly wipe it off). And unfortunately, he truly did not like the taste once he did try it. But he DID try it! I've decided we're going to play the "icecream of the day" game at the beach this summer -- when the icecream truck comes, we'll buy a different type of treat each day and give it a try. Maybe we'll find something he'll like. More likely, I'll put on a couple extra pounds eating rejected icecream....

the next big thing

2007-06-20T19:20:00.000-05:00

Following a pattern that he has right along, Jacob's scripting (quoting lines from movies, books, and conversations he hears) tends to increase steadily as he's working on a major developmental gain. He reaches a point where we think we're going to all scream "enough already!", but then suddenly we see something completely new from him that we've never seen before, and the scripting drops off again.

Jacob's scripting has been through the roof the last several weeks, getting worse as each day progressed. In fact, it got so bad, that he started exhibiting other classically Autistic behaviors along with it -- throwing his body repeatedly (perseveratively) into things, hand flapping, spinning. We figured he was either on the verge of something truly spectacular, or we were going to need to start RDI from ground zero again.

Tonight was the magical night where we finally saw what his brain's been working on this entire time.

We've been doing some spring (ok, so it's a little late....) cleaning around the house, and we moved the boys' dollhouse into a different room tonight. Of course, that sparked an immediate interest in it (funny how that always happens) and the boys, especially Jacob, started playing with it. He got things set up the way he wanted them (which is usually where the play ends unless Zoo Boy jumps in and gets a storyline going). The next thing I knew, I could hear a running conversation between the dolls -- but it was only Jacob's voice. I stopped what I was doing as I heard "Hi Hunter, hi Charlotte! I come to visit you from the time machine thing."
I shot a quick look over a The Map Man, who had also frozen in place. I said "Did he just....?" and didn't need to finish, The Map Man knew exactly what I was thinking and said "That would be incredible!"

What we were so astounded at was not only the storyline, being obviously invented and powered by Jacob, but also the use of the NAMES. Was it possible that, for the first time ever, Jacob actually spontaneously NAMED something? After years of trying to coerce him into coming up with names for pets, toys, dolls, creations, artwork, musical pieces, had he finally gotten to that point in his development that he had a desire to create his own labels/names for things?

I couldn't control myself. I scurried down the hall, grabbing my camera as I went. I tried to act casual. I watched the storyline play out a bit -- kids playing in their clubhouse, interacting with their grandfather. As casually as I could, I said to Zoo Boy, "I wonder what their names are..." Jacob immediately interupted his play to introduce me to his "friends". He said, and I quote:

"I named this boy Hunter, and this boy I named Fred. I named this girl Dorothy. And this girl over here I named Charlotte."

I took a couple photos then slipped out of the room as casually as I slipped in to rejoin the Map Man. He asked "Is that from...?" I shook my head. "No, so far as I can tell, that's entirely HIS."

We stood in silent wonder for awhile. In the background the dolls' conversation continued:

"Oh, hi there kids!"
"Hi Grandpa!"
"What are you kids doing?"
"Nothing."

Child development is a mystifying and powerful thing.

report on our latest RDA

2007-06-05T20:00:00.000-05:00

We've spent the better part of the past week or so driving back and forth across the state to meet with our RDI Program Certified Consultant so that she could perform an RDA (Relationship Development Assessment) on Jacob. It was time to get an "official" view on where we're at with RDI, especially in terms of the new stages/objectives, and to make sure there aren't any holes that need patching.

We did, in fact, find a "hole", back in Stage 2. Which, although that might sound a little depressing given that we were starting to look at Stage 6, was actually good news -- it explained some of the subtle differences we were seeing in several stages worth of objectives that he'd pretty much mastered, but just weren't quite where they needed to ideally be. The Stage 2 objective we're missing has to do with him caring about what I think of his ideas. This is something that will stand in his way of being able to truly collaborate -- without caring about what his partner on a project thinks about his idea, there is no motivation for him to negotiate with his partner to come to a mutually agreeable conclusion.

In Jacob's case, this presented itself as him being too willing to just adopt whatever the partner (whether it be me or our consultant) suggested, even if it meant abandoning his idea altogether. The effect percolates up through many of the objectives above this stage, and certainly will prevent him from developing proper collaboration skills. So, obviously, it needs to be worked on prior to anything else.

Our consultant also assigned us a couple of other objectives (stage 5) that are in need of work, and are convenient to work on at the same time as the Stage 2 objective above. They also build on laying the groundwork for collaboration. In addition, there are a couple of Stage 4 objectives that we're going to keep in mind to make sure that filling in that Stage 2 hole will result in firming up of those objectives as well.

Since I'm desiring a couple months to slow down and actually have a break, we're just going to focus on activities that target these objectives through the summer months, and I'll put off learning about new objectives until the fall. By the time he masters what we're now working on, he should be ready to start working in a dyad (with an equally matched partner), which will add a whole new dimension to our RDI program. And with the new RDI Operating System coming on board at some point this summer, I'll have enough things to learn at the technical end of things to keep me busy for a bit.

So, in short, Jacob's made remarkable progress since our last RDA (when I was fretting over the fact that he couldn't even make the simplest of choices -- wow, but we've come a long way!). But he's still got Autism, even if nobody outside of an RDA session could identify it as such. And so our work continues.

SOS success -- s'mores

2007-06-03T18:09:00.000-05:00

I really wasn't sure how this would go over, but Zoo Boy badly wanted to participate in the s'mores making activity that was being held during a family parks day event we went to this weekend. So I went ahead and popped a marshmallow on a stick for Jacob too and handed it to him, guided him over to the fire, and got him toasting it.

After tending carefully for his marshmallow, Jacob let the woman running the activity pop it between two chocolate-covered graham crackers. Imagine my surprise when he readily took the oozy, sticky treat from me!

Then he completely exceeded my expectations by actually TASTING it. And guess what? He LIKED it!!!! (Well, duh, he loves marshmallow peeps, but I didn't even need to tell him that it tasted like those to get him to take a nibble.) He ate quite a bit of the marshmallow from around the outside before the sensation of holding all that goo become too much for him and he started frantically looking for a place to ditch it and some running water to wash his hands. (I found a place for him to ditch it -- MY mouth! It was YUMMY!) We talked a lot about that the rest of the day, how cool it was to try something NEW and how he LIKED it, and now we can have campfires this summer and make s'mores. We talked about REAL s'mores, and how they are made from marshmallows (which he just found out he likes), hershey's bars (a long-standing favorite of his), and graham crackers (also a "Jacob-approved" food). And he expressed excitement about future opportunities to make s'mores. (And I'm pretty excited about it too! :-)

In another SOS success this week, he willingly touched an icecream sandwich to see how cold it was. I commented at the time that it was made up of things he likes -- sugar cookies, m&ms, and vanilla icecream. I'll have to buy the same icecream sandwich again this week and remind him of the s'mores, also made up of three things he likes. Maybe we can even get a nibble out of him!

By the way, in case you're wondering, Zoo Boy did NOT try the s'mores. Or the icecream sandwich, although he did hold the icecream sandwich for a brief time and at least considered taking a bite.

thanks!

2007-05-30T10:21:00.000-05:00

Thanks you guys! Honestly, I wasn't fishing for comments when I posted that last post, but I appreciate those of you who wrote in (and I totally understand about those of you who read but DON'T comment -- I don't typically comment on anyone's blog either). In fact, you guys managed to push my all-time high number of comments above the number I got on that sticker chart post that bothered me, so I guess I can put that little irksome feeling to rest.

Speaking of the sticker charts, I've continued to do them. Since the first chart, Jacob's not had any poop accidents -- not sure if I have the charts to thank for that, or just natural development. We've still got occassional pee accidents first thing in the morning (just not making it to the toilet in time after waking up), often enough that I don't dare let him sleep without the pull-up on, which also is probably related to development and will come along in time. I DO want to keep him motivated to TRY to make it there first thing in the morning (as soon as I'm hearing him in the morning, I remind him to go to the bathroom -- sometimes he makes it, sometimes not), so I'm going to stay with the sticker charts for now, but we're switching the criteria a bit to eliminate rewards for poop (he seems to have that mastered now) and just awarding stickers for a dry pull-up in the morning. I'm also planning on giving him surprise "bonus" stickers if/when he requests to use the potty on his own while we're out and about -- he still needs to be prompted to go, and we did have one accident this past weekend while hiking (he had to finish one hike back to the car bottomless, as his pull-up leaked and soaked his pants). And I'm on the verge of eliminating the day-time pull-up again.

So anyway, we're getting there. The fact that he's not in school certainly makes this more manageable and takes the outside pressure to get him trained out of the equation, which is very good for my sanity and is bound to be good for our potty training program in general.

And that's enough potty talk for today! :-)

pondering

2007-05-28T15:46:00.000-05:00

Here's a photo of Jacob on the trails this weekend. You can read more about our adventures this weekend over at my other blog by clicking here or here.

I was reading yet another comment on my post from a few weeks ago about using sticker charts for potty training. I can't believe I'm still getting comments on that one entry. In fact, it's the entry that's generated the most comments from any of my blogging history (which is only about a year long, so I supposed not THAT long). And it got me thinking about the whole blogging and commenting thing.

I don't get a lot of comments compared to other blogs that I've peeked in on. I think that has a lot to do with what I'm writing about, and the way it's presented. I'm not here spilling my guts or asking opinions. I don't provide any thought-provoking fodder, and I don't try to open discussions on controversial topics. I'm not trying to get anyone to think deeper about issues, or probe their hearts and souls for their own inner truths. In fact, I'd be really surprised if my entries promoted more than an "oh, that's interesting" or "maybe I'll try that" type of response. Bascially I'm just writing about what we're doing about remediating Autism for our particular son -- not making suggestions about what other should do (though I'm thrilled when people tell me I've given them ideas for their own RDI programs), not stimulating discussions, not trying to be particularly entertaining. I don't think it's a place that anyone who's not specifically interested in Jacob (as in, some of our relatives) or in RDI is going to bother to read.

So what was it about that sticker chart post that made so many people respond? I'm not talking about overwhelming numbers, by the way -- you've got to understand that most of my posts get NO feedback -- I'm sure there are people reading, as I'm told all the time by other RDIing familes and consultants that they read my blog -- these folks just don't have the time to respond! They're too busy with their own remediation programs or helping other families. Heck, I totally GET that -- there's only a couple other blogs I read with any regularity, and another one or two I drop in on occassionally, and that's it -- I just don't have time for any more than that. If I read my blog (well, you know what I mean), I wouldn't leave comments either.

But, regardless, of the one (if that) responses I've gotten on my other posts, the sticker chart post generated 6 comments. That's a large number for my blog. Are people searching around for potty training or sticker chart posts specifically? Is there something particularly stirring about that post? (I'm joking -- believe me, there's not!) Or is it that potty training posts rally the troops, since so many of us parents of ASD kids are fighting the bathroom battle?

In any case, I have to say that it bugs me a little bit. Of all the things I've written about over the last year, that is one of the things I'm least proud of. Not the post itself (which reads pretty much like any other post of mine), but reverting to using a sticker chart. I think a lot of the stuff I've tried with Jacob has been highly successful and potentially helpful for other families to read. The sticker chart, tho, is something I'm somewhat ashamed of. To the point that I considered removing the post from the blog. But in the spirit of sharing both the good and the bad (I do try to keep the ugly private, however!), I decided to leave it. But of all the things I've done to work on remediating Jacob's autism, this was the least RDI-ish, and the most behaviorally modifying and manipulative thing I've tried. And the least beneficial to Autism remediation. Oh, yeah, he's using the potty more. (More than he would be without the sticker chart? Maybe.) So I've sort of achieved the goal I wanted to with it (well, it would be nicer if he made it there ALL the time, but all in due time I'm sure). But has it worked even one fraction of an iota to remediate his Autism? Absolutely not.

So I guess I just wanted to officially say that those sorts of things -- the things we do to manage our way through life -- the gimicks -- are not the things we should be taking note of. It's the subtler, more meaningful changes that should be recognized and commented on.

And that's about as deeply insightful as I get.

more on SOS

2007-05-25T07:15:00.000-05:00

Due to popular demand (well, OK, so one person asked!), I wanted to give an update on our SOS progress. By the end of last week we'd had our first success with the kids touching and sniffing the extra foods we were putting out at mealtime.

This week we continued to increase the variety of foods, and I also had the idea of occassionally providing foods that they actually LIKE already on the extra plates. I figured that might build positive memories of taking stuff off the extra plates to try. So one day a plate of cookies appeared at dinner time (in addition to veggies, chicken, etc). I know, I know, there's nothing healthy about cookies, but trust me, ANY variety in their diet at this point would be a good one, we'd HAPPILY take increasing even their junk food acceptance! We put out two kinds of cookies they don't like and one kind that I knew that they had eaten in the past but don't get regularly. Jacob's eyes immediately brightened up when we announced "cookies -- sugar, chocolate chip, and oatmeal raisin". (As we place the "new" foods on the table, we announce what they are -- sometimes this produces some conversation about them, which I figure is a good thing too -- ANY interest in food is a good thing!) Jacob eyed the plate and said, thoughtfully, "When I finish my supper, I'm going to eat that sugar cookie." I said "that's what it's there for!". He mentioned the cookie several more times, then ate it with great relish after he finished his meal. This was the first time that either kid has actually eat something off the extra plates, so we were pretty excited. So excited that a few days later, we repeated the same experiement. That time, Jacob took the cookie, but only nibbled at it and didn't really eat it. Oh well, it's the idea that counts.

Yesterday one of the items on the plates was a piece of raisin bread. This is something that the kids have both loved in the past, but have since stopped eating (Zoo Boy more recently than Jacob, I don't think Jacob's touched anything with a raisin in it in about 3 years). When I put the plate down, I didn't even have time to announce what was on it, Zoo Boy immediately said "Oh, I like those!" After they'd finished eating, though, the cinnamon bread was still there. Clearing the table, I asked the kids "is it Ok if I eat these apple slices?" (That's another thing I do, I point out WHAT I'm eating off the extra plates, to show that these are real foods that get eaten, they're not just there for torture value . And I ask their permission to eat it, to emphasize that these are THEIR foods, they've got the first option of whether or not to eat them before I hone in and hog it all.) Zoo Boy looked up from what he was doing and said "yes", but then jumped up and ran to the table and said "Oh, I forgot to eat this!", and picked up the piece of raisin bread and ate it. I turned to Jacob and said "would you like some apple?" and he said "well, yes, I want an apple, but I don't like it peeled" (he meant cut up). So I offered him a whole apple and he munched on it for awhile (he already eats apples, so that's nothing new in itself, but the fact that he related to me that the "horrifying" apple slices on the table are the same thing as the apples he does like in a different form is a bit of progress, I think).

So overall good progress. We had a few less attractive issues -- at one point, in placing something with peanut butter on it down, Jacob scurried away from the table crying. I asked him what was wrong and he told me he wanted to get as far away from that as possible because he didn't like it. I asked him what he didn't like about it, and he said the taste. I pondered out loud the fact that he couldn't know that since he's never tasted it, and then wondered if perhaps he meant he didn't like the smell. He agreed with that, so I took the plate and moved it further away from him. He relaxed a bit and sat back down at his place, although he didn't eat much more of his meal after that and kept eyeing that plate suspiciously. Peanut butter really DOES have a strong smell, so I'm going to back off of that for awhile and get some other successes under our belts first before I ask him to sit next to something so strongly insulting to his senses. It seems like most of our negative moments with SOS have been when there is peanut butter on the table, and historically he's had problems when there's peanut butter or other strong smelling foods around. So hopefully eliminating that for now will help build some more positive memories of what we're doing before we try challenging him that much again.

SOS update

2007-05-18T18:34:00.001-05:00

It's been exactly one week since I began the SOS feeding program, and I figured it was time for an update. Two days ago, I figured the update would read something like this (based on this photo from that day): Jacob is absolutely horrified by new foods, we're never going to get beyond this desensitization phase, I may as well just buy stock in Froot Loops and McDonalds as that's all he's going to eat for the rest of his life. I mean, just LOOK at that body posture. Three times that morning, he tried sneaking away from the table with his beloved Froot Loops to get away from all that "nasty" food sitting near him. (Apple slices, strawberries, and raisin bread -- highly offensive foods all -- NOT!)

But we've come a long way in just a couple of days. Look at what happened at breakfast this morning! While discussing the fact that I thought both kids might like cinnamon bread (without implying they should actually TRY it), Zoo Boy voluntarily suggested that he could touch the cinnamon bread. I scrambled for my camera and captured this bold attempt.

Then, half jokingly, I suggested that Jacob could SNIFF the cinnamon bread. Well, darned if he didn't do it! Took me completely by surprise, so much so that I wasn't prepared to take a photo. However, he graciously agreed to repeat the performance for the camera.

So, go figure! Maybe this thing is doable after all! Ok ok, so touching and sniffing, it's not exactly TASTING, but just the fact that they are not screaming when I put the new food down is progress. In fact, Jacob was giggling with each new plate I produced, like the thought of all this novel food was actually funny. We'll get there, one micro-step at a time.

SOS feeding program

2007-05-12T21:34:00.000-05:00

We did it! We launched our offensive on the food issue. We're armed and ready for battle!

For those of you who don't want to go read about Jacob's food issues in detail, I'll give you a quick summary here. Jacob finds food extremely aversive. For many years, he couldn't even be in the same room with food (other than the dozen plus things he'll eat). This all has to do with his Sensory Processing Disorder (and a little bit with his Autism, but I think we can blame the vast majority of this issue on SID). His extremely limited diet and severe food aversion was reason enough for his Sensory Integration Therapist to want to make a feeding program a top priority. At the time (more than a year ago), I just didn't have the energy to invest in undertaking yet another thing. Jacob's diet was balanced, despite being quite limited, and I felt that this could wait.

Of course, as a result of his brother's poor eating habits, Zoo Boy has developed a pretty limited food repertoir himself. Despite having his own sensory issues, Zoo Boy's eating habits seem to be mostly a learned behavior rather than a sensory issue in and of themselves. I'll use an example below to demonstrate what I mean. But in any case, both boys will be involved in the feeding program that we have just started using.

The program is called the SOS (Sequential Oral Sensory) approach, and a concise description of it (and why it would be used) can be found here. Basically, it takes the understanding that these kids' feeding problems are based on sensory issues, and works on slowly desensitizing them to the overwhelming effect that food has on their senses. In a nutshell, you start by getting them to tolerate being near food, then progress to getting them to touch it, smell it, and eventually taste it. From looking at it to taste is a pretty long road, taken at micro-steps, but in the end should result in a child without an eating disorder, and without any trauma induced by the method. I've long known that this would be our feeding program of choice, I've just been lacking in energy to undertake it. But given that I'm feeling comfortable at the moment with our RDI program, and that the food thing is our last battle to surmount, I decided that the time was ripe to get moving with it. My hope is that by fall, we'll actually be able to concentrate on homeschooling and leave the therapies in the dust of our memories.

So above is a photo of our very first SOS session. I served lunch -- cheese and crackers -- as usual. Then I brought over a plate with a few of the same crackers, but with peanut butter on them. And a bowl with a few baby carrots in it. And a bowl with a small handful of raisins in it. As I set the bowls between the kids, I explained that they do not have to try them, but that I was setting them there in case they wanted to. Both kids panicked upon seeing me set the food down. I reiterated that they did NOT have to try them. Zoo Boy immediately settled down, with a happy sigh, repeating happily "we don't have to try them". Jacob burst into tears and told me to take them away. I explained again, patiently, that he did not have to try them. He moved to the edge of his seat to get as far away from them as possible, and he kept throwing nervous glances at them, but he eventually settled down and started eating his food. (A year ago he would have ran screaming for his room and refused to eat the rest of the day, so I'm REALLY glad I waited to start this program until now, when he's actually ready to accept more difficult things!) Eventually he ate everything on his plate and asked for more, but quickly followed it up with "but not those!" pointing anxiously in the direction of the peanut butter and crackers. I just smiled and made him some more cheese and crackers. When both boys were done eating and had left the table (with the new items entirely untouched), I put the food on my plate and ate it without making mention of it again.

Step one. Of one million, maybe, but at least we've begun. We'll continue at this level, presenting a variety of foods at meal and snack times in close proximity to where they are seated, until they are no longer stressed about the extra foods. Then the next step will be to actually put them on the same plate with the foods they WILL eat. I don't anticipate getting beyond that step anytime soon!

update on everything else

2007-05-11T12:48:00.000-05:00

Also known as, "Where we're at now". Or maybe "So, what's left?"

(At left, Jacob checks on our baby Rhode Island Red chicks.)

I just posted about where we're at with the RDI program. Which is, to put it frankly, pretty far along. At least in my mind. Jacob is 6 1/2 years old and has all the social and developmental abilities of at least a typical 4 year old (with scattered skills to a much higher age, of course). Which is pretty darned good considering a typical 4 year old is a pretty socially savvy individual. And considering that at age 3, when he got his Autism diagnosis, he had social and developmental abilities ranging anywhere from a newborn (or less!) to an 18 month old (with scattered strengths well beyond that), and that didn't improve much in the 9 months that it took us to find out about and start using RDI. So, in a nutshell, he gained about 4 years worth of abilities in the past 2 1/2 years. Pretty cool! Rah rah for RDI! And Sensory Integration Therapy -- I don't want to underplay the role that SIT has played in getting us to the point where we are today.

So: what exactly does that all mean?

Well, very breifly, it means that in a group of typical 4 years old, the only way he'd be picked out as being any different is because he's much too large to be a 4 year old. Even in a group of 6 year olds he looks pretty good, but there are subtle difference in maturity and sophistication of skills that can be picked out if you look carefully enough. But you DO have look carefully to find them. And even so, nobody would ever for a minute suspect he has Autism. All, and I mean ALL of the core deficits of Autism are no longer discernable in Jacob. Poof! Gone! Just like that! Well, ok, not quite, more like, after 2 1/2 years of hard work, they've dissolved away like a pyramid of sugar cubes in the rain. But to me, in comparison to what I had come to expect/accept about Autism, it's been in the blink of an eye.

Is it a miracle? No, it's RDI. And determination. And commitment. And hard work. And a good dosage of luck -- we're lucky in that Jacob's Autism has always been pretty uncomplicated -- he apparently does not have food sensitivities or allergies, he does not have heavy metal poisonings, he did not have vaccine damage (having not been vaccinated until later in his childhood), he does not have speech or language issues beyond those directly caused by his Autism, he does not have physical disabilities. He did have some pretty severe Sensory Processing Disorder and motor planning problems, but not really beyond the scope of what you would "normally" expect with Autism. We were lucky to find a wonderful Occupational Therapist trained in Sensory Integration Therapy, so that took care of the Sensory problems, which in turn (along with RDI) has taken care of the motor planning problems. We were lucky to find RDI, and a wonderful RDI Certified Program Consultant, and an amazing internet support system where I developed some true, real-life friends. We were lucky to not have started any contrary therapies that had to be un-done when we finally started RDI. All in all, we were pretty much a textbook example of a family ready to embrace RDI fully, without reservation or second-guessing. If that's not luck, I don't know what is.

So, the real question on everyone's mind: where does that leave us now?

Well, for starters, we need to keep paying attention to those RDI objectives to make sure Jacob continues down a typical developmental path. He may or may not be able to do so on his own from this point forward -- that's yet to be determined. But I'll be diligently cheering from the sidelines and giving him a bump here and a check there to make sure he follows the right roads, ever ready to jump in and help him if he stalls out.

Next, I'll keep up with the Sensory Integration stuff too. He's very nearly to the point where he's processing the world at the same level as typical kids. VERY nearly. Not quite there. We'll keep on working to maintain the gains we've made, especially since his little brother, though by no means on the autism spectrum, is in need of SIT too. In fact, at this point, our focus is more on Zoo Boy with therapy than with Jacob.

We'll focus more and more on homeschooling goals and activities than on therapies in the coming months and years. Our RDI objectives will blend nicely into our Enki Education curriculum to support us on his educational path.

We'll keep on fighting the potty training battle. We're almost there. He's got the basic concepts and abilities, he's just got 6 1/2 years of habit to overcome. All in due time.

The "final frontier" for us to conquer is the food thing. We have a plan, and we're finally ready to deploy it. The plan is a program called the SOS (Sequential Oral Sensory) program (described here), and I'll be blogging about it and our initial attempts to get Jacob over his food phobia soon.

All in all, the future is a bright place, and we're skipping towards it down the yellow brick road!

RDI update

2007-05-11T11:47:00.000-05:00

Here's a photo of Jacob pretending to be....um, well, actually, I have no idea what he's pretending to be. It's something he came up with entirely on his own, from his own imagination, not from a video or movie or book or anything else recognizable. To be honest, I'm kind of enjoying the mystery!

In any case, I wanted to give everyone an update of where we're at with RDI and the new objectives. The past couple of months have been very trying on my patience, undertaking the tedious task of reading each and every objective in the first 5 stages of the new version of RDI, which they are calling RDI 5.0. These objectives are detailed and specific, and I've wanted to make sure I had a complete understanding of them before I put a check mark next to them, indicating that Jacob has mastered them. I want no holes left behind!

So last month I drove out to meet with our RDI Program Certified Consultant for a face-to-face meeting and chat about the objectives, and this week I set up a phone consultation with her. We have an RDA (Relationship Development Assessment -- the assessment tool used in RDI Program Planning) schedule for the end of this month, and we've been frantically (well, I've been somewhat frantic anyway, I don't think our consultant is all that flustered about it!) trying to determine where Jacob's "edge of competency" is. That edge is the place where we need to work on objectives, and is the place she'll want to be looking for and defining during our RDA.

I think we've finally found a resting place, though. During our phone consult this week, we determined a handful of Stage 5 (equivalent to typical development between 3 and 4 yrs of age) objectives to look at with Jacob over the next several weeks. Most of them he probably has mastered, but are things I've not thought to look at, so I'll test them out and see where we're at. We may or may not have one or two objectives that need a bit of work -- if so, we'll work on them.

So after we spoke, she went ahead and sent me the Stage 6 objectives to look at. The new objectives are grouped in "Foundation" (abilities/understandings they need to have coming into the stage, in order for any stage work to get accomplished), "Discovery" (new abilities/understandings that would naturally develop in a typical child at this age), and "Elaborations" (which are the continued development of abilities/understandings discovered during preivous stages).

I read through the Foundation objectives for Stage 6, and, after giving each a bit of thought, checked them all off.

Then I read through the Discovery objectives, and while I did check off about half of them, the other half I put question marks next to, which means that either I'm not sure if he has it (I need more clarification about the objective, or I haven't seen Jacob demonstrate it), or I'm sure he does NOT have it.

I didn't even bother reading any of the Elaborations. Reading the Discovery objectives was enough for me to realize that there is plenty for us to work on in this stage. This is the edge of his competence. Stage 6 is equivalent to the development of typical 4-5 year olds, which jives with my own observations and interpretations of Jacob's abilities.

I'm very much looking forward to our RDA to further define where he's at and what we'll be working on in the coming months!

sticker chart

2007-05-08T13:42:00.000-05:00

I feel a little like I've treaded over into the dark side. Me, a mom very opposed to behavioral modification unless absolutely neccessary, decided to use a reward-based system to try to further Jacob's potty training progress.

I guess I thought it was absolutely neccessary. I'm not so sure now. But I'm in the thick of it now, so onward we go. And as of today, I'm sort of even liking it.

My motivation for starting this method was because we seemed to have hit an impass in his potty training. He COULD get to the potty in the morning (and any other time of day) before peeing or pooping in his pullup/pants. He was CHOOSING not to if he was too tired, or busy with something more interesting. I very carefully studied the situation for a couple weeks before coming to the conclussion that it was a purposeful choice rather than just an accident (lack of control). He was pretty convincing that it was by choice, consistantly claiming "I was reading that book" or "I was resting".

First I appealed to his inner sense of competency, claiming things like "I know you know how to do this" to which he'd respond, cheerfully "ok, maybe tomorrow!". Hm. Strike one.

Next I tried food bribery. Candy in exchange for potty usage. Problem was, if he felt like candy, he'd use it. If not, why bother. Strike two.

I even went so far as to try to shame him (gasp!) into using the potty (like that in a million years would work, and I well understand why). What can I say, I was desperate. I refused to let him wear underwear, insisting he keep pullups on "like a baby" until he could prove to me that he could put all his pee and poop in the toilet. And Jacob refused to feel ashamed, cheerfully stating "ok, maybe tomorrow". Strike three.

So, in sheer desperation, I grasped onto the sticker chart straw while we were in Target shopping for a birthday gift for his cousin. He was standing in the Lego isle, oogling all the various lego sets. Having recently been rewarded with a lego set for the first time he ever pooped on the potty, the precedent had been set, and an idea sprang to mind. And as I often do, due to general enthusiasm and lack of a proper self-control mechanism, I blurted out, before I even knew what I was saying "Hey, Jacob, I've got an idea! How about if we set up a chart for you, and then every time you use the potty, you can earn a sticker, and when you have enough stickers, you can come back and pick out a lego set." Of course, he jumped all over that idea, eyeing an enormous Star Wars Jabba The Hut Transport Set with an outrageous price tag. I wondered what wheels I had just set carelessly into motion.

First of all, those lego sets are DANGED expensive. At least the ones he found appealing. I had been naively studying the smaller $10 sets. I hadn't looked as far as the bottom shelf with the large, involved, collector's edition sized sets.

Second, there are a million and one tiny pieces, and those pieces like to migrate all over my house and hide in unsuspecting places with the express intention of jabbing me in my barefoot in the middle of the night while I'm stumbling down the hall towards the bathroom.

Third, have I mentioned that I'm really quite opposed to behavioral modification methods? Sticker charts in particular? (True, I bribed Jacob with Marshmallow peeps for his intial potty training attempts, but somehow that seems like a more pure, quid pro quo sort of reward system. This sticker chart deal, it's pre-conceived and intimately planned. It's first degree bribery at it's finest.)

I backpedaled a bit, mumbling, "well, ok, we'll see" and rushed him out of the store.

Too late -- upon arriving home, Jacob promptly dribbled several drops into the toilet and said "so, how about that sticker chart?".

Time for damage control. I gave him two choices -- he could either earn a sticker for every time he used the potty, but he would need 100 stickers to earn a lego set, OR he could earn a sticker for every day he made it to the toilet before peeing in his diaper in the morning, and he would only need 10 stickers to earn a lego set. He chose door number 2.

The next morning, he ran for the toilet and earned himself a sticker.

The following morning, he was too late. He was pretty upset about not getting that sticker. Same thing the next day. And the next. I was starting to regret this whole sticker thing, thinking that maybe he wasn't really ready for that sort of control and I'd just misjudged the situation (although I could hear him talking to himself in his room for a good half hour before he actually got up to use the bathroom). It felt to me more like punishment than positive reinforcement, and that wasn't setting well with me at all. Worse that that, he was still pooping in his pullup during rest time in the afternoon, even though I assured him that he could leave his room to use the potty (his usual answer was "but I was reading a book"). He was discouraged, I was discouraged, we were both disgruntled.

So I decided to make it easier to earn a sticker -- I added on the fact that if he pooped on the potty, he could earn a sticker too (in addition to a quid pro quo marshmallow peep). And I started trying to listen for him in the morning so that as soon as I heard him, I could remind him to get up and use the potty. It didn't always work, he was sometimes still too late, but slowly he started earning stickers for his chart. Trying to take any undue pressure off, I stopped talking about the sticker chart other than to award him a sticker when it was appropriate.

We had a major breakthrough this week with the sticker thing. About the time he earned his 7th sticker, he suddenly took more of an interest in it. One reason is because I went out and bought a bunch of lego sets (realizing that if I let him into the store to choose, he was going to go right for an $100 set rather than a $10 set), and he caught sight of some of the possible choices, in particular a Spongebob set he REALLY wanted. I set out that set, along with a couple others, on the counter of the bathroom, and he spent a lot of time going in to read the backs of the boxes and talk about building the sets. He talked about how many more stickers he needed to earn before he got to pick a set. He got up two days in a row (yesterday and today) and RAN to the bathroom to pee in the toilet and wave his dry pullup in front of me and award himself a sticker.

This morning he earned his 10th sticker, and triumphantly paraded through the house with his new Spongebob lego set. He spent the morning building the Krusty Krab, alternating between serious construction and occassional time-outs to play with some of the characters with Zoo Boy. I took pictures of him holding the box and then playing with the set after he finished setting it up, and glued the pics to the sticker chart, then hung it in a prominant place in the bathroom. I replaced the Spongebob set with another set. Zoo Boy has requested that Jacob select a star wars set next time. (Happy fallout from all this is that Zoo Boy has FINALLY taken an interest in using the potty himself, something that had been totally lacking to this point, and is making rapid progress towards his own potty competence -- fortunately for me, he's all about the m&ms and instant gratification, so hasn't asked for a sticker chart of his own. Yet.)

evolution of an obsession

2007-04-28T17:56:00.000-05:00

You folks will all remember when I talked about Jacob's obsession with signs. He recently demonstrated to me how something that used to be a totally static perseveration with him has evolved into something quite different.

Originally, he would obsessively read street signs. Wouldn't matter if we were paying attention or not, our car rides were pretty much Jacob in the back seat yelling out street names and exit numbers, and the rest of us chatting.

Last summer, as his desire to experience share with us grew, his sign obsession evolved to include us. Rather insistantly, as in SHOUTING at us to make sure we were paying attention, and not giving up until we acknowledged what he was saying. A suggestion from an RDI Program Certified Consultant at the Annual RDI Parent's Conference made a big difference for us and helped us turn it into more of an experience sharing moment. (See that same link from above to the post that talks about that.)

Now we can see the latest evolution of the sign obsession. The other day we were shopping at a local bulk warehouse type store. As we were waiting in line at the checkout, Jacob suddenly told me "when I get home, I'm going to draw a picture". I wondered out loud (with Zoo Boy) what he might draw about, but Jacob just grinned and said "you'll see. It's a secret!" When we got home, he ran for the magnadoodle and got straight to work and drew the above picture. He then came running to find me and show me what he drew, telling a narrative as he made sure I observed all that was to see in the picture. It went something like this:

"See here?" (pointing at the picture in the upper left corner of the screen, at the same time checking in with me -- referencing -- to make sure I was really looking) "That's an alarm. And see this?" (pointing at the picture in the upper right corner, referencing me again) "That's a sign that means 'do not'." I interjected, "do not what?" He gave me his full attention for a moment and said, dramatically, "do not stand there!" I wondered aloud what might happen if someone stood there, and he said "There would be fire! See?" (attention turned back towards his drawing, referencing me at the same time to make sure I'm following the storyline) "there's fire there, and there's a person who opened the door! It's a boy, he's running away." He confirmed that he saw a sign that made him think about drawing this scenario at the store we were just at.
When he finished his story, he immediately erased the picture and drew a new one (pictured left). It reads "DO NOT BLOCK FIRE EXIT". I just assumed and said "oh, you must have seen that one at the store today, too". He scowled at me (silly Mommy!), and said "no, I saw this sign at a McDonald's play area" (we hadn't been to one in over a week). Oh, I said, waiting for what came next. He didn't dissappoint me:
Here's the third and final drawing of the sequence, which reads "Emergency Exit Only - Push To Open". I noticed his "do not" sign again, but he told me that this time it means "do not open the door". I wondered aloud what would happen if someone opened the door, and he said that the alarm would go off (pointing to his picture of the alarm and making some impressive whooping noises) and it would be an emergency. He then told me that "everyone would run all over the store for all of 15 whole minutes until the alarm stopped." (He runs around with arms waving over his head to demonstrate.) He assured me that this was NOT at the same store we were at today, but at another store entirely.

So let's see, what have we got. Experience sharing. Referencing. Flexibility. Creativity. Episodic Memory (one thought reminds him of another experience of his that he wants to share).

Obsession? I don't think so any more. Special Interest? Yeah, I think that's closer to it. Something he wants to -- needs to even -- share with me, in pictures, story, and dramatic reenactment.

I'm not so bothered by the sign talk anymore....

homeschooling this week (and every week hereafter)

2007-04-25T13:54:00.000-05:00

I just wanted to reiterate, in case anyone is wondering what happened to my weekly posts about homeschooling, that I'm now blogging about our homeschooling activities and other parts of our lives on my newer blog, Along The Crooked Path. I invite anyone who cares to have a peek into what we're doing from week to week to take a looksy over there.

I'll keep on posting stuff related to Autism and RDI here, so please keep checking in here occassionally too. But I do think, given my recent shift in focus with my kids, that the other blog will get updated much more frequently than this one will.

banjo boy

2007-04-17T13:23:00.000-05:00

This blog title brought to you courtesy of Ryan Shupe and the Rubberband -- that's the title of Jacob's favorite song by them, Banjo Boy. He's insiting that he IS the "banjo boy" and proved it by creating his own banjo out of zoobs and a plastic golf club (see left).

As I've mentioned elseswhere on this blog, I've been taking Jacob to music classes since, well, forever. I think we started with the Kindermusik program when he was about 8 months old, because I love music and I wanted it to be a part of his life too, and in my heart I just knew he was going to love it. When he started having massive sensory problems with being in the class (which was pretty much right off the bat), I chalked it up to fussiness and kept on taking him, even though it was an hour away and rarely did we make it through an entire class without having to leave due to incessant screaming. Many times we never even made it into the building. Half the time when we did make it in, we couldn't get him into the classroom. And then half the time we actually got him into the classroom, we had to leave as soon as the first transition occured (which he couldn't handle at all). Yet I still shelled out the $$$ (oh, to have that back to use in more constructive ways now!) for tuition, and attended as much of the classes that I could actually get in the door for.

Then we found out about Autism and Sensory Processing Disorder, and had an answer as to why Jacob couldn't handle music classes.

Soon thereafter I discovered a family music program that I liked much better than Kindermusik. It was Music Together, and several months before Jacob's official Autism diagnosis, we switched from Kindermusik to Music Together. It not only was a better fit for our family (because Zoo Boy could participate too, on his own 6 month old level), but also because Jacob never got upset while he was there, at least not to the point where we actually had to leave the building. The reason for the difference? I have NO idea, to this day. Honestly, I just think the "vibe" was better in that classroom. He instantly fell in love with the instructor (so did I, she totally rocks!) and the more laid back atmosphere. He wanted to go sit under a chair for the entire class? Cool! He wanted to hang onto the bells long after they were "supposed" to be put away? Why not! He wanted to sing out of turn? Awesome! He wanted to dance during lullabye time? Go for it!! The openly accepting attitude towards ANY display of musical interest was bolstering both for him and for me.

He's now in a newly-launched (just this past school year) "big kids" program for Music Together for 5-6 yr olds, which also includes parents. The kids are learning about music theory, tones, notes, scales, and all sorts of other things I have very little hope of ever comprehending, even though I follow along in class and try my best not to embarass my kid. But not a problem for Jacob -- he's soaking it all up like a sponge. He quizzes me daily on the material covered in class. I consistantly fail. He'll pick up song lyrics, sing the song, then convert it (properly) to the do-re-mi s and the do-da-de s and the hand motions and everything else his beloved instructor spits out in class. Then he'll play it on his xylophone. Then on his ocarina. Then on his steel drum. All of which he taught himself to play just from the instruction booklets that came with them.

For a lot of years, Jacob wouldn't let me sing. As it turns out, he probably was just being a good critic. His music teachers have long suspected that Jacob has perfect pitch, which means that my not-so-perfect pitch was probably greatly disturbing to him. I'm no slouch in the singing department, by the way, I did sing semi-professionally throughout highschool and college. But I'm no where near perfect, and I'm more than happy to admit it. He lets me sing now (thank goodness for RDI and his growing acceptance of less-than-perfection), but he won't sing melody WITH me -- he insists on singing harmony to my melody (which probably bothers his ear less than his perfect tone overlaying my imperfect one on the same line of music). And it's seemless -- he hears me sing a song even once, and he's got the harmony all prepared for the next verse. (Yet, if I ask him what song he's singing, he'll fluidly sing the melody line instead.) It's downright disturbing.

I spoke with his music teacher before class this past week. I was curious about how his musical educational development measured up to his peers, as it just seemed a little, well, astounding to me. She just shook her head at me, and told me that she's long known how musically abled he is. She said that she only knows of one other child his age with the same level of musical mastery (I resisted asking if it was a child on the spectrum....). She also said that there are several by-audition children's choruses in the area who would die for the opportunity to audition him, but she's been hesitant to say anything to me, not knowing how I would respond.

I stared blankly at her for a little while. Two overwhelming thoughts kept running through my mind.

The first was that Jacob is extremely compliant and willing to do just about anything I ask of him. If I asked him if he wanted to go down this road, he would enthusiastically agree and off we'd go on a possibly never-ending cycle of auditions, rehersals, performances. But it would be MY decison, not his. I don't think he's yet capable of making that sort of decision for himself -- if I gave him a choice of music, dance, baseball, soccer, karate, theater, basketball, gymnastics, he'd say yes to them all. And, from what I've seen, he's pretty good at them all. Same way he's good at reading, math, and other things that require memorization, persistance, and concentration -- the strengths of his Autism. I could probably pick any one of those things for him to perseverate on, and he would shine, come out at the top of the class, be considered some sort of prodigy. But it would be MY choice, not his. Do I have the right to ASSIGN his passion to him? How would I ever know if this is the path that he would take on his own?

The other thought was that I could possibly be holding my son back from something he's meant to do, something that I would be absolutely THRILLED for him to want to do. I mean, that's why I started him in music classes to begin with, right? Because I love music and wanted to share that love with him? And here he is, with every drop of the talent I'd always longed for myself. Do I have the right to withold that opportunity from him?

And then I thought about the poor, sad, overwhelmed little boy that sometimes made it into music class, sometimes not. Did I really have the right to subject him to that experience, which was obviously more than he could handle right then, just because I knew in my heart that he would grow to love it some day?

I smiled at his instructor and thanked her for the reccommendation. I told her that when Jacob comes to the decision that he's ready to audition for a group like that, I will most certainly make arrangements for him to pursue his passion -- whether it be in music or any other opportunity he wished to follow. If there's truly talent there, I don't see how waiting a few years is going to matter. Because it's not just talent that matters, it's passion. And I won't begin to pretend I could guess correctly at what his passion(s) in life will be. That will be up to him. In his own time.

shout it from the rooftops!!!!!!!

2007-04-05T06:21:00.000-05:00

It happened! It finally happened!

In news that Jacob is sure to later yell at me for announcing publicly, I want to share with the entire world that, for the first time today, and from this day ever more (or so he claims at least, and his word is good enough for me):

JACOB POOPED IN THE TOILET!!!!

Can you hear the noise-makers going off, the confetti showering from the sky, the doves being released, the cork popping on the champagne bottles?!?!?!? This is news of GARGANTUAN proportions!!!

Why now? Why at 6 years, 5 months and 6 days?

Because, as his RDI consultant and I determined yesterday, by a measure of RDI stages he's mastered, he's developmentally at about 3 years of age (probably a little further along). And, as I've been suspecting and will continue to believe unless given proof otherwise, he's now on a normal developmental path. And..... and THAT'S WHEN KIDS POTTY TRAIN. It's just the natural progression of things.

No bribes, no begging, no coersion. A little bit of discussion about it. Especially two days ago, when, well, to put it delicately, there was poop in more places than just his pants, the bathroom not being one of those places. That's when we had the "pullups aren't made to contain that amount of poop" discussion. And I suggested that perhaps it might be time to start putting that poop where it belongs -- the toilet -- like the vast majority of big boys like him do. He nodded his head somberly at the time, apparently giving it a bit of consideration. Later that morning, he refused to watch a once-beloved Baby Einstein video that Zoo Boy wanted to see, claiming that it was "for babies and toddlers, I'm a big boy, I'll go read in my room instead". And so he did. So he's definitely been mulling over his growing up.

No bribes, but I did break out a set of legos I'd been saving -- his first "real" legos (we've got a massive set of duplos that the kids have fun building with). As you can see above, he's pretty thrilled to have yet another building medium to practice those great visual problem-solving and spatial orientation skills everyone was raving about at the IEP meeting.

It's a red-letter day in our house! And that letter is P for POOP!!!

IEP, yipee

2007-04-02T15:20:00.000-05:00

No, seriously, it wasn't that bad. In fact, it was even, well, fun. In a better-than-a-poke-in-the-eye sort of way. But really, the pressure truly was off given that all of us present were well aware that there wasn't a snowball's chance in Haiti that we were going to actually USE this IEP. So the atmosphere was relaxed and jovial. Well, as much as could be expected anyway. They weren't exactly serving cocktails.

The cast of characters included myself, the SLP (the "head" of Jacob's "team"), the OT, the School Psychologist, the School Nurse, the Principal, the Special Education Teacher, and a First Grade classroom teacher. We all greeted each other warmly, except for the Psychologist who didn't know anybody and had to be introduced. I guess my insincts were right on her, this was definitely her first IEP meeting at this school, othewise she'd already know the key special services players.

They let the rookie start. She presented a very detailed description of Jacob's history, and the results of her testing, although when she got near the end, she was hurried along a bit by the Team Leader, because there was a lot more results and reccommendations to go through in our hour slot, and she'd taken up about half of it. In the end, her basic assessment boiled down to a very bright Autistic child with deficits in abstract conceptual thinking. Fair enough. Except maybe the Autistic part. Well, Ok, so I guess technically Jacob IS Autistic. Was Autistic? I dunno. But anyway, she seemed to find it pretty incredible that he has moved from "severely Autistic" on the CARS to "mild to moderate Autism". I reminded everyone that Jacob's sensory issues cause that CARS score to be dragged down considerably. But I don't think anyone was willing to hear that he's quite possibly not on the Spectrum anymore, so I didn't quite go there.

Next was the OT. She presented the results of the Sensory Checklist she had me fill out, which found that he has significant problems in 2 areas, and minor problems in a few others, but that in general it represented a vast improvement over where he was at when we pulled him out of school (i.e. prior to starting Sensory Integration Therapy with him). She went on to describe the facility where he gets his OT/SIT now, emphasizing that the things they do there and the sorts of equiptment they have are just not possible to implement in a school setting. (Well, sure they are, it would just cost a lot of $$, so nobody is WILLING to do that.) And she said that yes, indeed, he should be continuing to get those services.

Up next was the Special Ed teacher. She presented her findings -- all Kindergarten Markers met or exceeded, and went on to describe the two written tests she gave. Before she started with that 2nd piece, I said "what everyone needs to know first is that Jacob has received absolutely no instruction in writing", and she laughed and said "yeah, you should have seen the look she gave me when I pulled out the pencil and booklet." I said "Yup, I thought you were completely out of your mind." But she presented the results, and turns out he tested in the average range for a child mid-way through the first grade. She identified his areas of challenge (other than actually holding the writing implement) as being reading comprehension (although his comprehension is at a mid-first grade level, his decoding skills are endless -- she couldn't find a ceiling, the child can pick up anything and read it to you -- so while he's actually above grade level in reading comprehension, he's far behind where he should be compared to his decoding abilities) and retelling stories. Her reccommendations included a once monthly consult with his classroom teacher, but she didn't think that any other academic services were neccessary.

The SLP went next, and she presented all of Jacob's test results as being in the average range for his age, with the exception of expressive vocabularly, which was in the high average range. She reported him having deficits in retelling stories.

The school nurse was last, which was a pretty quick report, since Jacob has not had any major illnesses or injuries since his last triennial review, 3 years ago of course. In fact, I think I just said more than she did.

Then it was my turn. I stated the reason I was homeschooling for the coming year as follows: 1. He needs to continue with his SIT therapy (as pointed out by the school's OT) and that would mean he would be missing 1 day per week, which would be very disruptive to both Jacob and the classroom. 2. We have identified via RDI that he is at a developmental level that is not consistant with academics yet. 3. We are going to be implementing the Enki Education Kindergarten curriculum, which has an emphasis on story comprehension and retelling of stories, and the RDI curriculum has an emphasis on conceptual thinking. Backflips of joy nearly broke out from the team members.

In summary the IEP reads sort of like this: Jacob qualifies for Special Services under the primary disability of Autism. We offer the following accomodations and reccommendations (as above). Mrs. Moon refuses all services. Next IEP meeting to be scheduled at whatever time Mrs. Moon decides to re-enroll Jacob's in school, allowing for enough time for testing and placement assessments (so in the spring of the year before re-enrolling him in the fall of the year).

We all shook hands and left on a happy note.

Since we DID write an IEP, I will have to file a Notice of Intent to Homeschool (which is a "suggested procedure" in our state, rather than a statute, so legally I shouldn't HAVE to do it -- but we've now written an IEP, with my full knowledge that SAYS that I'm homeschooling, so the paperwork all has to match up). Which is really no big deal -- it just means that I'll need to meet with someone from the School Board next spring for a "portfolio review". Which is scarier than it sounds, really I just need to bring in a bit of proof that I've been doing something with my kid other than letting him play video games all day. But it's still something that, in the future, I'll make a point of avoiding, making it very clear on the form that it's for the 2007-08 school year ONLY.

triennial review

2007-03-28T19:17:00.000-05:00

That's what the school district calls it. The every-three-year battery of evaluations and assessments and testing that every kid with an IEP has to endure. Jacob's been going through his triennial review for the past two months. I spread things out as much as I could to make it easier on him, but quite honestly, he loved the testing -- he loved spending time with the teachers/professionals, he loved having a captive audience for his anecdotes, he loved getting to "work" (the boy is a work hound), he loved being the center of attention. He had absolutely NO idea why all this was happening, in typical Jacob fashion it never occured to him to ask, but he was having fun playing the "games". And he got to see some old friends from his Pre-K days. What's not to like?

Most of the testing I was not allowed to be present for. He had several days of assessments with the Speech and Language Pathologist. He had several days of testing with the Special Education teacher, which I WAS allowed to be present at (and which I thought, in watching the testing, would have resulted in more useful information than it did). He had two days of evaluations with the School Psychologist. The Occupational Therapist chose not to see him, instead evaluating him based on a sensory questionairre we filled out. (The truly amusing part about that is that OT is where Jacob's greatest challenges still lie, and where the most work still needs to be done.) We filled out forms for the school nurse and the social worker too. As well as a half dozen or so forms for the school psychologist.

While we were going through the testing, I was really OK with it. Mostly because Jacob was OK with it. And I thought perhaps we'd get some useful information or helpful insight from it, that might assist in our homeschooling efforts.

Then yesterday, the reports from the 3 folks who did the testing came in the mail, for our review in advance of our April 2 IEP meeting.

And that's when I realized that this whole thing was a colossal waste of time.

The report from the Special Education teacher stated the obvious -- that he had met or exceeded all of his Kindergarten Benchmarks, and that he has deficits in verbal comprehension and conceptual writing. (Which, by the way, completely blew my mind at the time they administered these tests -- the child hasn't even offically learned how to write, and can't even really hold a writing implement comfortably, and yet still they gave him written exams and asked him to write essays. HUH???) The report went into great detail on his specific problems with writing -- but given that he has not yet learned to write, I should hope that point was OBVIOUS? What the report didn't say was that Jacob did his darndest to do the silly writing assignments -- in fact, he completely blew my mind with what he actually was able to do out of sheer willpower and persistance. I think they oughta award the kid some sort of medal.

Her helpful IEP advice is to include pencil grips, and to work on his areas of weakness. Gee, thanks, I would have never thought of that on my own.

The report from the Speech and Language Pathologist was unbelievable. I mean that litarally, I find it hard to believe. I don't care what the testing says, Jacob is NOT at an average level for his age with regards to language usage. I've conversed with other 6 year olds, none of whom their parents claim to be child geniuses, and their use of the English language is fluid and understandable. They didn't use sentences such as "I went to go, but I had, and then done". Even I, his mother, have no idea what that means. Maybe the SLP is clairvoyant? True, he's made AMAZING progress since that particular SLP last worked with him. But average level for his age?? No. Average level for his development? (Which is around 3 years according to our RDI stages.) Yeah, I'd buy that. Her reccomendation for his IEP? Social skills group. Yipee.

Then there is the report from the School Psychologist, which is an award-winning work of fiction. I was astounded in reading through the report, not only wondering what kid she had been evaluating, but also who was impersonating me and saying such outlandish things as "Mrs Moon feels that Jacob will benefit from another year at home, after which he will be ready to return to school at the 2nd Grade level." HUH???? I thought I'd made it perfectly clear to pretty much everyone that we were going to homeschool indefinitely. I certainly never said anything about Grade 2. In fact, even if the world ended (which is what it would take for us to re-enroll him), we would insist that he start at the FIRST grade level, which is where I anticpate he'll be in another year or two.

She's new. Brand new. Jacob was her first evaluation in this school district, and perhaps, dare I say, ever. I'm guessing she's brand spankin' out of college. And obviously trying to make a good impression.

Amongst the more amazing of her proclamations, she said that she asked Jacob the question "What would you like to change about yourself?" and that he answered "My mind....the way I think." Ok, first of all, there's no way Jacob would understand that question at this point. He can't even answer a question like "Where would you like to go today?" yet -- too conceptually based, he needs more concrete definitions in his questions, like "Do you want to go to the playground or to Grandma's house?" Besides "what would you like to change about yourself?" being too open-ended for him to answer, I sincerely doubt he's considered that it's possible to change himself. Or desirable. In fact, I'm willing to bet pretty good money that he wouldn't know how to answer "What do you like about yourself?" at all. That whole "about yourself" thing is just not a concept he's got a grasp on yet. Second, "my mind"???? I truly doubt Jacob has ever even heard the word "mind" used in this context, so for him to pull that out of thin air is less likely than me winning the next powerball lottery. He certainly doesn't know that it means the way he thinks. In fact, "the way I think" is another one of those concepts that he's not got a grasp on yet.

The Map Man was a little more generous than me when reading that. He looked shocked, then said "was she feeding him answers?" Personally, I think she was just making the whole thing up.

What was obvious in her report was that she's done her homework about Autism. She neatly stated after odd test results that "although this is unusual for a child his age, it is not uncommon for children with Autism to have deficits in this area".

She did present some facts -- IQ tests (an amazing array of varieties), CARS (childhood autism rating scale), and other standard tools of the trade. His IQ scores ranged from Average (for Verbal IQ) to Superior (for Performance IQ) with overall score falling in the High Average range (no sticking her neck out there), and her results from CARS suggests mild to moderate Autism (gee, wasn't that his original diagnosis 3 years ago???) Interesting thing about CARS -- he scored in the "slightly atypical" category for all but 2 items, and both of those items were sensory related so he scored "extremely atypical" for those, dragging down his overall rating. I never did think that was a good measure of Autism (he tested as "severely autistic" the first time he took the test 3 years ago, we all laughed heartily). She did claim that he would be considered "high functioning" (she used the quotes and everything).

Of course, I didn't believe any of it. After the "What would you change about yourself question" I stopped trusting anything written in that report.

The reccommendations sections of that report is impressive. Modified inclussion classroom environment, preferential seating, private study areas, awareness of potential lighting and sound distractions, sensory diet, individualized help as needed, visual schedules, etc etc etc. It read like a textbook checklist from an article that would be entitled "How to Design a Classroom to Facilitate Inclussion of a Child on the Autism Spectrum". They were actually WONDERFUL suggestions. If we were putting Jacob back in school, I'd definitely want her in our corner. I do, however, think she's going to get laughed out of the IEP meeting by the rest of the professionals who profess that Jacob is "at age level" and ready to be thrown into the mainstream with the rest of the fish.

Should be a fun IEP meeting. Or not.

where the rubber meets the road

2007-03-21T09:16:00.000-05:00

(A photo of my living room this morning -- Sensory Integration Therapy is a great excuse for making a huge mess!)

I'm here to report on the status of our RDI program. Our consultant has been helping us sift through the new Stage objectives so that we can figure out where we're at.

First, I have to say how massively impressed I am with these new objectives! Not only are they extremely specific, but they are amazingly geared towards the development of dynamic thinking, which, although RDI always purported itself as encouraging that, is the first time I've seen it laid out in such a logical, usable format. This is truly a dynamic processing model rather than just an Autism Remediation program. I'm going to get a lot of mileage out of these objectives with Zoo Boy, who is most certainly not Autistic, as well. Never has it been more true that RDI=homeschooling!

I've been biting my nails worrying that we were done with RDI stage work. That there was nothing left for RDI to offer us. Because, although Jacob has made amazing progress, and I truly don't think anyone is going to consider him Autistic anymore, I can still see major gaps in his dynamic processing ability. It's as though he has the ability to think that way now, but still lacks the drive to take it out for a spin and use it. I felt there was a lot more work to be done, but was fretting that RDI wouldn't be the best way to accomplish it.

I fear that no longer! These new objectives are chock full specific ways to get that dynamic intelligence revved up and rolling.

There are now 12 child stages (as opposed to 28 in the "old" version), in addition to parent stages which are seperate from the child stages, and really give parents a great education on child development and Autism, in addition to getting them quite prepared for designing and implementing their child's RDI program.

We started by looking at new Stages 1 and 2, which incorporates bits and pieces of things right up through the higher stages -- I recognized things that I worked on in the old stages 6 and 7 right off the bat, and saw things that, although Jacob has developed them on his own, I hadn't seen anywhere else in the stage work. By the time a family emerges from the new Stage 2, they are going to be well on their way to Autism Remediation.

I did, in fact, find an objective that I'm not sure Jacob has mastered in the new Stage 2. Not surprisingly, once we started looking at the new Stage 3, there were two objectives that built on that one that I also put question marks next to. This is where we're going to "begin" with our new RDI work, on this apparent "hole". The objectives have to do with Perceptions and understanding that other people see/percieve things differently than you do. Sound familiar? That's the old Theory of Mind thing, that I've always felt Jacob has been lacking. Now there's a structured way for us to work on giving him the opportunities to make this "discovery". I'm one happy camper!

By the time we got to looking at the new Stage 4, I knew that we didn't need to go any further. I've got question marks next to about a dozen objectives and "p"s (for "needs practice") next to at least a dozen more, in addition to the couple of dozen I have checked off as mastered. So that's where we're at! Stage 4 reflects the abilities of a neurotypical 2-3 year old, so we're still a bit behind where I'd like to be, but all of the stuff we're "missing" are things that just weren't addressed by the "old" RDI system, at least not during the first dozen or so stages. The things that were addressed are the items I've checked off. And the "needs practice" items are things that were not addressed, but that he just happened to develop naturally.

I'm SOOO excited that this new version has come out just in time for us, and I'm thrilled to have a definite direction to be working in! I have more confidence than ever that RDI is going to help us unlock all of Jacob's potential and open a world of opportunity for him. The sky's the limit!

appraising appraisal

2007-03-19T17:15:00.000-05:00

Here's a photo of my "hula boy" that I'm pretty sure Jacob will be incensed about me posting at some point in the future....

Today I got a good glimpse as to where we're at with Jacob's appraisal at this point, so I wanted to talk about it a bit. I've talked about Jacob's problems with appraisal and how we're working on it here and here and here and here, amongst other places, in the past. It's been a real weak area for him, and we've done a whole lot of modeling and letting him borrow OUR appraisal. It looks like it's finally paying off, though, as the following interaction depicts:

Jacob's OT had set up a bowling game today that allowed me to see where he's at with his appraisal. There were several sizes of heavy balls available for him to roll down a ramp and try to hit 3 "pins" (soda bottles filled with water) set up at the bottom. He adjusted his position so that he was in the right spot to hit the center pin, then picked up a ball and let it go down the ramp. As he was picking up the ball, his OT commented "Oh, you picked the orange ball." He said "Yeah, I picked it because it's the heaviest one". (Great appraisal!!) After knocking down the center pin, he picked up another ball and let it go down the center of the ramp again. Of course, it missed the pins on either side of it. But before the OT had a chance to prompt him to think about what he needed to do to hit one of the side pins, he'd already adjusted his position (more appraisal!) so that the next ball rolled directly at one of the pins and knocked it down. He seemlessly shifted his position to optimize his next roll to knock down the third pin. He made a discovery about how his appraisal and choices affected the outcome, and adjusted as neccessary.

He's certainly made a lot of progress in the appraisal department! Which explains why he's making choices very easily now, and can tell us his reason for making those choices. Understanding his own preferences and the cause-and-effect relationship of the choices he makes has allowed it all to come together for him, and has opened up a whole new world of discoveries and learning for him.

Ain't RDI grand???

moving day!

2007-03-15T10:56:00.000-05:00

I'm "moving" to my new blog (with an old name ) today. Along the Crooked Path is where I'm going to be writing about our homeschooling, family and farm life in general from now on. Among my person reasons (which I posted there) for wanting to make this move, I also wanted to give Zoo Boy equal billing in our adventures, and it didn't seem right for a family blog to bear the name of just one of the members.

I'll still post here about RDI, Autism and Jacob's remediation program as I find things I want to add, but I wanted to keep this blog pretty much intact for folks interested in reading about RDI, rather than let it get buried beneath years of more general type posts.

I'd like to invite each and every one of you to feel free to read at the new location. Hoping to see old friends and new there!

when does it stop being Autism?

2007-03-14T17:16:00.000-05:00

Truly, I've been busy. I've been working my hind end off at my occassional-yet-amazingly-stressful job. But I probably could have found time to blog, if I'd really felt the urge. And I DID feel the urge. Only I wasn't sure what I'd say. I opened up this form more than once in the past week, stared at it a bit, even started a sentence or two, then closed it and went to bed or out to play with the ponies. I just didn't know how to put into writing what was running through my head.

What it boils down to, though, is that I've been pondering the above question. When, in the course of Autism Remediation, does the word "Autism" stop applying to the child?

Jacob's made such amazing progress in the last month -- the last two weeks in particular, that it goes beyond what is possible simply through a remediation program. The only explanation I can think is that natural development has kicked in, and is kicking butt. (Er, well, kicking brain I suppose....) Not only does his (old RDI) Stage 7 stuff look good, but he's suddenly not only co-creating with us (Stage 8), he's also doing HUGE amounts of collaboration (Stage 9). I'm not even sure what's beyond Stage 9 in terms of objectives and goals -- maybe he's doing some of that stuff too. Not only is he holding his own in interactions, but he's planning and carrying out projects, purposely involving us in them, trouble-shooting difficulties for himself and others, problem-solving, making discoveries based on self-designed experiments -- all for the first time ever. His brain has thrown itself into high-gear and there seems to be no stopping it.

The timing is interesting -- RDI is about to launch it's new Operating System and the"new" version of RDI ("5.0") which is a major overhaul of not only the way the stages are set up, but the way the entire program is run. The major goal of consultants and their existing clients right now is to figure out where in the set of new stages (which have been rearranged so as not to even resemble the original stages, and follows closely the various facets of typical development) and objectives (some 1600 of them, or so I hear) they fall. It'll take months. It's confusing, and it's scary for parents who have gotten comfortable with the old stages and where it put them in the scheme of things in regards to stage work.

For me, I'm not even sure where we fall in the old stages anymore. So I'm embracing the release of the new stages, so I can work my way through and see where we're at. Where do I think we're at? I have a strong suspicion that we're pretty much at a place a typical 4 year old would be. Maybe a 5 year old? (Tho I don't know many typical 5 year olds, so am having trouble comparing.) And we're definitely in the process of shifting into cruise control -- Jacob's making some pretty enormous developmental strides with me standing on the side lines waving my hand as he passes.

Coincidentally, just as I was starting to wonder how much longer we would even be needing RDI, I ran into an aquaintance of mine who was doing RDI about a year before I even found out about it. She got to know Jacob "before" (people who have met him since RDI have no way of understanding what he was like before), so she knows exactly how far we've come. We got chatting about RDI, and I found out that she'd dismissed their family from RDI some months ago -- she said that she was so confident in her son's current developmental path, she just didn't need it anymore. Of course, her family still lives an RDI-friendly lifestyle (it's more a parenting style than anything else, and is something that will carry on for the rest of their parenting lives), but she's not done any purposeful stage work in quite some time, and couldn't even tell me what stage her son was at. She then looked over at Jacob, sitting next to her son having a conversation about something that only could interest young boys, and asked me if I'd considered that it was time to move on with him, too. I admitted for the first time to anyone, even myself, that yes, that was exactly what I'd been wondering myself lately.

Does the word Autism still apply to Jacob? Do I even need to be purposely doing RDI anymore?

Some pretty big questions. I'll be spending the next couple of months trying to determine the answers. Stay tuned.

photos of OT/SIT session, part two

2007-03-06T09:14:00.000-05:00

This is part two of my photo series on Jacob's OT/SIT session yesterday. Please read part one first.

Jacob is using a springy hammock (which he sometimes gets bouncy rides in) to stabilize himself as he jumps on the rim of the ball pit (which is comprised of truck inner tubes lashed together and filled with balls). He jumps for a certain number of repetitions, then jumps into the ball pit. More proprioceptive work, as well as muscle strength/tone and of course control and coordination of his body movements.

Half way through Jacob's sessions, he is told that he can invite Zoo Boy to join him. He then instructs Zoo Boy on how to do all of the activities he's done (more RDI work!), and he's responsible for making sure Zoo Boy gets any help he needs to accomplish it (even more RDI work!). Here Jacob helps his OT move the air pillow up and down and back and forth for Zoo Boy.

Jacob demonstrating the "sloth position" on the bolster swing. Like a lot of kids with ASD, he has a diagnosis of Hypotonia, which means that he has low muscle tone, and activities like this and many others that we do with him help him to build up his muscle strength and stamina. This sort of activity is something that he has quite a bit of trouble with.

Jacob enjoys using the massage mitten for a little tactile input after all that hard muscle-building work.

Here Jacob is using a blow pen to write his name. He has to blow with enough strength to get the ink to come out. Great "heavy work", and good for increasing airflow and encouraging rib-cage expansion.

photos of OT/SIT session, part one

2007-03-06T08:47:00.000-05:00

I'm going to post a series of photos from Jacob's OT/SIT session yesterday, just to give a feel for what happens during his weekly therapy sessions. I'll have to do it in two parts, as blogger is only letting me download 5 photos at a time. I left out the first 15 minutes of the sessions, which involves the Astronaut Board work that I already posted about last week, and a few small-motor activities that I didn't think to photograph.

In this first photo (above) Jacob climbs a "mountain" of mattresses, inner tubes, and other soft structures. This works on balance and integrating his vestibular and proprioceptive systems.

In this photo (to the left), Jacob's OT offers him choices as to what to take into the dark "cave" with him. The choices consist of a rubber chicken, several squishy balls of various textures (some that light up, some that make noise, etc), and a flashlight. This is actually RDI work, choices and appraisal, and shows how nicely this therapist incorporates what I've asked her to despite the fact that she has absolutely no RDI training. Jacob initially chooses a ball that lights up, then changes his mind (once he sees how dark it is inside that cave) and chooses the flashlight instead (working on seeing the consequence of his choices).

Here Jacob enters the "cave", flashlight in hand. The cave is made up of inner tubes and hollow soft climbing structures, and is tight enough that Jacob has to really work to get through it, working on his proprioceptive system as well as his muscle strength and coordination. He later revisits the cave to hide "treasures" (various balls) for other kids in later sessions to find (more RDI work, anticipating other kids coming and how they will be surprised to find the treasures).

The cave exits at the top of this "hill", and Jacob rolls down (proprioceptive and vestibular work). He has to decide to roll the flashlight down first to free up his hands before he starts rolling (RDI planning work).

After rolling down the "hill", Jacob climbs aboard the air pillow and is rocked and bounces at varying speeds by the OT. More vestibular and proprioceptive work.

philosophical question, ala Zoo Boy

2007-03-03T16:34:00.000-05:00

Looking down at his empty juice box:

"If a juice box is out of juice, is it still a juice box, or just a box?"

pillow talk and other victories

2007-03-02T11:37:00.000-05:00

(To the left, Jacob gets a little drawing assitance from our new pup. I have oodles of stuff to update his art blog with, I'll try to get to that at some point today.)

We're getting close to mastery of RDI Stage 7. I can tell, not just because of the gains I've seen with the Stage 7 material, but also by the shifts and developmental gains in other parts of his life.

For Stage 7 (which includes both Self-Awareness and Caring For Others objectives), a good indicator for me was when the other night, while sitting at the computer looking at some photos I'd taken that day, Jacob suddenly left me when he heard Zoo Boy's cry of frustration from behind us. In a voice loaded with empathy, I heard him say "Oh, do you need some help with that? Here, I'll help you." He helped his brother assemble a piece of a toy, then rejoined me at the computer. I didn't need to spotlight this wonderful Stage 7 moment, Zoo Boy did it for me, with a "Thank you, Jacob!" as he dried his eyes.

But a surer indication to me of approaching mastery has been in Jacob's overall developmental growth in the past week. We're seeing new things, for the first time, on a daily basis.

For months now we've been dealing with a problem with Jacob not making it to the bathroom in time to pee first thing in the morning. He's always loved to lie around in bed after waking for an hour or so, chattering to himself, reciting lines from favorite videos or movies, quoting entire books, poety, singing songs, etc. We've never tried to discourage this -- I've always felt that his time prior to 8am (our official "get up" time) can be spent anyway he chooses to spend it -- the rest of the day is on MY schedule, that part of the day is all his. But as he's gotten older, and his bladder capacity has gotten greater, peeing in the pull-up he wears to bed has become problematic, as they just weren't designed to hold an entire night's worth of a 6 yr old's urine emptied all at once. So there's been lots of leaking, and consistantly I get up in the morning to a naked Jacob huddled under a sheet working on a puzzle. When I ask him WHY he's naked, he just casually mentions "Oh, my pull-up leaked" as if it's a crazy question, OF COURSE he didn't make it to the potty again, get over it Mom. Silly me.

Finally, a couple mornings ago, I decided to have a sit-down chat with him about it. He managed to tell me (via me guessing the right answer) that he's peeing because he wants to stay in bed and talk, etc. I suggested trying to make it to the potty as soon as he wakes up. So for a couple of mornings, I heard him make the mad dash for the bathroom in time, and then he came and told me about his success. Great! Then he crawled into bed with me and Zoo Boy and proceeded to cause enough disruption to wake Zoo Boy more than an hour earlier than he should have been awake. Not so good, it lead to some real over-tired ugliness out of the little dude during the afternoon hours. Last night, I suggested that perhaps he could get up to pee in the potty, and then go back to his OWN bed. "Oh, that's a good idea" he said. Yeah, I'll believe it when I see it, I thought.

But, lo and behold, this morning I heard him make the dash to the bathroom, then call out to me that he couldn't find any pull-ups. Oh yeah, I forgot we were out, I got out of bed to pull a new package out of the closet -- but there weren't any. As I dug around in the closet, Jacob informed me that he was going to go back to bed to go to sleep for awhile more once he got dressed. Good plan, I muttered as I dug through the closet, and came up with a few ancient pull-ups with a long-since discontinued pattern. We laughed at the "new" pull-ups, then I left him to his own devices while I groggily climbed back into bed, fully expecting him to follow close behind, secretly plotting ways to keep the kids occupied in the other room while I snuck in another hour's sleep.

But he shocked me by going to his own room instead. And shortly after I heard his voice. But instead of the usual barage of movie lines and book recitations and songs, the background to which I've become accustomed to drifting back to sleep, I heard this one-sided conversation: "I'm going back to bed, Teddy, do you want to come with me? I have on new pull-ups, look, they have Mickey on them, isn't that funny? There. Are you comfy?"

There would be no more sleeping for me this morning, as I listened to my son cheerfully sharing observations and thoughts with his Teddy Bear, tears running down my cheeks. All I could think was "it's happening, it's really happening!". 5 years of constant early-morning scripting has finally dissappeared. The RDI experts, those parents futher along in this journey than we are, had all told me this day would come, sometime between mastery of Stage 6 and mastery of Stage 8, the day where the scripts dissappeared. Where conversation, dynamic thinking, and true pretend play would replace the memorized rote lines. Are they gone for good? I'm not sure. I'm not even willing to guess. If they show up again, it's fine, because now I've seen that they WILL dissappear eventually. I have all the proof I need in the next bedroom.

for want of a dentist

2007-03-01T09:28:00.000-05:00

The following heart-breaking news story, about a boy who died from a tooth abscess that spread to his brain, confirmed my worst fears:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17372104/wid/11915773/?GT1=9033

which is that the lack of a link between dental health and medical health has some pretty severe consequences.

We have medical insurance. (Such that it is, HMO, better than nothing!) However, we do not have dental insurance. So all of our dental care, both for us and our kids, has to come 100% out of our pockets. Yet, dental offices don't care, they charge us the same inflated fees they charge the insurance companies. (In fact, having seen the way insurance companies work with the professional offices they are paying, I'd bet you even money that the insurance companies are paying LESS than we are.) As a result, we can only afford to care for our teeth when we obviously need to. In other words, when a dental problem gets bad enough to actually be threatening our health, we find a way to get it take care of. (ie, we put it on a credit card and make minimum payments for the rest of our life on it, or beg a loan out of a relative and then make minimum payments to them for the rest of their lives)

Of course, by the time we get to the "medically neccessary" stage, it costs about 10 times as much to take care of it as it would have if we'd just gone to the dentist in the first place. Problem is, it's pretty hard to predict which problems are going to "turn into something", and MOST problems that could have been fixed would have needed to be caught during the "6 month routine visit". And we just can't afford for any of us to go to the dentist for a "routine" visit on any sort of a regular basis.

All of which made me wonder -- what happens to the people in worse shape than us, the ones who can't afford ANY dental care, health-threatening or not? Do they just let their teeth rot out of their heads? Do they die from dental absesses?

Obviously, that question is yes. And it makes me sick. The point they make in the article has to do with access and Medicaid. My bigger concern is wondering WHEN the medical/insurance professions are going to recognize the obvious connection between dental health and medical health, in a tangible form rather than just as a theory. I mean, ask any doctor or dentist, they'll tell you there is a direct link. Yet my medical insurance wouldn't even look at my claim for periodontal disease. I would have had to let the infection spread to my heart and threaten my life (no doubt leaving myself with long-term damage even if I survived the episode) before my medical insurance would touch it, and even then, they'd only treat my heart problems, not my teeth. When Zoo Boy had major dental surgery a couple of years ago (he was born with no enamel on his teeth, and his teeth pretty much rotted right out of his head), our insurance covered his hospital expenses, but all the dental expenses (thousands of dollars) came directly out of our pocket.

And what does this seperation of medical and dental coverage really serve in the end? The boy in the article could have been saved by an $80 extraction and a $20 antibiotic prescription when his tooth abcess first began. Instead, the child has died, and the medical community is stuck with a $250, 000 bill that has no way of ever getting paid. Can no one see how insane this is? Simple math tells us that we could save 2500 children for the same cost to the profession/medicaid/society (whatever!) as was spent to let this one boy die. Even for those not morally horrified that this happened, they should at least be financially horrified.

And that's my soapbox rant for today.

air hockey

2007-02-28T18:23:00.000-05:00

This is an activity that I picked up from Jacob's OT. I wanted to share it, as it's both a great sensory integration game, and has a lot of potential for RDI as well. Here, Jacob plays with Zoo Boy, our RDI work is on co-regulation (stage 6), making adjustments based on where the other child sends the ball.

Here's how it works -- each child has a straw. They lie a distance apart from each other and use the straw to blow a ping-pong ball back and forth between them. I set up "lanes" for them as scaffolding so that they don't have to worry about the ball going wildly off-course -- as they get better at this, the "lane" will get wider and wider, so they'll have to work harder at co-regulation.

While Jacob's working on co-regulation, Zoo Boy is working on pursing his lips (an oral-motor exercise) and determining how far in his mouth the straw has to be to get the best blowing power. Both boys are working on the lung capacity needed to blow the ball all the way across to the other child. I guess that works on appraisal too -- they have to decide if the ball is going too fast or too slow (if they've blown too hard or too soft), and whether or not they need to blow again to get it all the way to the other child. And of course it works on self-regulation (being able to change how hard they are blowing). Depending on what stage of RDI you're working at, you could spotlight any number of things: emotion sharing, referencing (to see if the other child is ready), the back-and-forth coordination, variations galore, opposite-world trying not to get the ball to the other person, etc etc etc.

A lot of value in one simple game!

astronaut board

2007-02-27T15:34:00.000-05:00

Our Astronaut Board came this weekend, so we've been able to start implementing the Kawar Vestibular Oculomotor Protocol at home. The goal of this therapy is to enhance the integration of the vestibular and visual systems. (This article is a really good explanation of the importance of this therapy for kids who need it.) Jacob's OT has been doing this protocol with him as part of his Sensory Integration sessions for nearly a year now, and he's made great progress with it, but we've found when he's had a week off from therapy sessions for whatever reason, he again has problems with these activities. We figured that daily work on this activity would help him maintain his progress.

The board rotates (it is build upon a lazy susan), and you rotate the child 10 times in each direction while they are in 3 different positions: sitting up (as Zoo Boy is demonstrating above, although his eyes should be CLOSED, but turning 4 soon, he's not the most cooperative child on the planet), lying on the right side (as Jacob is demonstrating) and lying on the left side. Focused visual activities are done between each change of position. (So the child is rotated in each direction in the position, then the visual activities are done.) Hence, each set of activities is done 3 times. After each set of rotations, the child keeps his eyes closed until he no longer feels dizzy. The purpose of the rotations is to produce nystagmus (the movement the eyes make in response to this vestibular input) in order to "warm up" the eyes for visual activities.

I'm not going to go into the details of the actual visual activities, because this therapy really needs to be done under the supervision of a trained therapist, but there are 4 specific exercises used that involve using penlights for tracking and "jumping" (moving between two focal points).

When Jacob's OT first started using this protocol with him, she was unable to get him dizzy. So he'd rotate around and immediately open his eyes. His vestibular system was underactive. But over time with the therapy, his vestibular system has begun kicking in, and now he's more sensitive to the rotations and actually has to wait for his nystagmus to stop before opening his eyes. Pretty cool! I assume this would likewise be a useful therapy for a child with an overactive vestibular system (um, that would be me, in fact, just rotating Jacob makes me want to vomit!), and I'm starting to use it with Zoo Boy for that very reason.

I'm not sure why I waited so long to get this piece of equiptment, but it's name finally popped up at the top of our priority list. Like so many other things that we've wound up just purchasing, we kept thinking "well, heck, WE could make that!" But of course, we never did. So eventually I felt like we'd dragged our heels long enough and took the plunge. I'm glad we did! It feels good to be working on this important piece of the Sensory puzzle on a daily basis.

this week's snow theme, our daily rhythms, and books

2007-02-26T11:17:00.000-05:00

This will be our last week on our "snow" theme, which has sort of lasted the entire month. Next week we'll be focusing on Maple Sugaring, which is a pretty big part of the New England tapestry this time of year, and a great introduction to early spring.

Thanks to the strong sun and warm temperature (well, if you consider 35 warm, we certainly do after the past month of frigid temps!), our snow pack turned just sticky enough yesterday to allow the kids (and The Map Man) to build our first snowman of the year. He looks pretty good all dressed up like that -- trust me, now that he's naked (the dogs pulled all the clothing off fairly soon after this photos was taken), he looks more like a snow blob. A pointy-headed snow blob. But the kids were pretty proud of him, and we'll head on out this afternoon to see if we can't make him some buddies with the fresh 4 inches that fell overnight.

Other than snow play, which no doubt will be on-going all week, this week I'll be focusing on getting back with our daily rythms. I revamped them slightly to allow more "wiggle room" for taking care of new critters -- the pup has added the need for even more flexibility than our schedule already calls for, and the new pony is coming tomorrow afternoon. They aren't all that different than the last time I posted our daily rhythms, but I'll include them here anyway just to keep things current:

8am -- rise and shine, make beds and open curtains (@ 10 min)
sensory brushing, dressing (@ 15 min)
play with puppy while I feed the ponies and get the adult dogs outside (@ 30 min)
9am -- breakfast (@ 30 min)
toothbrushing (@ 10 min)
calendar and weather activity (@ 20 min)
outdoor play (@ 1 hr)
11am -- snack (@ 15 min)
adventure (classes, grocery shopping, library, etc) (@ 90 min)
1pm -- lunch (@ 30 min)
rest time (30 - 60 min)
therapy (OT/SIT/OM) activities (30 - 60 min)
3pm -- snack (@ 15 min)
barn chores/outdoor play (30-60 min)
pony care (brushing, riding, etc) (30-60 min)
RDI focus activity (may incorporate pony time or barn chores) (30-45 min)
5pm -- supper (@ 1hr, including prep time which may also be RDI focus time)
free/creative play (@ 60 min)
7pm -- baths and bed prep (@ 60 min)
8pm -- Family Story Time (30 - 60 min)
9pm -- lights out, sleep, Parent Time

Here's the books we're reading this week: (the first two are purposely quite simple because the third is much longer/more complex than we've used in the past)

Flannel Kisses, by Linda Crotta Brenna, illustrated by Mari Takabayashi. A really cute, extremely simple-texted book with only a few words per page. A simple tale of a family's day of fun in the snow. Jacob really likes this book. Zoo boy really dislikes it. So mixed reviews in our house!

Cat and Mouse in the Snow, by Tomek Bogacki. I'm not thrilled with this book, but the kids are over the moon about it. Young cats and mice play in a snow-covered meadown. Not much to it. But the text (and artwork) is simple and bouncy and the tale is uncomplicated but fun, and there's snow aplenty in the illustrations. They love pretending they are the cats and mice climbing and sliding up and down the hillside.

Winter White, by Joanne Ryder, illustrated by Carol Lacey. This is the REAL book of this week's story time. A wonderfully woven fable about the change of the arctic seasons. I had originally taken this book out of the library back when we were reading about the arctic a month or two ago, but my kids weren't ready to sit still for this long of a story back then. Not only are they able to listen to this now, but they became absolutely absorbed in it, and acted it out immediately after we finished reading it for the first time, and have been incorporating the characters (especially the bear, Winter) into their play ever since. The beautifully detailed illustrations (acrylic paintings) help bring this magical tale to life. A definite must-read!

my life outside of Autism

2007-02-25T12:31:00.000-05:00

Pictured at left is the new pup I mentioned, taken at 8 1/2 weeks. He's a Smooth (short-haired) Collie from a very dear friend who lives and trains Collies in Kentucky. He's very closely related to our other two Smooth Collies.

I have been thinking for a little while now that maybe it was time that I started to share a little more about me on this blog. I mean, things other than being my kids' Mom and educator and personal therapist. Bev C requested that I talk more about our new puppy, so I'm taking that as the springboard to talking more about me, who I am, what it is that I actually do outside of Autism remediation.

Well, to start with, I'm a dog trainer. That's both what I do, and who I am. I can't really say I do it "to make a living", because nobody could live on what I'm making (!), but I do get paid, so that officially makes me a Professional. (Incidently, it IS possible to do just fine on a dog trainer's salary, if you're working enough hours. It's just not possible for ME to work enough hours to make a living on it at the moment.) Technically I work part-time (about 20 hours a week on a good week), but I am a full-time dog trainer, as I don't just train dogs, I live with them too. Same way there's no such thing as a part-time mother (something that has always cracked me up when someone refers to themselves as a "full-time mom", as if there is any other type of Mom!). I teach herding lessons to owner/dog teams on my farm, I train other people's dogs for stockwork on occassion, and I teach dog obedience classes and lessons at a local dog training facility a couple nights a week. I also work for a dog agility trial secretary, running agility (athletic doggy obstacle courses) trials on a much more part-time basis, but that's just for a little additional income, it doesn't have much to do with what I see myself as "doing".

I have a sheep farm. Well, WE have a sheep farm. The Map Man (who's other nickname is "The Accidental Farmer") wasn't raised in a family with a history of farming the way I was, but he would have made a fine dairy farmer if he were more interested in cattle and less interested in bridge design -- talk about a work ethic! He certainly pulls his weight around here, especially this time of year with so much water-hauling and ice-chopping to be done. So the fact that I'm the driving force behind living the way we do doesn't make it my farm. It's definitely ours.

I used to have a wool business -- I raised Angora rabbits, and sold their fiber along with my sheep's fiber to other hand-spinners (using a spinning wheel to make yarn, which I also do -- er, well, I CAN do, I haven't exactly found much time for that sort of thing lately). But when Autism made an appearance here, and my time started getting eaten up with the accompanying therapies, etc, I disbanded my business, sold all my rabbits, and switched from a wool breed of sheep to a hair breed (which doesn't need as much care). As much as I loved being involved with fiber animals, training dogs has a better pay check. So our farm has since converted primarily to a stockdog training facility. I'll slowly be converting it back to a fiber farm (at laest partially) once my time is not so occupied elsewhere.

When I first started in sheep, I needed a dog to help. So I got a Collie, a big black hairy Rough-coated (think Lassie) male. Prior to that, I'd been in sporting dogs (and was an avid hunter for years, another hobby that's fallen by the wayside, and another story entirely), and had trained my dogs as gundogs. My first Collie made such an impression on me, and I enjoyed training him to herd so much, that another Collie followed. Then a Border Collie. Then a whole litter of Collies. Then some more Collies. You get the picture. I currently live with 7 dogs -- at times I've had twice that many, but as I finish up a dog's training and working career and retire them, I start keeping my ears open for a family with a wonderful home to give a well-trained dog, and I give the dog away. At first that was hard for me, as I'm quite attached to all of my dogs, but it would be selfish for me to hang onto a dog that wasn't going to get the benefit of a lot of attention from me (which the dogs I'm working do). I do have a couple of old retired dogs -- one ancient hunting companion from long ago, and that first Collie I mentioned above -- who are perfectly happy with retirement and will be here for the rest of their lives, but in general if the dog will benefit from being a family's only beloved pet, I will let them go on to fulfill another destiny after I'm done working them.

In any case, our new pup is my next up-and-coming working star, as well as a fun diversion for us and the kids. And other than being a Mom, that's the biggest part of who I am right now. Of course, I've not always been this same person. But that's probably enough about me for now.

snow!

2007-02-24T09:15:00.000-05:00

I have so many memories of winter from my childhood. Sledding, skating, building snowmen (and, more often, snow animals), making snow forts, having snowball fights, shoveling the driveway (which at the time I thought I hated, but is actually one of my pleasant childhood memories), making snow angels. Dressing up in ridiculously weatherproof outfits we could hardly move in. Putting my father's way-too-big wool socks on over my tiny socks, the whole thing getting strapped into a plastic baggie then stuffed into an oversized boot. Tramping out the garage door with sled, shovel, skates, everything needed for a fun few hours in the snow. My dad wiping my nose with his handkercheif. The neighbors dog biting our feet while we sledded across 3 backyards, and if we were lucky, into the woods, and if we were VERY lucky, not into a tree.

Jacob's first winter, he was only a few months old, and I bundled him up in adorable fleece buntings and mittens with no thumbs and lovingly tatted lace mohair hats. I strolled around with snowflakes gently landing on my hair and his cheek and dreamed of the fun in the years to come.

His second winter, he sat in a sled while we pulled him about, swallowed up by a slightly-too-large snowsuit over a slightly-too-small fleece one-piece. He screamed. He refused to walk in the snow. He's still too young, we thought. Next year.

His third winter I was quite sick, pregnant with Zoo Boy and not handling it well. I spent the winter indoors. I watched as The Map Map bundled Jacob up and tried pulling him on the sled, tried getting him to take a step in the snow, built a snowman for him while Jacob repeatedly asked to come inside. I shrugged my shoulders and said oh well, next year. I was too sick to let it bother me.

His fourth winter I understood the problem. By then I was well aware of his intollerance of water, of droplets of moisture touching him anywhere on his body. It was a given that he was going to hate snow, wouldn't want to be out walking in it. Our whole parenting/handling autism approach was avoidance of things that upset him. So we spent another winter indoors, me commenting on the snow while watching out the window, Jacob doing his best to ignore me, refusing to even look. I watched The Map Man make snowmen in the yard from the window, as that was the only thing Jacob showed at least a spark of interest in in regards to the wintry weather. Even then, he wouldn't cross the yard to see them up close, would just say "no man" when we pulled out of the driveway. The Map Man made a few unsuccessful attempts to pull him in a sled, but since he wouldn't put any winter clothing on, it made having him out in the snow pretty much impossible.

His fifth winter I had great hope for. We'd started RDI in the fall, and on the various internet lists and message boards and chats I read accounts of all the cool RDI activities people were doing out in the snow with their kids. Donning the role of the optimist, I bought snow pants and boots and mittens and hats. He had a great time playing dress up with them in the house, but when it came to putting them on to go outdoors, it was a no go. He refused to wear the boots, even though it meant he couldn't go out onto the playground with the other kids at school. Half way through the winter he finally submitted to wearing the boots for that, but even then, he'd just stand on the shoveled part of the blacktop, watching the other kids in his class running around and having a great time. At home, if we managed to get the boots on him, he froze in place, unable to move his encumbered feet. Being out during an actual snowstorm was out of the question. He didn't even want to look at the snow as it was falling, as if just the thought of one of those snowflakes touching his cheek was too much to bear.

His sixth winter we made a bit of progress. He actually followed the other kids out onto the playground, picking his way gingerly through the snow with his prized Elmo boots on. I found him an oversized knit hat that was acceptable to him, and a pair of knit mittens that he absolutely fell in love with. At home, he agreed to come out into the snow with us, carefully placing one foot after another in footprints already made by me or The Map Man while Zoo Boy ran gleefully around making trails and begging to be pulled on the sled. Jacob perched anxiously behind his brother on the sled as we pulled. The Map Man tried taking him sledding down the hill in our sheep pasture on several occassions, but each time a bit of snow managed to make contact with his skin and that ended the sessions pretty quickly and with lots of anxiety. My sister invited us on sledding and skating parties with her kids, we politely turned them down. I viewed the photos my dad took of her kids on these ventures, wide smiles and joyful laughter in a whirl of snow and brightly colored woolens. I wondered if Jacob would even learn to enjoy the winter, the season that I as a child had most looked forward to.

And now this winter, Jacob's seventh winter. We started talking about getting ready for winter in November, how the animals all prepared, we pretended to be bears and chipmunks and skunks getting ready to hibernate. We agreed that it would be more fun for us to stay up for the winter, go outside and enjoy the snow rather than sleep through it. Jacob enthusiastically shopped for snow pants, boots, mittens, hats. Hopeful, I came home with a pair of iceskates for him, and he was over the moon at the thought of skating. He talked about building snowmen, and making snow angels, and having snowball fights. I crossed my fingers and held my breath and waited for snow.

During our first breif snowfall in early December, he enthusiastically dressed himself in all his snow gear and ran outside, teaching Zoo Boy how to catch snowflakes on his tongue (something that he'd only seen on a video, never having tried it himself). He laughed at how the snowflakes tickled his cheek as they landed on it. He tasted a handful of snow, and ran madly around the yard leaving tracks all over the place, then following his own tracks to see where they led. We didn't get enough for sledding or snowballs, but I promised him those things would come soon enough.

And then the weather made us wait. Other than that inch or so of snow early on, we saw nary a snowflake for months. In fact, the temperatures warmed up and it was more like spring here than winter for weeks on end. I fretted that his new-found enthusiasm for snow would peter out before he even had a chance to explore it.

But once the snow finally arrived in force, he attacked it like he'd been playing in the snow for years with grand abandon. He took to sledding like an otter, and we've had to get very firm about the amount of time he iss allowed to be out in the bitter cold, as he never wants to come inside, despite frost-kissed cheeks and ice cold fingers. When out and about in town, he purposely goes out of his way to trudge through snow banks rather than walk on the shoveled surfaces. He happily drops into snowy surfaces to make snow angels, and has been making his best attempt at snowballs. (Although, despite our early warm start for the winter, we've yet to have a good snowball or snowman type sticky snow, it's just been too cold for the past month.) When given the chance to go for a walk or a pony ride in a snowstorm, his answer is a resounding yes.

All in all, he's having snowy fun the way I remember it from my childhood. He's rolling down snow hills, nibbling icicles, and trying not to crash into the fence at the bottom of the pasture on his sled (we're thinking a nice sand bank right there might be a good investment in the coming year....). He's enjoying being a 6 year old boy in New England. And that's what winter is all about for me.

winter break, and books

2007-02-21T12:47:00.000-05:00

In case anyone is wondering where I've been for the past week or so, I was traveling across the country to pick up the pup pictured in this photo. Kids are having a blast, as you can well imagine!

Well, our daily rhythms have completely fallen apart. As has just about any other semblence of regulation in our household. The fact that I was away for 4 days is partly to blame. The fact that Zoo Boy had an oral-motor and speech evaluation most of the day before I left is another part. The fact that our little foundered pony needs somewhat frequent attention is another piece, as is the fact that I have to keep running to the barn to check for new lambs. And then you throw a new puppy into the mix, and it's pretty close to utter chaos around here.

So I've declared this week as our "winter break" -- break from classes, therapy, and anything that has to do with travel or organized thought. I DO need to sit down and hammer out a new daily rhythm schedule for us, that takes our added responsibilities into account. For instance, with the new pony arriving any day, we will have one more major animal to care for -- she'll need to be brushed and ridden in addition to adding another feed bucket to mix up and 33% more poop to scoop. Riding can take the place of our morning exercise time, but is more time-involved than just going for a walk or turning on some songs to dance to. Brushing, feeding, and clean-up can be incorporated into our RDI time, but that means moving our "scheduled" RDI time to the morning instead of the late afternoon where it was. And then there's the new pup, who needs regular attention as well (more concentrated attention than our older, trained dogs) in several blocks throughout the day.

So while the kids enjoy a "holiday" from "work", I'll be concentrating my efforts on working out a new daily rythym schedule, while also trying to organize my increase in work load into manageable chunks. I'm not thinking about RDI this week at all -- it'll still happen, it's become such a way of life for us, there's no avoiding it. But I won't be looking at the objectives and figuring out where our activities for the day might fit into the mix. It'll be all go-with-the-flow, no planned organized time.

The only thing we're adamently sticking to this week is our evening Family Story Time. This is the anchor that will keep us from completely floating off the planet. We are being uncreative about it, however, and are using the same books we did last week (which I never did have a chance to post about), continuing our Snow theme. Here they are:

Fox's Dream, by Tejima. A simple story of a lonely fox's night-time walk through a winter woodland and what he sees and meets on the way. Beautiful woodcut illustrations tell the tale as much as the text does, leaving much to the imagination, making the book very RDI-friendly as well. Thumbs up around here!

Snowballs, by Lois Ehlert. Ehlert's paper-sculpture illustrations always catch my kids' attention, and her text is always expressly simple so as not to take away from the artwork, which is really what tells the story. Winter birds, creative snowmen, and the inevitable melt-down when the sun comes out is about all there is to this book. But the kids just adore it, and have been swiping it from my Story Time stash to read on their own.

Snow Ponies, by Cynthia Cotten, illustrated by Jason Cockcroft. FABULOUS book, telling the tale of Old Man Winter's string of Snow Ponies, who he lets loose upon the land, spreading a blanket of snow as they tear across the countryside on a romp, coming home for a rub down and a rest when they are done turning the world a winter white. Much is said between the lines rather than in the rich text, and gorgeous illustrations add to the wonder and mystique. An absolute must-read that we just had to add to our home library.

'good job'

2007-02-13T11:33:00.000-05:00

I had a request a week or so ago to write about my thoughts on the topic of praising kids ("good job"). I've been holding off, looking for the right inspiration. There have literally been volumes written on this, by actual experts in the field of child rearing, what could I possibly add to their advice?

My inspiration came in the wee hours of the morning today, and is pictured above. That's my best ewe, Freckles, and her new twins, sporting home-made (at 3 am, yawn!) lamb coats because it was about -3 degrees F when then were born. (They'll wear the coats for a couple of days until they're better able to maintain their own body temperature, or until the temps rise above freezing, whichever comes first -- I'm betting on the lambs.)

So, when I trudged down to the barn at 2am to find these adorable little babies, do you think I said "Good job!" to Freckles? No, of course not. Not because I'm not impressed by her natural birthing abilities (quite to the contrary, I am CONTINOUSLY amazed at what animals are capable of!). But because she doesn't care if I'm impressed or not. She gets her own intrinsic satisfaction out of raising her lambs well, she doesn't need to be told that she's doing a good job.

How does this relate to praising kids, you ask? People are all born with the same innate capacity to recognize when they've done well, and the ability to feel proud of their accomplishments. And if left alone with it, they continue to strive for accomplishment (whatever they consider that to be), and continue to feel pride in their efforts, all of their own motivation and appraisal system. THEY determine what is success and what is not. And the self-found pride in accomplishment is their driving force to strive for more. This makes for an integrated person, full of self esteem and inner motivation.

Let's say we take the above child, and rather than letting them define their own measure of accomplishment, we start praising them for what WE deem to be a "good job". What does this tell them? First, it tells them that what WE think is more important than what THEY feel. That working towards a "good job" is more important than working towards feelings of self-accomplishment. (Add "prizes" onto that, and it compounds the issue even further.) Beyond that, it takes them out of the integration of an internal experience and applies external criteria for success, actually drawing them out of the experience itself and making them an outside observer of their own work. (Talk about stifling the creative proccess!) And even more damaging is that when they DON'T hear the external praise they are working for, they then deem themselves a failure, eroding their blossoming self-esteem, when in fact, the usual "person of power" (Mom, Grandma, Teacher) doing the praising probably just didn't think to say "good job" at that moment. Allowing children to develop their own internal measure of accomplishement is the most improtant step you can take to ensure the development of a healthy self-esteem.

Providing rewards and reinforcement makes for some pretty great animal training -- it lets the animal know when it's doing something that pleases us, and makes us able to get that response on cue. (Think trained seal.) Is that what we really want for our kids? No -- we want them to be free-thinking, creative people with internal motivation and drive and their own system of appraisal to determine when they are right and when they are wrong. Kids that strive for external gratification are easily influenced by peers into all sorts of dangerous situations -- drugs, alcohol, deviant behaviors, anything to gain them that external praise and acceptance from their peers. Which is the last thing on earth that parents are trying to promote when they pat their toddler on the head and say "good job!". But that's the slippery slope that is praise. It's what ABA (Applied Behavior Analysis, the most "popular" method for "treating" Autism) and other behavioral models of Autism "treatment" is based on, and is why I rejected it as a possibility for Jacob, despite the fact that it was the treatment reccommended by the Developmental Pediatrictian that made Jacob's diagnosis.

In the case of kids with ASD (and really any special need), the negative effects of praise is amplified. As parents and educators, we are desperate to make that connection with our hard-to-connect with kids, and we tend to be even more over the top with the praise than the average parent. Even though I was well aware of the damage of "good job", I found it coming out of my mouth all over the place in the early years of trying to get a handle on Autism. I'm happy to say I've since learned to control myself. But it wasn't easy, it took effort and some major brain-reprogramming on my part. Just recognizing that I was doing it was the first step, and I'd actually say out loud "good job! Oh, I shouldn't have said that." Eventually, the "I shouldn't say that" started coming before the "good job" and that's when I finally had control of it. Now it never occurs to me to utter "good job".

What do you say instead? Because, truly, we want to make note of our kids' accomplishments, right? And of course, the kids themselves want us to see and comment on what they've done. And that's the key right there -- to recognize their work without assigning a value to it. So when Jacob shows me a piece of artwork he's especially proud of, I'll comment "Wow, look at that!" or "That's a really high mountain" or "whoa, that's HUGE!" or "Oh, you colored that flower red". I leave the appraising of that -- the assigning of value -- to Jacob. He is just as proud of me commenting on the color of his drawing as he is if I said "good job!", and there is no unwanted fall-out. His pride is self-motivated and self-assigned.

So what did I say to Freckles when I saw her lambs this morning? "Wow, look at that!" She didn't need me to say anything. She already knew she'd done a good job.

Jacob's new buddy

2007-02-10T19:17:00.000-05:00

Here's a couple photos of Jacob's first meeting with his new pal. (She's the one with 4 feet.) Sadly, his little Shetland Pony hasn't recovered from his founder -- in fact, he's going through a horrible flare-up right now -- and it's been months since Jacob's been able to ride. So we finally made the decision that it was time to search for a new pony for Jacob. Today's visit was love at first sight! He was a little nervous when first mounting her -- she's quite a bit taller than his little pony. But he quickly settled in and had a great ride. This pony loves to move, not like his pony who putters along and has to be pursueded to keep moving, and Jacob was all smiles and songs while riding her.

We've still got a few details to iron out, but it looks likely this girl will be joining our crew sometime soon.

tooth ordeal, the final chapter (I HOPE!)

2007-02-09T16:23:00.000-05:00

Today was the day! Jacob got his 2nd (and last, at least for the present time) cavity filled.

He was very calm going in -- we'd been discussing the fact that the dentist wanted him to switch to a "big boy "toothpaste (something with fluoride, he's still using the same Gerber baby toothpaste we started him on at 5 months of age), so the first thing we did was talk to the hygeinist about it, and she got him a tube of Colgate kids' toothpaste. He brought it out to me to hold onto for him, and went willingly with his "friend" to the treatment area. I heard him chatting with her and the dentist as he climbed in the chair.

It didn't take long for things to go bad, though. I heard the dentist tell him that he was going to give him a ride (tipping the chair back), and that was followed almost immediately by sounds of distress. I'm not sure if Jacob caught sight of the needle or what exactly happened, but things went from totally calm to screaming and threatening in about 5 seconds flat. The dentist was being firm and telling him what he MUST do, the hygeinist was begging him to hold still, and Jacob was pleading to be let out of the chair. This was followed by general anxiety sounds, then the loud, escalating repetition of "are you done yet, are you done yet, ARE YOU DONE YET??" I heard the dentist, in a soothing voice, say something to try to calm him (obviously the novacaine was already injected at that point), telling him that they needed to rest and give his tooth time to go to sleep. I heard Jacob yell back "I DON'T WANT MY TEETH CLEAN!" His voice returned to a lower volume soon thereafter and I could hear him nervously answering questions. Eventually I heard the dentist inquire if he could feel something (probably a probe to see if he was numb enough), followed shortly by Jacob shrieking "NO NO NO NO NOT THE WHISTLE I DON'T WANT THE WHISTLE I'M AFRAID OF IT!!!" as the dentist turned on the drill. A tussle apparently ensued, I was on my feet in the waiting room, on the verge of dashing in, when I heard the dentist's firm, commanding voice say "Jacob, you HAVE to hold still or else we will have an accident". He then spoke in a softer voice asking Jacob about trains and train whistles (apparently they call the drill/polisher a "whistle" with him) and after that Jacob calmed down tremendously. I'm not sure if it was the firmness in which the dentist dealt with him, or if he just gave in to the inevitableness of the situation, but I didn't hear a cry, a wimper, or another sound from him, though I did hear lots of praise from both the hygeinist and the dentist at how good he was being. I suspect that someone finally thought to tell him that this was the LAST time he had to have this done, so he just needed to hold still and he wouldn't have to come back for this again -- that would have been motivation to "suck it up" and just get through it for him. I settled back into my seat, and nervously flipped through a magazine without ever looking at the pages.

Finally it was done. The dentist hollered for me to come on back, and there was Jacob sitting on the edge of the chair, picking through a basket of toy "prizes". His face was flushed, but overall his composure was good, much better than after the first visit. I guess something can be said for understanding what's about to happen -- even though it was something he really hated, at least he knew how the whole thing was going to go and that he WOULD get through it. A big hip hooray for RDI for that one, that most certainly would NOT have mattered to him before. I assured him that the next time he came in, it would NOT be for this, it would just be the cleaning that he likes to do, and he said "Yeah, I know, they told me that". And with that he trotted off to the waiting room to play Pac-man until I convinced him it was time to go.

THE END. I hope. You know I'll be scrubbing and flossing the heck out of his teeth from this point forward.

this week in homeschooling

2007-02-09T15:41:00.000-05:00

I decided a broader topic heading for my homeschooling posts would be appropriate, as I know I'm wanting to write about more than just about what books we're reading.

This past week's theme has been snow, specifically focusing on animals (especially birds) and how they survive during storms. As you can see, one of our projects this week was to make pine cone birdfeeders. We collected pine cones from our woods, stuffed peanut butter in the gaps, and rolled them in birdseed. Then we hung our finished birdfeeders on our Christmas Tree on our deck (moved out there after Christmas for this very purpose). We've spent a lot of time the past few days watching the birds come to eat at our feeders (and the other kinds of foods we put out for them -- seeds, nuts, berries, fruit). We've been identifying which type of birds come to our feeders, and which food that particular type of bird seems to like best -- we've discovered that the nuthatch and woodpecker prefer the suet, the titmouse really loves the peanut butter on our pinecone feeders, the chickadees prefer the black oil sunflower seeds, and the goldfinches like the thistle seeds. Mysteriously, the nuts we put out seem to disappear when we're not looking....could it have something to do with the squirrel we watched climb up onto our deck last week? We haven't seen him again since we started putting more than just birdseed out there, but I highly suspect he's sneaking in when we're not looking. I'm sure catching him in the act (bound to happen eventually!) will cause much excitement with the kids.

We did some googling to see photos of all the snowfall in Oswego, NY. Seven feet of snow on the ground -- imagine! My back is glad it's out there and not here, though a part of me would love to see what that depth of snow looks like -- imagine being able to tunnel through snow that is over your head! As for us, we got 4 inches of the white stuff last Friday, allowing me to break out the snow theme FINALLY. The books we've been reading reflect that. And we've spent as much time as the bitterly cold temperatures and windchills have allowed us to outdoors, sledding, making snow angels, having snowball fights (though our powdery snow doesn't ball up well, so a snowman is currently out of the question). The kids have developed a real passion for sledding, and we've had to insist on them coming inside long before they want to, cheeks, noses, and ears bright red, kissed by Jack Frost.

This week we've been reading:

The Big Snow, by Berta and Elmer Hader. This book is an oldie (published in 1948) but a goodie, and a Caldecott Medal winner. It describes all of the preparations that a wide variety of woodland creatures make in the late fall to prepare for winter. Then winter comes, along with a little snowfall. Then a big storm hits, burying and freezing all the available food. It talks about how this effects each creature. Then a little old man and little old woman come to the rescue for those who can't find food, putting out seeds and grain and hay, attracting all the critters who are still stirring to the feast. In the end, the groundhog puts in his Feb 2 appearance. The text is longer than most books that I choose for my kids, but because it's a topic they are exited about, this quickly became a favorite of theirs.

Blizzard, by Carole Gerber, illustrated by Marty Husted. The Map Man and I LOVE this book. My kids are luke-warm on it, and I'm not sure why. Lovely, simple rhymes and beautiful watercolor illustrations contrast a gorgeous New England winter storm with a cozy indoor scene, then blends the two in the end as the storm subsides and the boy ventures outdoors to make a snow angel. It's just SO appropriate for where we live and the season. I don't get why the kids aren't just thrilled to pieces over it. Go figure.

Gingerbread Baby, by Jan Brett. Here we go again, our favorite Author delivers another big hit around this house! This is the classic Gingerbread Man "catch me if you can" story, told as only Jan Brett could, with a Scandenavian flair and absolutely delicious illustrations, and a 100% totally satisfying ending (which certainly can not be said about the traditional version of the story!). The kids are ga-ga about this book, and so are we.

I expect our snow theme will run into next week too. Would be nice if we got another snowstorm in the interim, but it's not looking likely according to the weather forcast. Poor kids want to make a snowman!

a little more on Homeopathy

2007-02-05T08:46:00.000-05:00

I've had a request to talk a little more about Homeopathy, and what I'm doing with it for Jacob. I like requests, it prevents me from having to think up a topic to write about!

I originally wrote about Homeopathy during my back-history of Jacob's autism, and I'd encourage anyone not familiar with how Homeopathy works to read there first before continuing here.

I have long been a fan of Classical Homeopathy, using it as our primary health care option for any illness or injury, long before we became aware of Jacob's Autism. In fact, long before I even seriously considered having kids. So we were using Homeopathy with Jacob before we had a diagnosis -- even before we had an inkling of what was "wrong". In fact, I had taken him to a Professional Homeopath before I even suspected a thing, although I didn't employ the Homeopath that eventually helped us until after I knew there was something wrong (see my posts about The Storm).

Every child is going to have a different Constitutional Remedy, even those that may have the same presenting symptoms. A lot of Classical Homeopathy depends on finding exactly the right remedy for the child based on their individual temperment and make-up, in addition to the problems they are experiencing. In Jacob's case, the proper remedy was Argentum nitricum, which we arrived at under the guidance of a Professional Homeopath.

We started out by giving him a 30c dose twice a day for the first day, and a follow up dose the following morning. Then we waited and watched to see what happened. We would give him a follow-up dose of 30c whenever he experienced a meltdown or tantrum of extreme instensity or duration (think 3 hour earth-shattering meltdown), which is something that I've heard would be refered to as a "neurological event", and that's a description I quite agree with. Or when he experienced a string of meltdowns or intense anxiety attacks (several in the same day). The dose would return him almost instantly to a more settled, regulated state.

Once we realized that this was the proper remedy for him, we started fiddling around with the dose so that we could give it less often and have a more lasting effect. We finally settled on 200c pellets, which we gave to him as above. These seemed to help him maintain a more settled emotional state for a week or two at a time -- we'd only see small tantrum and "normal" (HA!) meltdowns, mild anxiety, etc. It would wear off over time, and we'd need to re-dose him, but eventually we got down to about once a month, and there it stabilized for quite some time.

Then we discovered RDI. Via our RDI work, Jacob developed self-regulation, and that is what finally ended the need for his Homeopathic remedy. We haven't given him a dose of that since....oh, gosh I can't remember. Mid-summer 2006, I think. Maybe early summer. Around the time that he mastered Stage 4 he no longer needed it. There were no more meltdowns. He wasn't an anxious child anymore. He could handle change. He could regulate himself, maintain his composure in all but extreme circumstances.

Did Homeopathy work to cure his Autism? Nope. Not even a little. But it did make it possible for him to be able to live with himself while we were doing the work to help him develop his own self-regulation. It prevented him from being self-injurious, and from lashing out at others. It ended seemingly endless "neurological events". And I think it prevented any more emotional damage being caused to him by the developmental route his Autistic brain was taking. It was a really important first step for us to get in control of this thing and give us the time to seek out actual solutions. It took us out of crisis mode and set us onto a path of healing.

Incidentally, and I refer to this in my original post on Homeopathy too, there is a practice called "Sequential Homeopathy", whose proponents claim works to "cure" Autism. It didn't make enough sense to me, in our particular situation, to pursue this -- we were already making strides with RDI before I'd ever heard of Sequential Homeopathy, so I didn't see a need to pursue it. It may be of use to some families to look into it, however, especially if they feel that their child's autism has been caused by or is being exacerbated by physical illness. I think the folks that find help with biomedical interventions may find help in pursuing Homeopathy too.

We still use Homeopathy for Jacob, for illnesses and injuries. Just like we do for any of us in this family, including our pets and farm animals. Other than having given Zoo Boy antibiotics once for an ear infection, and Jacob's continued use of Glycolax to keep him pooping regularly (a topic for another day....), my kids have never had any western medications -- no antibiotics, no fever-reducers (what a bizarre concept anyway -- the fever is there to naturally fight off the disease, why would you want to get rid of it???), no cold medicines. Homeopathy helps their bodies fight off infections naturally. It's worth reading about for anyone's health, but especially that of kids with ASD, whose neurology may be adversely affected by medications (I mean more than the average person would be affected!).

5 year and 20 year mission previews

2007-02-03T23:06:00.000-05:00

Originally I had planned to post our 5 year and 20 year misssion previews along with my post from yesterday, but the post ended up being so long that I decided to just wait and give them their own post. These were written in January 2006.

a scene 5 years from now:

phone rings:
voice: "Hi, this is John, can I talk to Jacob?"
I call Jacob in from the yard where he's playing baseball with his brother and a few friends. He yells "be right back!" as he comes running.
Jacob: "Hello?...Oh, hi John! You should come over, we're playing ball....Hey, Ma!!! Can John come over?"
me: "Ok, but we have to leave for Grandma's in a little while."
Jacob: "Yeah, come over now! We can play ball until I have to go to my Grandmother's birthday party."
Jacob yells "Thanks, Ma!" as he runs back out the door.
Sounds of laughter and fun from the yard.

This mission preview shows my 5-year vision of a "normalized" life, where we all will have moved beyond therapy being the central focus of our daily lives, and a 10 year old Jacob will have moved on to the important work of being a "just a kid" rather than a "kid with Autism".

a scene 20 years from now:

Jacob and his wife come to visit us, bringing pictures from their recent trip to Spain. Jacob helps his Dad barbecue steaks on the grill while I chat with his wife about the house they are about to move into, their first house. We're thinking about color themes for the nursery when Jacob come in from the deck with the food and teases me about becoming a grandmother and being old. We all sit down to dinner and discuss our plans to rent a weekend house on the Cape later that summer.

I chose to use a 20 year scene rather than a 10 year scene (the suggestion was long-term results, 10-20 years from now) because I figured that 10 years out would only get Jacob to age 15, and I figured we'd want to look at longer term results than that. I know that the scene shows some pretty specific things. However, it was not my intent to choose the sorts of thing that Jacob will be interested in (travel, marriage, parenthood), but rather to show that he'll have as likely a chance to have those things if they are things that he desires. That he, in fact, will have the choice of becoming anything he chooses, no ifs, ands, or buts.

mission previews

2007-02-02T14:13:00.000-05:00

One of the parent exercises that the RDI program has started having families do is to create "mission previews" about how we anticipate RDI changing our lives in the short term (1-2 years from now), in the mid-term (5-7 years from now) and in the long-term (10-20 years from now). The idea is to realistically imagine a scene from our lives during those time frames and write down how our lives will have changed. We're talking minor things here, how our everyday life is going to be altered by RDI, not grandiose goals or technical statements.

I first participated in this exercise when I attended the 4-day Parent Training in January 2006. It was recently pointed out to me that a year has passed, and that I should look at my 1-year mission preview and see how it compares to real life for me. Here's what it looked like when I originally wrote it:

A scene from next year at this time:

driving home from the supermarket
Jacob: "Mom, can we stop at the playground on the way home?"
me: "no, I'm sorry, we've got to get home, we have icecream in the trunk"
Jacob: "Why does the icecream need to get home?"
me: "Because otherwise it will melt."
Jacob: "Oh. I really wanted to go to the playground."
me: "Tell you what, maybe we can go tomorrow."
Jacob: "Ok! Maybe John can come too."

At the time, I wondered if I was being a little overly optomistic. At that point, Jacob had never thought about a place to go without us prompting him to come up with one. In fact, he had never independently asked to do ANYTHING. He'd never asked a "why" question, nor do I think he ever actually wondered about anything (he certainly had the ABILITY to ask "why" about things, he just lacked the motivation -- curiosity -- to do it). And the thought about delaying gratification like that at the time seemed monumental -- the mere suggestion would have caused a whole lot of stress and tears (for both him and me!). So suggesting that he'd be "OK" about me saying we'd come back another day seemed to be a pretty lofty goal. And then the final thought, that he would actually think to include a friend, was more a pipe dream than anything.

In looking at our mission preview now, a year later, I was shocked (and thrilled!) to see that every gain I hoped to see in a year's time has come true! About a month after we pulled him out of the pre-K school program to homeschool him full time, he not only mastered RDI Stage 4 (variations), which allowed him the flexibility to be OK with delaying gratification, but he also started asking "why" questions and showing the first signs of true curiosity. He now is coming up with ideas of things to do and is asking if he can do them. And he's even, on occassion, asked if his brother can join in the fun, too.

It all came true! I was floored. And excited. And jumping up in down in my seat. And when, in sharing my thoughts on this with a friend, she suggested writing another mission preview for the coming year, I gladly obliged. Here it is:

A scene from 1 year from now:

Jacob is sitting at the table working on a crayon drawing.
J: "I need a black piece of paper"
Me: "You do?"
J: "Yeah, white crayons won't show up on white paper. I'm drawing the snowstorm that's coming tomorrow."
Me: (searching through our paper supply) "I don't see any black, best I can do is pink."
J: (considering that) "Never mind, I'll just use the white paper as the snow and I'll draw in the other stuff around it."
He gets up from his drawing and goes to the window, looking outside.
J: "Do you think we'll get a lot of snow?"
Me: "Well, they're predicting almost a foot."
J: "Yeah, but sometimes they're wrong."
Me: "That's true."
J: "Maybe we'll get more than that!"
Me: "Maybe we'll get less"
J: "Maybe we'll get rain"
We both laugh, and Jacob returns to his drawing.

The changes that would need to happen to make this come true? Creative, flexible problem-solving. More complex curiosity. Theory of mind. A sophisticated sense of humor.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again -- it's going to be a big, exciting year!

the six birds

2007-02-01T11:53:00.000-05:00

Following the lead of our succesful day on Monday, I decided to try again yesterday to take one of the kids' idea and run with it for our day's activities. Wednesdays are fairly relaxed days for us anyway -- we have a community exercise/movement class in the morning, then we spend a quiet afternoon at home, both because the kids (especially Zoo Boy) are pretty beat after 45 minutes of solid movement, and also because I don't do enough of that in general -- just being at home -- so I've actually written time for that in our weekly schedule.

After our rest time, I set up an OT activity for them (a short obstacle course with a lot of bouncing and jumping), then played a round of "fishin' for favorites" to get in some more bouncing and some focused RDI time. At the end, the kids jumped into the "fishing hole" (the ball pit) and pretended they were catching fish. That got us talking about animals that eat fish, and then more specifically about birds that eat fish. Which gave me an idea.

In watching a Blues Clues episode the other day, Zoo Boy asked if we could play a game they did on the show -- there were cards on the floor with pictures of various colored objects on them, and a leader called out the colors and the kids had to jump onto the right colored object. I have a deck of bird flashcards, so I sorted through the deck and extracted the colorful birds from it. I scattered the cards on the ground, then explained the rules to the boys. Then I called out a color and the boys had to jump onto a bird that was that color. (The photo is of the kids playing this game, listening for the next color.) Then we picked up that bird card and flipped it over to find out the name of the bird. This game was a BIG hit with the kids (especially Zoo Boy, our budding Ornithologist), and they insisted on playing it twice.

One of the birds in the deck was a Kookabura, so after the game was over, I left out the Kookabura card and we all danced around it singing the "Kookabura" song with assorted variations in words and movements (sometimes he sat in the old gum tree, sometimes he climbed up the old gum tree, sometimes he flew around the old gum tree, sometimes he ate gumdrops).

After several rounds of the song, I fished out a book I had recently purchased at a local thrift shop for $1. It's entitled The Song of Six Birds by Rene Deetlefs, illustrated by Lyn Gilbert, both from South Africa. The story tells the tale of a village girl who is given a songless flute as a gift. There are wonderful snippets of village life displayed as she wanders about filling her flute with the song of 6 native African birds. In the end, the beautiful music she plays inspires a village-wide festival and celebration. WONDERFUL story!

After reading it, the kids wanted to flip back through the book to find the names of the birds and the songs they sang, and we all practiced singing the songs of the six birds. They then started flipping through the flashcards to see if they could find any of the six birds in there, and I faded into the background to leave them to their quest. Eventually they started playing pretend games about the six birds, having birds from the deck of cards talk to the six birds, etc. By the time The Map Man got home, Zoo Boy had an entire birthday party set up for the six birds and we each had a role as a party guest.

I officially declared the day another raging success. Which has me thinking that my best plan for using the Enki curriculum is going to be to arrange my materials in thematic folders so that I have easy access to materials to use based on the natural inclination of the kids as to what is interesting them that particular day/week. They certainly seem more integrated with the experience when it comes from an inner place, and they have a more open intake of the "lesson". The day just seems to flow easier, more naturally. And the flexibility of that sort of set-up appeals to me, strong believer in unschooling that I am.

time for an elephant?

2007-01-31T18:32:00.000-05:00

Here's a pic from earlier in the week, kids still in their jammies playing with a lego set.

When Jacob was just a little dude, before we started working with RDI and unlocked his inner communicator, there wasn't much he said that wasn't completely scripted. Mostly lines from Kipper (yes, WITH a British accent, don't think that didn't fool a few people!), Blues Clues, or Finding Nemo. What wasn't scripted was generally held to one or two word demands. Like "want cookie".

So imagine my surprise the day, while riding in the car on our way to the pre-K class we had recently begun with him, he suddenly out of the blue said, thoughtfully, "Mommy, time for an elephant?" I nearly drove off the road. I adjusted my mirror to look in his face, and said "What?! Jacob, what did you say?" Calmly he repeated "Time for an elephant?" I slowly pulled the car off the road so I could turn around completely in my seat. He was absently kicking a foot, playing with a snap on his jacket. "What was that again?" I asked one more time. He met my eyes and said, again, "Time for an elephant?" I'd heard him right, but I had NO idea what it meant, what my expected response was, where this bizarre question had come from. I muttered "I don't know what that means" as I turned around and went back to driving.

The next day, in the same exact location, his voice piped up from the back seat. "Mommy, time for an elephant?" The effect was equally flooring to me. As I sat there silently contemplating this as I drove, he repeated "Time for an elephant?" Realizing he was waiting for a response, I said "I don't know what that means." He seemed satisfied with that answer.

It happened again, the following day, and every day after that, on our way to school, in that same exact spot. It happened when he was with The Map Man at that same spot. We kept responding with "I don't know what that means", said with a bit of an exaggerated voice which had started eliciting giggles from him. He started giggling before he even said it, knowing that it now was a big joke. Sometimes we added another question "Jacob, time for a tiger?" to which he'd giggle and respond "I don't know what that means." He also started varying it -- it always started with the Elephant, but sometimes the 2nd time around he'd say "Mommy, time for a Monkey?" to which I'd respond "Honey, it's ALWAYS time for a monkey." This went on for the better part of a year. Once we started RDI, The Map Man and I dreamed of the day that Jacob's communication skills would be advanced enough to be able to ask what it meant -- and why in that particular location?

The elephant has since been long forgotten, but we drove past the location the other day, jogging my memory about it. I looked in the rear-view mirror and said "Jacob?" "Yeah?" he responded. "Time for an elephant?" I asked, with the same inquisitive tone he'd used. His eyebrows went up, and he laughed and said "WHAT??" like I'd flipped my lid. I repeated the question. He laughed a nervous my-mom-has-completely-lost-it-and-I'm-trapped-in-the-car-with-her kind of laugh and said, sincerely, "I don't know what that means."

Nor will we ever, apparently.

books, week of Jan 28

2007-01-31T18:04:00.000-05:00

Tea anyone?

Here's what we've been reading this week:

Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening, by Robert Frost, illustrated by Susan Jeffers. A nice introduction to my favorite poet, just a line or two per page, with lovely pencil drawings full of life and detail, and just a splash of color here and there. I can't think of a nicer book for a winter's night.

The Hat, by Jan Brett. Another hit by my favorite children's Author/Illustrator! A girl's woolens hung to "air out" before winter slowly dissappear as various animals attempt to copy a wayward hedgehog. Absolutely endearing text and pictures, with her usual amazing ability to tell several sides of the same story at once. A real hit around here, our favorite book of the week.

The Eyes of Gray Wolf, by Jonathan London, illustrated by Jon van Zyle. I really like London's books -- realistic without being gruesome, and he always chooses just the right illustrator. But these books are perhaps a little TOO realistic for my crew, books with more whimsy and fantasy seem to hold my kids' interest for longer periods of time. The boys loved this book the first day, but interest began waning after that, while The Hat continues to be a favorite. We'll read it again tonight, but if it meets with an equally luke warm reception tonight, I may replace it with another book for the remainder of the week. With both the full moon and Groundhog's day on Friday, and a potential snowstorm brewing, there are plenty of other good selections available.

animals animals animals

2007-01-29T17:32:00.000-05:00

I decided to try out another approach to our day today. Rather than picking out a theme for this week's activities (mostly because I hadn't decided on one -- I've been rolling along with a general winter theme for a couple of weeks), I decided to just "go" with what the kids were doing, and see where that took us (which, in homeschooling terms, would be considered a more child-led, or "organic", approach).

They started their day, as every day, with creative free-play. And here's a photo of what they chose to do during that time. They pulled out a set of African animals and played out various scenes with them for about an hour. Much of their play was around a familiar theme over the past year or so (however long it's been that Jacob's actually willingly participated in pretend play with his brother): the animals interacting in families, babies seeking out their parents, young ones growing up, etc. Today, however, the play shifted a bit after the family themes to be a hunting theme -- instead of the kids playing the parts of the animals and giving them voice, they became hunters on the African plains, and the animals became their prey. Interesting twist, and something new for Jacob (although Zoo Boy has been playing the role of The Great White Hunter since last summer). Usually anything to do with killing or otherwise injuring anything is highly resisted by Jacob. Anyway, by the time breakfast time arrived, they had already experienced quite the adventure whilst on safari.

As I was preparing their breakfasts, Jacob trotted off to him room and retrieved his current issue of My Big Backyard (a magazine put out by The National Wildlife Society for kids his age), which just happened to be about African animals (at least in part). He read selections from it to Zoo Boy while they ate, and both of them sang a song about an Elephant Shrew (set to the music from "Winnie The Pooh"), and pretended to make animal snouts from the directions in the magazine. (If we'd had time for our small-motor activity this afternoon, I would have dug up the materials needed and we could have sat down and made them -- maybe later in the week if we're still working on an animal theme.)

After breakfast, I had to run to the barn to check on the sheep (we're very close to lambing time, we need to make frequent checks to be sure there aren't any wet lambs turning into lambsicles in the frigid temperatures). Zoo Boy dug out a video entitled "A Trip To The San Diego Zoo" from our collection of videos, and asked if they could watch that while I was in the barn. I popped it in for them (happy to know that they'd be occupied if I got hung up with a lambing problem and couldn't come right back in) then ran down to the barn, where there was no action. As I came back in, I could hear the boys engrossed in a play scenario where they were pretending to be IN the video, visiting the zoo in person. I grabbed a shower and took care of some laundry so as not to interupt them.

When the video ended, I produced a handful of animal flashcards and said that for our exercise time today, we were going to take turns drawing a card, and then we'd all move like the animal that was drawn. I had pre-arranged the cards so that we got a variety of movements for a well-rounded workout and plenty of beneficial OT work. First we were hawks, soaring through the living room, down the hall, over the beds, and back into the living room with our arms spread, banking too and fro. Then we were polar bears, lumbering along on all fours along a similar route that the hawks followed, although the smaller polar bears (as in, the boys, not me) wound up slipping into a pool of ice water (the ball pit) and swimming around trying to catch seals. Next we were frogs, jumping on all fours along the same path, winding up jumping into the "pond" (ball pit again). Next were hermit crabs, crab-walking the route, and hoisting large exercise balls onto our backs as our "shells". When we were elephants, we stomped along with our arm-trunks swinging too and fro, and gave ourselves a ball-bath at the "waterhole" (that ball pit sure comes in handy....) at the end. We had a hopping good time as kangaroos. And we climbed over and under and through everything we could find as spiders, spinning webs and catching flies. As jellyfish, we wiggled and jiggled and giggled our way through the house, and finally as knuckle-walking gorillas, we pretended to eat bananas, snuggled in our tree house, and thoroughly made monkeys out of ourselves. This activity even managed to captivate Zoo Boy, which isn't easy to do. He usually immediately rejects anything smacking of organization, and he tends to wear out long before the end of anything resembling exercise (if we can manage to get him engaged with it at all). But he stuck right there with us for this entire activity, even taking the lead on a few of the animal variations.

Then we had to run out to our OT appointment -- the office is an hour away and we had to run a few errands afterwards, so we were gone for a 4 hour chunk in the middle of the day. For my afternoon trip to the barn, on arriving home, Zoo Boy requested Blue's Safari (a Blues Clues episode featuring -- da da dum! -- African animals! Imagine that! We definitely had a strong theme going!). For our focused RDI time, we played a game of Hedge Harvest (suburban animals foraging for food), and currently the kids are involved in a game of go-fish with animal cards. Tonight for Family Story Time, I'll add "The Eyes of Gray Wolf" by Jonathan London to our other selections for the week (I'll give a run-down of all 3 later in the week), and will finish off the bedtime routine with an animal related video.

Not only did it seem neat that everything fit together around our day's theme, but we had one of the most regulated, natural-feeling rhythms going that we'd had in a long time (since some of the stronger themes we worked with in the fall, where our days were based around apples or pumpkins or autumn leaves). I'm thinking that keeping broad themes available and then working child-selected themes into the fabric of our homeschooling is going to produce the best results for us, all interwoven with our Enki rhythms and educational philosophy.

hedge harvest game

2007-01-27T18:50:00.000-05:00

This game was a real find -- Jacob's Aunt found it for him, despite the fact that she has no training in RDI whatsoever. But she couldn't have made a better RDI choice! The game is the Over the Hedge Hedge Harvest game, put out by Sababa Games (yeah, I never heard of them either) and Dreamworks Productions. It is labeled for ages 5 and up, although Zoo Boy seems to have no trouble playing it at nearly 4 years.

Unlike standard board games, where players move along a track towards an end goal (which in and of itself can be good for productive uncertainty -- who knows what that roll of the die or spin of the spinner will bring), this game has several interconnected loops of track, and with each turn the player has several choices as to which way to move his player. The goal is to collect one each of 7 different food tokens, which can be received by landing on a food item space, or as a result of a lucky draw of a "treasure trove" card, which are drawn when landing on numerous "treasure trove" spaces.

Let me tell you all the ways this benefits Jacob's RDI program. You might be surprised!

1. There are many opportunities for Stage 1 (emotion sharing) and Stage 2 (referncing) skills to be practiced via playing with other family members (and, eventually we anticipate, friends). This is true of any game.

2. As with many games, the players take turns -- Jacob has to both wait for his turn before playing and pay enough attention to the game at large to know when it's his turn (good Stage 6 co-regulation work).

3. Productive uncertainty in massive doses -- you roll the die when it's your turn, so you never know which number you're going to roll. And then when you land on a "treasure trove" space and select a card, you don't know what it might say. Some are good, some are bad, some provide more chances for productive uncertainty by making you move a certain number of spaces in a certain direction (where will you land?) or by having to roll the die and try to get a certain number in order to win a food token. This is the part of the game that Jacob likes the best -- the uncertainty of what might be in the "treasure trove". (My gosh, we've come a long way with our remediation program, for me to say that the uncertainty is the best part for him!!)

4. Appraisal work -- this is the best board game I've come across so far for working on Appraisal. When you roll the die, you have to examine (count out) all the possible results from moving in each direction, then make a decision based on all the possibilities as to which is the best move to make. So not only are there choices to be made, but also consequences for making those choices (depending on where you land). Sometimes it's an obvious/easy choice (a lose a turn space in one direction, a food token in the other), but most of the time the choices are more subtle (a blank space in either direction, but getting closer to different food tokens in each direction). Even those treasure trove cards provide a chance for using appraisal to assess the situation -- if you are told you can select any food token, you need to decide which one -- will it be the one furthest from your "home" (sometimes you are sent back to your home, so it's often easy to get the closest token), or the one furthest from where you are now, or the one that isn't on the same path as the rest of the ones you need? Sometimes you're told to give or take a food token from another player, so you have to decide which one will be easier for you to get again, or which one will be hardest for the other player to get.

5. General uncertainty of when the game will end. This game can take anywhere from 20 minutes to several hours to play, all depending on the luck of the draw of those treasure trove cards. Sometimes it just goes on for so long that you all have to decide on a "good enough" stopping point, and whoever has the most food tokens wins. More great RDI work!

We do a lot of spotlighting of appraisal with this game, and we scaffold it so that Jacob can more easily "see" and understand his choices. Sometimes he chooses poorly (deciding to draw a treasure trove card -- where he winds up losing a token this time -- instead of landing on a token space and assuring himself of a token), and we spotlight the consequence of making that choice. This works on one of our Stage 7 RDI objectives: "Connect decisions with their consequences". We also demonstrate another objective, "Practice self narration and self evaluation of current actions" by talking our way through our own thought processes as we play, and then narrating his choices for him as we walk him through the appraisal process after his roll of the die. We'll know we're having success when he starts saying things like "I'm going to go this way, because then I'll get a treasure trove card". We're not there yet. But we will be someday soon!

small motor and books for this week

2007-01-26T16:18:00.000-05:00

The boys worked with a marble and block run set this week during the "small motor skills" part of our daily rhythms. Here's a photo of them in the midst of the creative process. They also did some play with playdoh on another day, and then drawing/coloring with block crayons on another.

In books this week, we've been reading the following during our Family Story Time each evening:

It's Winter, by Linda Glaser, illustrated by Susan Swan. This is part of a series, one for each season, by this author and illustrator team, and it's as good as the It's Fall book we enjoyed during that season. The verse is simple yet engaging, and the cut-paper "sculptured" illustrations draw you right into the scene. The kids love this book, and can relate to it now that we've got snow on the ground. (I've had this book for awhile, but wanted to wait to use it until it actually looked and felt like winter around here!)

Winter Days in the Big Woods, by Laura Ingalls Wilder, illustrated by Renee Graef. Another in the My First Little House Books series, this story tells about the Ingalls family (from Laura's perspective) as they prepare for winter, and the indoor activities that fill their winter days, from household chores, to pretend play and paper dolls and stories on Pa's lap. This entire series is a BIG hit with the kids, particularly Jacob, who I think has a crush on Laura....

Trouble with Trolls, by Jan Brett. I LOVE Jan Brett, she's definitely my favorite kids' author and illustrator. Her stories are imagination-inspiring, and her beautiful, detailed illustrations are SO involved, with side-stories always happening beneath and around the main theme. I can't say enough good things about her. In this tale, Treva meets a family of greedy trolls who try to steal her dog, and she repeatedly has to use her wit to save her dog from them. Just enough imagery and peril to inspire my kids' imagination and excitement without losing or scaring them. Great book!

fishin' for favorites

2007-01-25T15:07:00.000-05:00

Here's a photo of an activity I came up with to help us work on a couple of our current RDI objectives we're working on, "Catalog personal preferences in relative degrees" and "Catalog likes and dislikes of family members".

I clipped a paper clip onto each of a set of 20 index cards with categories, such as "movie", "book", "food". Then I distributed the cards, face down, in the ball pit. We each got on our "moon bounce" toys (for a little OT work while we were at it -- I often combine RDI and OT, because they combine so nicely!) and bounced around the outside of the ball pit until we got into a position we wanted to "fish" from (changing position with each turn). We then used a magnetic fishing pole (part of a magnetic fishing puzzle set) to "fish" out the cards, each taking a turn. After retreiving a card, the person who "caught" it reads the category, then tells his/her favorite thing from that category, then passes the pole on to the next person for them to have a turn.

This works on our first objective, because Jacob has to select his FAVORITE item from the category. (This builds on the work we've done previously, just listing items he likes from these types of categories.) It works on our second category as he gets a chance to hear what other family members' preferences are.

Although for the past year and a half I've been focused almost entirely on RDI lifestyle, with this set of objectives I'm working on (the "new" Stage 7) , I've decided to block out a half hour or so of each day to work on our objectives in a focused manner, through games and activities that I set up to target our objectives. This doesn't mean that we don't still practice RDI lifestyle all day long. MUCH of our day is spent giving Jacob the opportunity to practice making choices in real-life situations, and allowing him to listen to OUR reasons for making choices.

For instance, I'll announce that we need to go to the grocery store, and then as we're pulling out of our driveway, I'll say "I think we'll go to the Big Y today, because it's the closest grocery store and we need to get home in time for music class", or "Today we'll shop at the Stop and Shop, because we need the crackers you like, and that's the only store that carries them." What I'm spotlighting here is my system of Appraisal -- the thing that I'm finding important at that moment that I'm basing my decisions on. "I'm getting chocolate icecream, because chocolate is my favorite flavor."

Initially we just provided lots and lots of choices without consequenses for Jacob "which color shirt to wear?", "blue cup or yellow cup for your orange juice?", "shall we turn left or stay on the trail we're on?". Now we're upping the ante, so to speak -- we're giving him choices to make that require some thinking and have consequences. "Do you want to go to the sometown playground, which is closer so we can play longer, or the othertown playground, which is further away but has that slide you like?"

Self Awareness and Appraisal are our big goals for the coming year. Along with that, I think his Theory of Mind will begin developing, and the ability to think conceptually. Like I've said before, it's going to be a big year for us!

stop junk mail, save the planet

2007-01-24T18:46:00.000-05:00

I encourage you all to go here: http://nativeforest.org/stop_junk_mail/nfn_junk_mail_guide.htm and take 5 minutes out of your life to follow their simple steps to reducing your volume of junk mail. This will save trees, reduce waste, and help ensure more tomorrows for our children and our planet.

If that's too much to ask, then please at least remember that all junk mail can be recycled -- please don't throw it in the trash.

tooth ordeal, volume 3

2007-01-24T14:39:00.000-05:00

Jacob had the first of his two cavities filled today. We of course had already decided to go with the composite, although it DEFINITELY made it much more of an ordeal for him than it would have with the amalgam. (Still and all, I'd rather preserve his overall health than save him a bit of short-term trauma, so I'm still very happy with our decision on this.) He had to have 3 rounds of grinding/polishing that he wouldn't have had to have with amalgam (the dentist would have just drilled, and stuffed the amalgam in there).

As I've mentioned previously, this is a pediatric practice, with a dentist that has an actual Autism protocol for dealing with Autistic patients. They've build up his trust over a series of visits, as well as introducing him to all the equiptment they might possibly have to use on him. He LOVES these people, and we're always sure to arrange appointments so that the same Hygienist is working on him as well as his "friend" the dentist. This dentist happens to have an adult son who is Autistic, so his mannerism with Jacob is the sort he only gets from parents of other Spectrum kids -- pretty much 100% appropriate, and never taking Jacob's good mood at the moment as an indication of him being able to handle things in the same way a neuro-typical kid would. He always assumes that the least little thing might set Jacob off, so he does a lot of pro-active work to prepare him for each thing, and has back-up plans on what to do if things go awry.

That might make it easier for folks to understand why I trust these folks completely, and willingly go along with their request that I do NOT accompany Jacob back into their work area. (Of course, I did, at their request, the first couple of visits until Jacob learned to trust them.) I can hear everything going on, and can peek around the corner when I feel I need to, but I'm out of Jacob's vision for the entire thing. I know that they are experts with this sort of thing, so I happily leave it in their capable hands. It's always worked well for Jacob before, and it seemed to work well this time too. I really think if I was there, he'd be trying to crawl out of that chair for me to "rescue" him.

This dentist is also a big believer in NOT using anesthesia in the office. He doesn't take chances with kids' lives, and I 100% support that. So many people have reccommended that I find a dentist that uses laughing gas, but for the same reason I don't want mercury in his teeth, I don't want drugs in his lungs/brain. Of course I agreed to novacaine, but I was very happy that he was insistant on do this without giving Jacob anything stronger. (This is also the reason I so seriously considered his offer to put in amalgam fillings -- he wouldn't have reccommended this if he wasn't so sure that it was a viable option for reducing Jacob's trauma.)

Here's the details on how the visit went:

We walked in at our appointment time (actually, Jacob SKIPPED in), and Jacob sat in a chair waiting to go see his friends, more interested in interacting with them than in playing with the toys. (WOW, how far we've come with EVERYTHING!) When his Hygienist appeared, he squealed with glee and dashed over to take her hand and have her lead him into the back. (That made my heart skip a beat, actually, knowing what was to come....I'm guessing he won't be that happy to see her next time.) I could hear them making chit chat with him as they got him situated at the work station. Before they got started, the dentist paid me a quick visit to confirm what was going to happen with me, and commented on Jacob's great mood today.

The first thing I heard from the back was the dentist explaining some of the equiptment they were putting on Jacob, and then I heard him say "Jacob, this is going to be a little pinch" as he apparently shot in the novacaine. When I didn't hear any screaming or crying, I sank back in relief in my seat. They chatted quite awhile about various kid type stuff while the novacaine was taking effect. I actually picked up a magazine and started glancing through it.

Then he turned the drill on.

Immediately I could hear sounds of distress coming from Jacob. There was groaning, crying, a little screaming, and a very clear declaration of "that's SCARY!" I could hear the staff reassuring Jacob that all was well and praising him for holding still. I could hear him begging for it to be done. I was half aware of the magazine slipping off my lap onto the floor as I perched on the edge of my seat, waiting to run to my boy's rescue. But in a few minutes, the drilling was done. I could hear lots of praise, Jacob's crying and noises stopped, and in a few minutes his voice returned to normal and resumed chatting with everyone while they prepared the composite material. I released my death-grip on the arms of my chair and sagged back in the seat, heart still pounding. I listened while the dentist explained the stuff he was doing while filling the teeth, the special light used to make it hard, etc. And then he explained that he was going to file it and make it shiny.

Jacob must have seen him pick up the tool again, because I heard the shout "OH NO! NOT THAT AGAIN!" in a panicked tone. The dentist talked him through it, Jacob continued to beg for it all to end. No screaming this time, more of a resigned-to-this-torture type of thing. This was the procedure that we could have avoided with the amalgam. But like I said, even though it pretty much tripled his torture time, I couldn't have lived with myself if I'd let him put mercury in my kid's head. So I just bit my lip and choked back my tears, and busied myself tidying up the magazine rack.

The dentist came out while the staff was cleaning him up, and sang Jacob's praises -- he said that despite his protests and unhappiness with the procedure, Jacob kept his mouth open the entire time, and they didn't need to use the bite block at all. He never tried to climb out of the chair, and the few times he tried moving, he settled back down when they asked him to hold still. He rated it as a completely successful visit. At about that time, Jacob came down the hall and into my arms, then directly to the coat rack where he hurriedly put on his outerwear, blinking back tears, avoiding looking at anyone. I set up another appointment in a few weeks, and they warned me about his cheek being numb for the next hour or so (next time will be worse, as it's a bottom tooth and they'll have to numb his entire jaw on that side). We'll see how successful I am at getting him through those doors again....

Fortunately, while I was making the appointment and Jacob was trying to leave, another little boy and his mom came in. Jacob immediately turned into host, and showed the little boy all the toys in the waiting room. Then he got caught up in playing along with him, so I sank into a chair and let him have some relaxed time, reminding him gently about not chewing on his cheek when it looked like he might be. When the hygienist showed up for the little boy, Jacob introduced her "I'd like you to meet my friend, D.". She thanked Jacob and took the little boy down the hall, and Jacob said he was ready to go home. (Well, back to his grandparent's house, where Zoo Boy was waiting and playing -- they had a great time tossing Jacob's new foam airplane -- his "prize" from the dentist for being so good -- with their Grandpa.)

So, we survived! I'm actually very pleased with how it all went, really best case scenario. I'm pretty worried about getting him in for the next appointment, and I'm REALLY interested to see what he has to say about it to The Map Man when he gets home from work. But I'm less scared about the actual procedure being done again. I think we're both going to live through it.

Clara

2007-01-22T19:10:00.000-05:00

This evening our dear old feline friend, Clara, passed away. She was a ripe old 24 years old, and had never been sick in all the time she lived with us. I adopted Clara at the age of 16 from a vet I worked for, when her owner brought her in saying that she didn't get along with the family's two new kittens, so they felt that it was "her time" and that she needed to be "put to sleep".

It was true that Clara didn't like other cats, but she adored her private "presidential suite" in our laundry room and brought us much joy in her golden years, always greeting us with a special 'prrow!' and a battery of head rubs and love nibbles.

I took this photo of her this past fall, still looking vibrant at an age that most cats never see. She left the world in the same dignified and peaceful manner we were accustomed to her displaying -- she simply curled up and went to sleep.

Doing laundry will never be the same. Rest well, sweet kitty.

2007-01-20T00:04:00.000-05:00

I didn't just forget to post about what we're reading this week. I actually just shirked my general parenting/educating responsibility for a bit. Between the end of last week and the middle of this week, we didn't have much in the way of Family Story Time. In fact, most nights we were lucky to get in even one book at bedtime, and our bedtime routine fell more into a shove-in-a-movie-for-the-kids-while-we-run-around-getting-stuff-done sort of thing, with us both landing back in bed with them in time for lights out.

So, by the time we donned our good-parent Family Story Time hats again, it was last night, and we decided to just go ahead and finish out this week with the same books we read LAST week. Fortunately, the kids are thrilled with that idea, since they loved last weeks books. We DID make one change, though. We replaced "Welcome To The Ice House" with this book:

"Winter: an Alphabet Acrostic" by Steven Schnur, Illustrated by Leslie Evans. If you've been reading my blog right along, or following Jacob's art blog, you'll recognize that as the same format/author/artist that wrote one of our favorite books of the fall season, "Autumn: an Alphabet Acrostic". Well, guess what, they have books for each of the four seasons. It's an alphabetical collection of beautiful Acrostic Poems (a form of poetry that has captivated Jacob ever since his first introduction to it -- the letters from the title of the poem starts the first word in each line of the poem) with a seasonal theme. The linoleum-cut illustrations add the proper home-made feel to the collection. We of course also have the other titles in this series, so you'll definitely see them mentioned in their appropriate seasons. I HIGHLY reccommend these wonderful books.

We finally got some snow here, and it finally seems like winter! Let the wintery stories begin in earnest!

an enormous nibble

2007-01-18T15:31:00.000-05:00

Well, the nibble itself wasn't enormous -- in fact, it was so tiny, I'm not sure he actually tasted what he nibbled. But the fact of the matter is that Jacob actually took a bite of something new today! And for him, that's just ENORMOUS!

He didn't want to. In fact, you'd think I was asking him to take a nice big mouthful of toxic waste from the look on his face when I asked him if he wanted to taste the Sun Chip I was munching on. But I kept after him. And instead of screaming and running for the other room, he started to look a little curious about it. He finally took a chip from me, eyed is suspiciously, then took a crumb from a corner in his teeth and pulled it off. He immediately gave me a look of great disgust, and I launched his water bottle at him so that he could rinse the offensive taste down, and followed up quickly with a couple of M&Ms (which he was simply delighted to receive). I said "see, you did it!" and told him that I was REALLY proud of him trying that Sun Chip. When The Map Man gets home tonight, I'll bring the topic up again, and hopefully it will be with a sense of pride that he shares his big eating adventure with his father. If not, then I guess we just weren't ready for this sort of thing yet. Either way, it was worth a shot.

Maybe by the time I'm ready to systematically deal with the whole eating thing, it'll have already taken care of itself. That's the nice thing about RDI -- it's made me feel so successful, that I actually dare to dream the big dreams.

theory of mind

2007-01-15T10:33:00.000-05:00

Here's my football boys, all ready for the big game (divisional playoffs, where our beloved New England Patriots beat the odds and beat the team with the best record this year). Jacob's ultimate football hero is Tom Brady -- kid's got good taste. Zoo Boy just likes to dress the part, he's not particularly into sports.

ANYWAY, what I really want to talk about today is Theory of Mind (TOM). TOM is the understanding a person has that other people have their own thought proccesses that are not directly connected to that person's own thought proccess. This is a developmental thing that comes along as typical kids' brains are doing all the amazing things that typical kids' brains do while they are toddling around. By 3 years of age, Theory of Mind is in place. For a typical child, that is. TOM is often entirely missing for a child with ASD.

There's a quick and easy way to test for TOM. In the presence of the child you're testing plus one other person, you hide an object, then have the other person leave the room. You then, in view of the child, move the object to a different hiding location. Then you ask the child where he/she thinks the other person will think it is. A child with TOM will point to the original hiding spot, realizing that the other person has no idea that we moved the object. A child without TOM will point to the place the object is actually hiding.

I did this test recently with my kids, spurred on by a discussion about TOM on an internet list, and at the suggestion by others who've met Jacob, seen how "well" he's doing, and thought he must have TOM in place now. I knew he didn't, but I figured I'd test it out anyway, in case I wasn't right. So I set it up to test both my kids. I hid a ball under a pillow with both my kids present, sent one out of the room, then moved the ball to under a box, and asked the child watching me where the other would think the ball was. Zoo Boy immediately giggled (getting the trick) and pointed to the pillow. When I did the same test with Jacob, we had different results.

First, we had a bit of a receptive language problem. When I initially asked him where he thought Zoo Boy would think the ball was, he pointed to a totally different location (misinterpreting what I was asking him -- he was picking a new location to hide the ball). So I narrowed his choices down and explained it a bit more simply. He immediately chose the box the ball was now hiding in. No TOM. No surprise to me. Probably a surprise to a lot of folks that see how "well" Jacob is doing these days.

So, why are we still lacking in TOM when he's doing so well with everything else?

Because we haven't addressed it yet, of course. Jacob's Autism is a pretty simple thing -- he didn't have much from the higher RDI stages before we started the program, so it's truly been a step-by-step process for him. A lot of kids aren't like that -- the Aspergery-type kids often have quite a bit of stuff "going on" up in their heads, and their ASD deficits are more like holes in their development, rather than the "blank slate" my kid is. The stage work we've focused on up to this point in our RDI program has helped Jacob out with his social development and communication ability. But we've only just started to scratch the surface of TOM.

Which is why I think this next year is going to be the most exciting for us so far. We're going to be addressing those things that no only help Jacob to LOOK and ACT more like a typical kid (which have been our focus up to this point, and successfully so, there aren't many folks out there that would guess he's got Autism), but now we're focusing on the things that will help him THINK more like a typical kid. I have no doubt that by this time next year, Jacob will "get" the ball hiding game and will have the TOM to realize that Zoo Boy has no way of knowing that we moved the ball.

It's going to be a GREAT year!

our first Stage 7 objective

2007-01-12T19:25:00.000-05:00

So, we began our Stage 7 adventure today. And I'm going to drag you all through the entire thing (lucky you!), so you won't miss a moment of it.

Stage 7: Self-Awareness -- Learning to evaluate your impact on others.

Here's how our first objective reads:

"Catalog personal preferences in relative degrees"

To work on this, this morning I created a game for the kids and I to play together. We started by taking a stack of index cards, and took turns writing down things that we each like to eat. (In the photo, you see Jacob eating his favorite thing, Cheese and Crackers.) This activity served as a review of some previous objectives we worked on -- making choices (Jacob chose which color marker to use each time it was his turn) and generating a list of preferences. Happy to say, Jacob was able to complete this pretty fluidly (and even was able to write down his own answers, a little bonus handwriting work that I wasn't even trying for!). Next, I produced a set of cards with the following categories written on them: "I like it", "I really like it", "It's my favorite", "I don't like it" and "I really don't like it". I also added cartoon faces to depict what we might look like to show the emotion behind liking, really liking, disliking, etc. (Degrees of change in emotion is also a previous objective.)

I set the preference cards out next to each other, then shuffled all of our food cards together. Then we each took turns drawing a card, and placing it under the right category for us. Spotlighting was acheived by making the emotion face at each other after placing the card under that category.

We played the game this way twice, then moved on to other things.

This afternoon, I pulled out a set of blocks, and the kids and I took turns adding blocks onto a building, with an empahsis on each of us having our own ideas. After completing a couple different structures (working also on when it was "done" enough before knocking it down and moving on to the next), the kids played with the blocks (a chance to work on independent creativity) while I got some cleaning done. I posted one of Jacob's block creations this evening.

After dinner, I pulled the card game out again, only this time I had another set of cards already prepared. I set out the preference cards as before, and we each took turns drawing our new cards. This time there were locations written on them -- some that I know the kids love, like the playground, their grandparents' house, McDonalds, and some that I know they really don't like, like the Doctor, the Dentist, as well as others that fall somewhere in-between. We played the same way as before, with us putting our cards under the right categories based on our preferences. We played the game twice this way, then added a twist.

In a first peek at our 2nd objective, "Catalog likes and dislikes of family members", I had Jacob and Zoo Boy draw cards for EACH OTHER and place them where they thought they should go based on the other's preferences. That was decidedly more difficult for both boys, but especially for Jacob. (Zoo Boy caught on pretty quickly.) Jacob got pretty upset when Zoo Boy guessed wrong about something (although I suspect that Zoo Boy did it on purpose to get a rise out of his brother -- ah, the joys of a non-autistic sibling!). I provided each boy with the opportunity to correct what the other guessed so that nobody was stuck feeling like they had to "really like" something they didn't like. However, when Jacob insisted that having his hair cut (traditionally one of our bigger challenges with him) was his "favorite thing", and that having his hair washed (most assuredly one of the things he hates the most in this world, somewhere on the scale of hatred between having blood drawn and entering a crowded noisy room) was something he liked, I became pretty uncertain that this was working the way I'd hoped it would. As with all activities I set up to work on RDI, I made a video tape of it, so I can send that segment off to my consultant to see what she thinks is going on and what I should do about it.

The good news is that Jacob isn't having much problem coming up with answers in these types of situations. The problem is, I'm not sure they are really HIS answers, and not just what he thinks I want him to say. Which raises the question, does he even understand that he has preferences? (I certainly know what they are based on his reaction to things!) And if not, how do we go about flipping that switch to the "on" position? Because, truly, without that, we're going to be spinning our wheels with this stage.

refocusing on RDI

2007-01-12T17:13:00.000-05:00

Over the course of the last several weeks I've decided that I need to start focusing my time and efforts back on RDI again. Not that I've NOT been doing RDI -- it pretty much permeates everything we do and every aspect of our lives -- but I've been taking a real go-with-the-flow approach to it for the past 6 months or so. Part of the reason is because, after about 8 months of really focusing on Stage 4, I needed to take things at a little slower pace, just for my own sanity. Part of it was because we needed to focus on other things. And part was because time itself was taking care of the next couple of stages for me.

Stage 4 was a REALLY huge one for us, turning The World's Most Rigid Boy into Mr. Flexible. It was a major effort, it took a lot of work and committment. You definitely need a mental vacation after something that enormous.

One of the obstacles we met with during the course of struggling with Stage 4 was Sensory problems due to Jacob's significant Sensory Processing Disorder. So thing had to come to screeching halt while we addressed these problems via Sensory Integration Therapy with a wonderful Occupational Therapist trained in that specialization. Once we started removing some of those roadblocks, we made some pretty rapid progress with the areas of RDI we'd been stuck in. And because Jacob was making such fabulous progress with SIT, we kept that as a priorty for the entire summer and early fall. Once that seemed pretty much under control (we're still working on it, but it's a solid, established part of our lives now, not something we have to put a lot of conscious thought into anymore), we jumped into the homeschooling thing to lay out our plan for the next year or so in that area. We ordered the Enki Education Kindergarten Curriculum, and my focus for the last several months has been reading through the Foundation Guides and getting a good understanding of the Enki methodology and philosophy, and incorporating those components that I wanted to use right now.

And the most amazing thing was happening -- even though I wasn't doing any focused RDI work, we were mastering stages anyway. Stage 5 was sort of a "gimme" because we had already done most of the work during Stage 4, we just needed to make sure the pieces were all in place. And Stage 6 just developed on the playground, during playdates, and during our daily interactions at home, without much specific attention being paid to it. In fact, if someone asked me how to set up a Stage 6 activity, I'm not sure I could be of much help.

Which has landed us squarely at the start of Stage 7. And as I look over the "new" objectives that our Consultant sent us (the part of Stage 7 that now addresses Self Awareness), I realize that this is going to be a lot of work again. The sort of work that requires me to concentrate and pick activities to target the objectives. Because, really, Jacob doesn't have much in the way of Self Awareness. Even simple things, like knowing his preferences, are difficult (if even possible) for him, never mind understanding how his actions impact others. We've got our work cut out for us on this stage.

So it's time to let our Enki rhythms sustain us, let our SIT work flow along as it has been, and put our heads down and slog back into RDI. By the time I'm ready to shift my focus back onto something else, we should be much further along the road to true Autism Remediation.

creativity and education -- Sir Ken Robinson

2007-01-12T15:53:00.000-05:00

You have just simply GOT to go to this link and watch this 15-or-so minute, highly entertaining and eloquent clip about creativity and how the current educational system is killing it in this generation of children:

http://www.ted.com/tedtalks/tedtalksplayer.cfm?key=ken_robinson

rest time

2007-01-12T15:23:00.000-05:00

I'm not sure if you can read the Jacob-designed sign in the picture, propped outside his door. It was one he made today during our rest time, and cracked his door open to place it outside. It reads "Naptime Do Not Disterb" (the spelling error is his, not mine).

One of the elements that we'd been having trouble incorporating from the suggested Enki Education daily rhythms was the idea of a rest/quiet time. I LIKED the idea well enough -- heck, time to lie down and relax and even, dare I say it, NAP, every day sure sounded heavenly to me! But despite the fact that I'm constantly tweaking and messing around with our daily rhythms, I was having trouble being HOME to have a rest time at some reasonable point after lunch. And both of my boys had dropped napping on any sort of a regular basis a full year ago.

I finally decided to just give it a try and see what happened. So at the beginning of last week, I took the kids right home after lunch and told them that we were going to have a rest time. They both pounced on the idea like I was offering them a bag of candy. Jacob immediately scurried off to his room, shut the door, and lept into bed. Zoo Boy led me by the hand to our bed (he still sleeps with us at night) and snuggled in with me beneath the duvet. 20 minutes later, he sprung back up to announce that he was done resting -- Jacob heard him and called from the other room that he, too, was done resting. Well, I WASN'T done resting, but didn't want to throw a monkey wrench into the postive, restful experience we'd just had, so I told them we'd stay under the covers (Jacob would join us in our bed) and they could watch a short video. I popped in a Between The Lions episode and went back to sleep for another blissful 20 minutes.

I immediately noticed a difference in our afternoon. Instead of a steady ramping-up of energy and the inevitable flaring-up of tempers, everything stayed on a more even keel. There was more cooporation, less bickering (not that they bicker all that much anyway, but still....), and when bedtime rolled around, everyone settled in quickly instead of having to toss a lasso around them and drag them to bed, hogtie them to the pillows, and sit on them to get them to hold still for the reading of the first book.

It worked so nicely, I tried it again the next day, coming directly home from our morning activity and lunch to jump into bed for rest time. We had pretty much the exact duplicate of the day before. Hot dang, I thought, this was a GOOD THING.

Of course, then I was unable to be home anywhere near mid-day for the next two days. I was tired. I wanted my nap! The afternoon and evening returned to escalating chaos. I started chatting with a couple other Enki families, and lo and behold, discovered that they too were unable to get in their rest period at mid-day. Instead -- and here's that innovative thinking out of the box that I seem to be missing a gene for -- they did their rest time in the mid to late afternoon. Well, heck, I get home at SOME point during the afternoon, even on days when we've got a bunch of stuff going on. I could DO that!

So I started tacking that rest time on whenever we got home from our morning ventures, even if it wasn't 'til late afternoon. And you know what? It's working for us! The kids are not only cooperative, but actually seem to enjoy that break, that time to refresh. Jacob usually climbs into his bed and reads or draws on his magnadoodle. Zoo Boy usually grabs a small toy to bring to bed with us, and either closes his eyes and truly rests, or plays quietly under the covers while I grab a quick nap. Like clockwork, about 20 minutes later (sometimes longer), Zoo Boy announces the end of naptime. Sometimes Jacob joins us, sometimes he continues to "rest" in his own room while Zoo Boy watches his video (either Between the Lions or Magic Schoolbus)and I....ahhhh....grab yet another quick nap. It's certainly leading to a less exhausted evening for me!!

This is a lot less time than Enki suggests rest time lasting (and they certainly don't mention the use of a video!), but for us this is what seems to be working, so I'm just riding the wave of success.

I LOVE the homeschooling!

this week in books

2007-01-11T22:55:00.000-05:00

Here's a quick run-down of the books we're reading this week:

"Welcome to the Icehouse", by Jane Yolen, illustrated by Laura Regan. Jane Yolen is one of my favorite kid's authors, and the arctic is of interest to my guys right now, so this was bound to be a big hit with us. A year's glimpse at the Arctic, with an empahsis on the long winter. Just perfect for January nights which FINALLY seem to be cold enough to call winter! The verse is rich and poetic, and the illustrations are beautifully realistic.

"Sky Castle", by Sandra Hanken, iullstrations by Jody Bergsma. This is a whimsical book about Fairy children who, together with their imaginations, build a castle in the sky to house all the hopes and dreams of our planet, then bring it down to earth to create a nirvana. The bouncy verse and detailed illustrations immediately captivated my children, and the overall message of peace, harmony, and love sold us parent-types on it instantly. This one goes on our favorite books list!

"Dance at Grandpa's", adapted from The Little House Books by Laura Ingalls Wilder, illustrated by Renee Graef. If you haven't checked out the "My First Little House Books" series, you simply must! My kids LOVE these books, this is the third that we've read -- the first was "Wintertime on the Farm" and the second was "Christmas in the Big Woods". These books are little snippets of the lives of all of our favorite "Little House" characters, and a wonderful introduction to the world of Laura Ingalls Wilder. Jacob immediately identified himself with young Almanzo as a "farmer boy", and was absolutely thrilled when I told him that when they are older, Almanzo and Laura meet, fall in love, and get married. (I think he's got a crush on Laura!) I purchased several more titles from this series as well, I'm looking forward to the chance to work them into our rotation.

my amazing artist

2007-01-09T22:18:00.000-05:00

I'm not sure how many of you check out Jacob's art blog, but you really MUST go see this one. It's worth the trip!

resolutions for 2007

2007-01-08T09:41:00.000-05:00

Ok, so I'm a little bit behind with this sort of thing. But I have excuses! I mean, reasons.

First of all, I'm feeling generally dysregulated with this non-winter weather we're experiencing -- it was nearly 70 degrees on Saturday! And yesterday was the 30th straight day in a row with above-normal temperatures, many of them record-breakers. It's making reading stories and doing activities about snow, ice, and cold a little, well, stupid. And yet, focusing on a different season makes no sense either. So that's left me with a feeling of sort of floating, supsended in space and time, waiting for winter to really happen so I can break out all those cool books about the snow, etc. My supply of books about the arctic (and other regiouns where it really IS snowy) are running thin....

Secondly, due to various things, we had to wait until this past Saturday to celebrate Christmas with my family. Now, while technically it WAS the "12th day of Christmas", we've never postponed Christmas for quite so long before, so that in itself was enough to make me feel a bit topsy-turvy. Add to that the fact that it was near 70 degrees that day (on a day that it should be about 30), and we were all sitting there roasting even though the windows were open, the whole experience didn't exactly lend itself to integration. As if opening a zillion and one presents wasn't dys-integrating enough!

I have to say, my kids have handled it better than I have. I still have that "what just happened?" head spinning sort of feeling. I'm hoping settling back into our regular "post-holiday" rhythms will help me feel a bit more grounded. Though with Jacob still running around singing Christmas carols at the top of his voice and doing impromptu recitations of "the night before Christmas", it's a little hard. That and the fact that we've still got Christmas decorations scattered throughout the house....gotta do something about that....

But instead, today I've been thinking about my yearly resolutions, although I've always viewed this as more a time to prioritize my life rather than setting goals to reach. There are several times a year that I like to sit down and do this -- at the end of summer, the end of the holidays, and the start of spring. And since the end of the holidays coincides nicely with New Years, these are what I use when people ask me my resolutions for the new year. For the past couple of years they've looked pretty similar.

1. Simplify. This is an ongoing, ever-changing goal of mine. And probably the most challenging for me, the over-scheduler who has trouble saying no to anything. One reason is because I want to do EVERYTHING. There's very few things in this world that hold no interest to me. And I just love to do stuff. Doesn't even really matter what the stuff is, if it's something to do, I generally want to do it. Or learn about it at least. And, if you haven't happened to notice, I'm a bit hyperactive.

There are several reasons I feel the need to simplify: first of all, for a child with ASD, running around with a chaotic schedule is a pretty good way to assure yourself of dysregulation and meltdowns. It's not so good for non-ASD kids either. So I'm constantly revamping how our week looks, to try to keep things as simple as possible. Secondly, let's face it, it's just not possible to DO everything! And the more things you "do", the less time you have to focus on any one thing and get really good at it. I haven't quite decided if that's a problem -- I mean, does it matter if you're really good at one thing as opposed to just OK at a lot of things? Probably not, if that's what makes you happy. And thirdly (is that even a word?), I truly believe that slowing down your pace in life helps you appreciate all the little things more. It gives you the time you need to truly absorb experiences, and have them grow within you.

My ultimate goal with all the simplifying is to be able, someday, to just sit on my front steps and enjoy the sunset, with no other agenda running through my mind, no other place I feel I need to get to, no list of needs-too-be-done urging me to hurry up with that cup of tea and get back to work. I'm still a long ways from that place, but my hope is to get a little closer with each passing year.

2. Live Greener. This is always on the list of resolutions, but I've backslid a bit the last several years. I could blame it on preoccupation with other things (oh, like Autism, Remediation, Sensory Integration, Homeschooling....), or on our tight budget (Ha! Budget! Is it still a budget when you're shoveling yourself deeper into a hole?). But really, I think I've just been lazy. Right now there is 3 tall kitchen trash bags full of my recent cabinet-cleaning fest sitting in my kitchen. Most of the stuff in those bags are outdated foodstuffs that can be fed to the animals or composted, and most are in packaging that can be recycled. I'm having my usual internal struggle with whether to just haul it to the dump as-is, or to meticulously pick through and recycle every bit that can be recycled. I think the greener side of the argument is going to win this time, not the lazy side. I hope so, anyway.

I want to live greener for several reasons, too. First, I want to do what's right for this world we're living in. Sometimes the feeling that I'm just an insignificant speck, whose recycling tendencies and product selection can't possibly really affect anything, is overwhelming. Yet, if everyone felt that way, or more importantly, pushed those feelings aside and strived to live greener, it would have a MAJOR impact. So there's that. More important is my second reason, which is to set an example for my children. Because then we're not talking about just me -- we're talking about two other humans, and potentially their future families and children and grandchildren. And last, but by no means least, is the overwhelming feeling of guilt if I DON'T try to live greener. How can I expect anyone else to care if I, I the lover of all things natural and pure and clean in this world, don't?

I need to embrace my inner hippie and get with the program. Not just as good as I can, but as good as I want to. If the world's going to come to an end, by gosh, it's not going to be MY fault!

3. Mindfulness. You know, living in the moment, recognizing and appreciating the powers around me, sitting in awe of the tiny miracles. Recognizing my "falls" but not laying blame on myself. I think I'm getting better and better at this all the time. Yet, there's still plenty of work left for me on truly focusing on the moment, letting go of guilts of the past, and (an area that especially needs attention from me) letting the future take care of itself.

4. Being nicer. My grandmother (and I wish you all could have met her, she was absolutely the best person ever!) was the nicest person I've ever met, without being the sort of person anyone could take advantage of. She had a quiet confidence, an innate perception, and a strength of character that allowed her to live her life to it's fullest without ever having the need to place blame on anyone else. I never heard her say an unkind word about another person, she never felt the need to whine or complain about anything, and she always thought the best of everyone she met. She was also downright hilarious, brilliantly smart, and moved through this world in perfect harmony with it. Her life was not all primroses and daisies (tho her gardens were!), yet she treated each day as a beautiful gift full of the richest of treasures.

I'm not like that. Oh, I'd LOVE to be!!! I want nothing more than to have just a fraction of the generosity of heart that my grandmother did. But I'm not her, I'm me. I'd just like to be a kinder, gentler version of me. I'm a work in progress. Aren't we all?

5. Get fit. Such a cliche, huh? Eat better, lose weight, exercise more, blah blah blah blah blah. But I'm serious about it this time. Really I am. Really. Sort of. Not.

I really SHOULD care more about this shouldn't I? That whole thing about you can't nourish others unless you are nourished yourself? Somehow I can't seem to get the leg up I need to climb aboard that bandwagon. So I guess it'll keep sitting at the bottom of my priority list until such time that something scares me into caring more about it. Candy, anyone?

mercury fillings, global warming, and autism remediation

2007-01-05T17:26:00.000-05:00

What do those three things have in common you ask? The world's seeming unwillingness to accept it. Or at least THIS part of the world.

In the past week I've read enough scientific proof about the amount of mercury leaching from amalgam fillings to make me wonder why these things are even in existance anymore. Ok, sure, 10 or 20 years ago, there was no other options (other than gold, and who can afford that?). But in today's world, where there are modern, safe alternatives, some dentists still choose to put a material that is considered illegal to even dump as a waste product INTO PEOPLE'S MOUTHS. How does that make sense? How is it even legal to do so?? I'm simply astounded that despite the fact that all the research says that it's harmful, there is still some debate about it. WHAT debate? Hasn't anybody seen the research?? It's pretty clear cut -- amalgam fillings release mercury gas. Period. Would be bad enough if they just sat there. But then people have to go and brush their teeth. And eat. Which makes the darn things give off even more mercury. What a great idea, let's all get a half dozen tomorrow.

Which reminds me a WHOLE lot of the whole Global Warming "controversy". Why is "controversy" in quotes, you ask? Because 100% (ONE HUNDRED PERCENT) of all of the scientific studies (almost if not more than 1000 of them) published on global warming say it's real, it's happening, and it's being caused by CO2 emmissions. You'd think that wouldn't leave much to question, would you?? Yet, more than half of all Americans (that would be 50%), and their corresponding congress-people, seem to think it's a myth, a coincidence, a natural occurance, a fluke -- whatever, they DON'T BELIEVE IT. Excuse me? Could someone please explain to me why the heck we even bother DOING scientific research? Maybe we should just make up results that everyone wants to hear and leave it at that.

Which brings me to the next item proven to be real yet somehow being almost entirely ignored -- Autism Remediation. Specifically, Autism Remediation via RDI. IT WORKS. It FIXES Autism. It allows kids to grow up to be, well, kids, and then go on to be productive, happy adults. Ok, so there's not a plethera of published scientific studies proving it yet. In fact, there are none. Why is that I wonder? There are two studies that have been submitted, both showing REMARKABLE results. Yet nobody seems to want to publish them. And still, I wonder, even if they were published, even if 1000 studies were published proving how effective RDI is at remediating Autism, would people believe it??? I'm guessing no. Why should they -- they don't believe that amalgam fillings are dangerous or that Global Warming is real, why should Autism Remediation be any different.

Watch the video clip (http://www.iaomt.org/smokingtooth.cfm) I mentioned a couple days ago. Watch Al Gore's movie "An Inconvenient Truth" and/or go to www.climatecrisis.net . Write to organizations that fund Autism research and request funding for research on the results of RDI, and write to the Autism research publications and demand that RDI result studies be published. Open your eyes, and open your mind to the proof. And vote for politicians who care more about our world's health than about their popularity in Washington.

what we're reading this week

2007-01-05T10:44:00.000-05:00

Here's my kids (the two in the middle) hanging out with some good buddies of theirs that we see regularly.

Here we are at the end of the week, and I realized I haven't posted about our reading selections for this week yet. Would seem a little silly to miss a week the 2nd week I started doing it!

This week we're on a general "new year" theme (though we haven't really introduced the concept of the year changing with our kids, we're approaching it more on a seasonal shift type of thing). I'm having a little difficulty reading all these books about the dead of winter when it's 60 degrees outside. What happened to January? But reading books that cover more of a general flow of the year seem to be fitting the need a little better for us right now thanks to our new weather pattern.

"Antler, Bear, Canoe: A Northwoods Alphabet Year", by Betsy Bowen. Very cool book about the change of seasons per month in the author's native Minnesota, with a little alphabet and calendar work tossed in. The illustrations are gorgeous wood block prints -- I hear she has a "northwoods counting book" too, which I'll have to see if our Library has.

"Ice Bear and Little Fox", by Jonathan London, paintings by Daniel San Souci. With this author and illustrator, this book was bound to be a big hit around here! A year in the life of an adolescent Polar Bear and an Arctic Fox. London does a great job of telling the story of the relationship of the animals to each other as well as to their environment, without anthropomorphizing it at all, it's quite true to life, including how predatory animals eat, yet not in a gruesome or scary way. Wonderful book! And beautiful, true-to-life illustrations.

"Bear Snores On" by Karma Wilson and Jane Chapman. Ok, so it's a little cutesy. But we like it anyway. A whimsical story about animal friends dropping in to hold a party in an unsuspecting bear's hibernation cave -- while the bear is sleeping. Bear wakes up to join the party eventually, but the anticipation of that moment builds nicely throughout the book. The verses are bouncy and fun, and the illustrations are just realistic enough to make it seem not overly corny. I wouldn't put it on a "must read" list like I might the other two, but we liked it enough to buy it.

the smoking tooth

2007-01-03T18:30:00.000-05:00

First, thank you so much to everyone who provided input for me on the dentist thing. We've decided we'll go with our gut and do the composite.

In case anyone else out there is wondering about just how much mercury there is in amalgam fillings, you have GOT to see this horrifyingly informative video on the topic (which was the cement that concreted my decision to go with composite):

http://www.iaomt.org/smokingtooth.cfm

Shudder......

advice wanted -- teeth

2007-01-02T15:16:00.000-05:00

Well, I told you I'd tell you when I wanted advice!!

As I posted recently, Jacob needs to have a couple of cavities filled. We went back to the dentist today to have his 6 year molars sealed, and for the dentist to experiment around a little with what he can and can't get away with. It was a good visit -- I heard a slew of "good boy, Jacob"s coming from the back (which always makes me cringe a little -- I really should do a post about praise and how detrimental it is to a kid's development -- but my attitude at the dentist's office is WHATEVER WORKS, DO IT!), and both the dentist and hygeinist gave him a glowing report, and Jacob himself told me he had fun. (FUN?! How the heck is getting your mouth propped open and a gooey substance painted on your teeth fun?) The dentist said that he's fairly confident that he can get the cavities filled in the office, and wanted me to set up the first of the two appointments (he can't do them both at once, as they are in two different parts of his mouth, requiring numbing him in two locations). So I swallowed hard and set it up for later this month.

Then he presented me with the choice that has me stymied. Shall he fill them with amalgam (the old standard "silver" fillings), or composite? I hadn't even thought ahead to having to make this choice, I had just assumed we'd do composite. He strongly reccommends amalgam -- it means less time in the chair for Jacob, less drilling and grinding needed, he just sticks it in there, grinds it off, and he's done. With composite, there's layering, drying, lots of additional grinding and polishing -- up to 10 extra minutes of torture (it's a 1/2 hour appointment, so we're talking either 20 minutes or 30 minutes). He pointed out that these are teeth that will be falling out when he's 10-12 years old anyway.

In case any of you have been living under a rock for the past 15 years and wonder why I'm so concerned about this, amalgam has mercury in it, and mercury is implicated (strongly) in the development of Autism. Does it make any sense whatsoever to purposely put mercury into an Autistic kid's head??

Well, as it turns out, there's a pretty good argument in it's favor. First, the danger with the amalgam fillings comes when they get old and start to deteriorate, leaching the mercury from them. (Until that point, the mercury is locked within a solid.) These fillings won't get a chance to get old, they'll be out of his head when he loses those teeth, at most 6 years from now. (The silver fillings I had removed recently were in excess of 25 years old!) Second, it means increasing the likelihood that the fillings will actually get done. Third, it means potentially decreasing the amount of trauma Jacob has to endure in that chair. Fourth, it's less expensive (but that's a far distant fourth -- the cost isn't THAT much more for the composite, and even if it were, I wouldn't hesitate to use that instead if it were the right choice).

But still, despite all that, you can't deny the fact that I would be purposely choosing to expose my son, my AUTISTIC son, to mercury. A poison by any definition. Something I purposely choose to avoid (and just spent a small fortune that I don't even have to eliminate from my own mouth). Something that I never in a million years would have imagined myself considering.

But the trauma of all that extra dental work when I could make it simpler for him....

And ultimately, getting the cavities filled is the most important part.

So here it comes -- HELP!!!!!! What should I do? What would YOU do? I'm sure others have been in this boat, what have you done? I welcome any and all perspectives on this, just click on the "comments" link at the bottom of this post, then type your comments in the box, either sign in or click the "anonymous" button, and retype the code it gives you (to prevent spam -- my gosh, the best invention EVER!).

THANK YOU so much!

zoobs

2007-01-01T11:42:00.000-05:00

I figured I may as well blog about the Zoobs since they're pulled out all over my living room and on my mind. Here's a photo of Jacob from a few minutes ago, in the midst of building a "Zoobrex" (the Zoob version of a T-rex).

Jacob's Zoob building talent is something that everyone who sees him in action seems to be amazed by. I don't consider it particularly amazing, given that he has Autism and this is just following written directions -- very static, very up Jacob's alley. So from an overall conceptual level, there's nothing to it at all to get excited about. In fact, it initially caused a bunch of concern for us, as it seemed to be exactly the sort of thing that we did NOT want to target.

However, when I stopped to think about the individual skills that go into being able to do it -- shifting focus from one thing (the directions) to the next (the Zoobs) without losing his place, matching pieces in real life to the pictures in the directions, following steps sequentially, the hand strength needed to snap the pieces together (and take them apart), the modulation in strength needed to get the pieces to sit in the right place once they are together, the patience and persistance needed to assemble an entire creation (some of these things have hundreds of pieces in them), and the appraisal needed to trouble-shoot if the creation doesn't stand correctly, I guess it IS sort of an amazing thing.

When we got our first set of Zoobs (I believe for Jacob's 5th birthday), it had 50 pieces and an instruction booklet to build a handful of items. As he does with anything that comes with instructions, Jacob quickly worked his way through the construction of those items, then started rebuilding the same ones over and over. We worried about it becoming a very static obsession for him, and figured that we had two choices -- either take them away (which didn't feel right, as he really enjoyed building those things, and at that point, he wasn't doing any imaginative play, so seeing him so involved with something was nice), or get him a whole LOT of them. We chose the latter, and Ebayed up a set of 500.

The set came with instructions for dozens of different designs, and we breifly considered just destroying the instructions in hopes that he'd play more creatively with the toys. But the reality was that, at that point in our remediation program (or even now, for that matter), he just wasn't capable of generating original ideas as to what to do with the Zoobs. So in the end we gave him the full set of instructions. It was a good move. Because there were so many different things to build, it prevented him from focusing on just building one or two things over and over. Instead, every time he sits down with the Zoobs (which is at least several times a week, usually in that hour time span between when he gets out of bed and when Zoo Boy and I do), he builds something different. Sure, we've had lots of repeats of the same items, but he doesn't usually build the same thing every morning, he seems to rotate through them in a random fashion.

As far as his OT (Occupational Therapy) work goes, these things have been terrific. He's working on his hand strength, his reading skills (even though there are no words involved, the eye movent and ability to keep his "place" are skills he needs for reading), his small motor skills (the pieces are only a couple inches long), his manual dexterity, and his motor planning. It's also really good heavy work -- it takes a pretty good amount of pressure both to push the Zoobs together, and to get them apart again.

They're plastic, so that's not 100% ideal (see my post from a couple days ago as to why I feel that wooden toys are superior to plastic toys from a sensory integration standpoint). But it's not the only plastic toy in his life at the moment (notice the huge plastic ball pit behind him in the photo!), nor is it bound to be the last. I'll talk more about the plastic vs wood battle in our house in a future post. But really, other than that, I think they are pretty close to the perfect small motor OT toy.

I've used them in some of our RDI work, too. I've built things that Jacob has to copy. We've built stuff at the same time. We've built stuff at different times. We've built stuff that I accidentally break so we have to build it again. Picking them up together is a great regulation activity. I plan to incorporate them as we progress through the higher stages too -- Stage 8 (collaboration) and Stage 9 (co-creation) come to mind as excellent places for them to fit in. And along the way with that work, perhaps we'll open up new paths for Jacob to try some of his own creative variations on what to build with them. In the meantime, it's something he feels very competent at, and he is obviously proud of his ability to create complicated structures on his own.

And an added bonus -- Zoo Boy has just started taking an interest in playing with them. Only, in super-creative Zoo Boy's world, there's no sense in following instructions. So he slaps a few pieces together and then uses whatever he created in his pretend play. Usually it's either a superhero that saves the world, or a villian that lives in the mud and shoots people. Often he switches back-and-forth roles with the same creation, making it all but impossible to keep up with the story line (tho he certainly has it straight in his head!). But anyway, my hope is that he'll suck Jacob into his pretend Zoob world, adding another dimension to the toy set for him.

Yup. I guess I like the Zoobs.

an RDI glimpse for the new year

2007-01-01T08:27:00.000-05:00

Happy 2007, everyone! May all your wishes and dreams for the new year come true! We're leaping into 2007 with enthusiasm! (See photo!)

Figured I'd start this morning by giving you a little glimpse into our RDI life from yesterday morning. This wasn't a planned activity, it just sort of happened, which is how all the best RDI opportunities seem to do. That's why they call it "lifestyle".

I woke up to find Jacob playing with a set of wooden blocks. When he was finished messing around with those, he moved on to building with his set of Zoobs. (Zoobs are an interconnective plastic building toy -- I'm going to start posting some of the stuff he builds with them on his art site. I have conflicted feelings about Zoobs, which I'll share in a future post maybe later today -- it's pouring rain and we have no plans to do anything much today.) But anyway, while he was doing that, I sat next to him and built a tall, fairly sturdy tower with the blocks, waiting for Zoo Boy and The Map Man to get up.

At about the time the rest of the household arose, I finished my tower, so I interupted Jacob's Zoob building fest so that we could all take turns chucking small blocks at the big tower, trying to knock it down. The tower was sturdy, so it took a bit of doing, but we all worked as a team, cheering each other on, taking turns, trying to aim our hits to help out the next person. When we finally felled the tower (I can't remember who delivered the final blow), it fell in a dramatic pile of rubble and we all cheered and celebrated our victory over blocks.

How the heck is that RDI, you ask?

Well, this one simple activity incorporated all of our previous RDI work. Regulation (I throw, you throw), Master-Apprentice (I set the rules for the game, Jacob followed them), Stage 1 (emotion sharing -- enjoying the activity together, celebrating our victory), Stage 2 (referencing -- checking in with each other to make sure we know it's that person's turn, and that we're going to take it, and that we're all ready to watch and cheer), Stage 3 (coordinating actions -- taking turns, cheering together), Stage 4 (variations -- we used different shape and color blocks to do our smashing), Stage 5 (reversals and transformation -- we were knocking down blocks rather than building with them), Stage 6 (co-regulation -- turn taking without being reminded, being OK whether or not the blocks fell, reciprical conversation and exchange of ideas as to where to aim the next throw, general social chit-chat throughout the activity, being OK with -- and actually enjoying -- failure so that the next person got a turn).

And this was also a rudimentary collaboration (Stage 8) activity. While we're not actually targeting Stage 8 objectives yet, our Stage 6 (Co-regulation) activities seem to be naturally morphing into more collaboration type stuff. Which is cool, that's the way it's supposed to work, and is why you never truly start from ground zero with the RDI stages -- by the time you hit mastery of one stage, stuff from the higher stages are starting to form naturally without even putting any effort into it. Then when you actually GET to that stage, it's just a matter of fine-tuning the objectives (which then lays the ground work for the natural development of future stages). It's sort of a like a big puzzle, which is why I think that puzzle piece that Autism organizations use is so appropriate -- not only does it signify the many pieces that cause Autism, but it's also a good image about how Remediation takes place, one piece at a time, always building on the rest of the picture.

electronics -- to view, or not to view

2006-12-30T09:12:00.000-05:00

That is the question.

And the answer's not simple. Well, I suppose if you're the "no TV" type of parents, it's a simple answer -- you just don't own a TV, and voila, no problem. However, I happen to like TV. I don't watch a lot of it, but I do enjoy a couple of shows (like, um, LOST!), and football is just NOT an option for me, it's what I live and breath for this time of year (GO PATRIOTS!). I used to be an absolute baseball nut, but the Redsox 1986 season did me in on that sport. I've not been able to shake the football fever though, nor do I have any desire to. I also love (LOVE!) watching movies on video/DVD. LOVE it, I tell you. Don't do it often, but when I do, well, I LOVE it.

So it just seems a little bit of a stretch to convince me that my kids shouldn't watch and enjoy TV too. Mind you, I can't stand child-directed advertising, so we never actually watch TV per se (as in, we don't turn on TV stations to watch -- in fact, we only get 2 stations, and not very well -- we don't have cable). But we've got a pretty extensive collection of kid videos and movies on video and DVD. And above, you can see a photo from about 10 minutes ago, of my two boys enjoying a DVD movie they got for Christmas ("Ice Age: The Meltdown").

RDI says no electronic media if it causes obsession problems. That was certainly the case for us with Video Games -- we had to sell our PS2 system when we started RDI, because it was obvious that Jacob was having problems with it -- he'd play the same game over and over for hours, often SCREAMING while he was doing it. Wasn't too much of a stretch for us to chuck it out. And we never did let him get involved with the computer beyond simply typing on the word processor. Even today, a half an hour of watching even someone else play video games while visiting will throw him into dysregulation. Truly, video games are poison for Jacob.

But to toss out the videos -- that was a whole 'nother ball of wax. True, initially Jacob seemed a bit too involved with them, in that he wouldn't come away from the screen if we asked him to. But that seemed to be an RDI stage problem -- once we'd mastered Stage 1, he was readily coming away from the screen to do other activities with me. So we determined that watching videos was NOT an obsession for him. In fact, he didn't ask to watch TV very often, it was more a family thing (we'd all sit down and watch the TV together), or a keep-the-kids-occupied-for-half-an-hour thing if I needed to get something done that they couldn't be involved in.

One argument to be made against videos was that Jacob was scripting from them excessively -- memorizing lines and repeating them constantly. But it wasn't just TV he was doing that with -- it was books and converastions he heard as well. My solution to that was to amass as large a collection as we could of both kid videos/movies and books, so that at least it wasn't the same lines over and over, and so that we weren't repeating media with him very often (with the number of videos we have, there's no need to watch the same thing twice in a 3 or 4 month span). That worked pretty well to keep my sanity at a usable level.

The situation becomes a little more complicated when you add the Enki Education view into it. Their claim (and it's backed by studies, and just plain makes sense to me!) is that watching TV causes damage to the Vestibular and Proprioceptive systems, by providing lots of visual input without any vestibular or proprioceptive input. Am I damaging my children by letting them watch TV? Enki says no to TV, except on very sparing occassions for an educational nature program. My thoughts are a little more moderate -- yes to TV, but in small, infrequent doses.

Most days we don't have any time to watch TV anyway. But on the days that we're home for large chunks of time, Zoo Boy will occassionally ask to watch something. Jacob almost never does. I think Zoo Boy is being prompted by the TV being right in the living room where they are playing, so I'm in the process of moving the TV out of our main living spaces. (As soon as football season is over, that is. Just another month!) I have a feeling that removing the TV alone is going to cut their viewing time down to just about nothing. We do, as a family, watch a couple of Spongebob Squarepants episodes in bed as part of our family time at night. Honestly, I'd prefer that we didn't (not that I don't adore Spongebob -- I do! -- I just think that TV before bed isn't the greatest of ideas). But it's such a part of our bedtime ritual now, and my kids don't have any sleep problems, that I am hesitant to change anything up right now. And since some days it's the only screen time my kids get, I'm letting it slide for now.

So, like everything, I guess whether or not to watch TV (or play video games, or allow computer time) is going to be a personal family decision, based on how the family members respond to it. I DO think that less screen time is best. But I also think that a little bit of electronic media isn't always a bad thing. Like with everything else, moderation is fine, UNLESS it's actually damaging. Certainly there are many RDIing and/or Enkiing families that choose NO electronic media, and I have no doubt that that's the right decision for their family.

sensory integration and Enki Education

2006-12-29T17:19:00.000-05:00

Getting back to the Sensory Integration topic for a bit, I wanted to talk about what Enki Education has to say about it, mixed in with my own thoughts on the topic. Since the Enki curriculum is based on child development research, it is inevitable that it is going to include Sensory Integration in it's program, since the development of a child's sensory system is basic to their development in other areas. (If the child isn't processing the world properly, then their brain is not going to function properly, which is going to be a major problem during an educational program.)

Enki first looks at how young children were raised traditionally, say a hundred or more years ago. There was a lot of manual labor, even for the very young. Travel was by horseback or wagon or on foot. There was lots of hauling -- water, animal feed, supplies, cooking materials, building supplies. Mucking out the stalls, grooming horses, cleaning out the chicken coop, plowing the fields were a daily part of life. Washing the laundry was a very physically involved activity. So was putting food on the table -- milking the cow, churning butter, gathering eggs, plucking chickens, kneading bread, stirring stew. Sensory Integration was built into those kids' daily lives automatically, nobody had to think about providing "heavy work" for them, it happened naturally, daily. Vestibular and proprioceptive stimulation occured all day, every day.

Now think about how the kids of today are raised. When they need to travel, they are strapped into car seats in smooth-riding vehicles. Vast mileage is covered in no-time flat, and children are pummeled with visual input without any vestibular or proprioceptive input. The same is true of watching television or movies. And there's just not much opportunity for kids to participate in "heavy work" -- food comes from the fridge, often pre-packaged and ready-to-serve. Laundry is tossed into a washing machine, a button is pushed, and voila, you're done. What has replaced all that natural heavy work? Nothing, in most cases. And is there any wonder Sensory Processing problems are on the rise? And I'll take it a step further -- if unable to process their world properly, wouldn't these kids be more prone to other developmental problems, such as ADD and Autism?

There's a concern with Tactile feedback as well (which is the third important "base" sense). Traditionally, kids were raised with a minimum of pre-constructed toys -- they played with sticks and rocks and other natural things they found hanging around the farm, balls of wool yarn, leather and wooden items. What toys they did have were made of cotton, wool, and wood. Those natural substances give back a tactile experience that is very different from the touching of plastic (which is what most kids' toys today are made of). The Enki materials also suggest a core feeling of disconnectedness with unnatural substances. But whether or not you believe that, certainly the experience of holding a rough piece of wood in your hand is different than holding a smooth plastic toy.

In any case, Enki suggests mirroring as closely as possible the way young children were raised back before Sensory issues were a concern. Toys made from natural materials, no TV, minimize car travel, provide plenty of "heavy work" that at least immitates the work kids used to do (but why stop at just immitating it -- why not just DO it?). Enki goes a step forward, providing sensory activities right in their curriculum, which is a good idea, considering that not many of us out there are really living like the pioneers did. And it makes sense to me that for a kid with actual problems with Sensory Processing (like Jacob), there's a need for even more (the professional involvement of an OT trained in Sensory Integration Therapy, or at least a solid at-home Sensory Integration program.)

the potty thing

2006-12-28T07:39:00.000-05:00

(Here's the kids in their new dress-up costumes that they gave to each other for Christmas -- aren't they adorable??)

Ok, that's the cute part of this post. The rest of this is going to be a down-and-dirty, more information that you probably want, long and droning, and quite probably whining, rant about our potty training woes. Here goes.

I'm actually not sure where to start with this. I guess with where we're at NOW and I can fill in the backstory as we go. I hope it doesn't end up being as confusing as one of those movies that flashes back and forth so much that it loses you by the 3rd scene....

TODAY in our potty training adventures, Jacob is wearing pull-ups during the day, and diapers at night. He's peeing in the toilet (usually upon prompting, but he's generally holding his urine until we prompt him, and occassionally will take the initiative to go himself to the potty). He's peeing in pretty much ANY toilet (sometimes with a bit of cajoling), including public bathrooms, which is a nice generalization that I know a lot of folks have problems with. (Well, with their 2 and 3 year olds at least....) He is pooping in his diaper or pull-up still, but I'm so happy about the peeing thing that I don't really care right now about the pooping.

Here's some history: when Jacob was....oh gosh, I guess about 2 1/2 or 3, he started having some major constipation problems. I don't think it had anything to do with actually BEING constipated, I think he didn't like the sensation of pooping, so he was purposely witholding his poop, which gets you into a terrible bind (quite literatlly!), producing stool so large that it's very difficult (and painful!) to pass when your body finally insists upon it. Needless to say, we had a lot of cramping, screaming, nigthmares over this, which went on for a good year or two -- enemas (the evil "e" word) were involved, and none of us were happy with that. I researched all the possible ways of dealing with this "naturally", and there just wasn't anything that worked for us -- we either couldn't get the substance into him (oils), or there was no way to control how much of the dose he took (metamucil mixed with his drinks) and the results we saw were too hit-and-miss to be helpful, or the stuff we did manage to get into him just didn't seem to have any effect.

Sometime after his Autism diagnosis, we asked the Pediatrician for help. She prescribed Glycolax (also known as Miralax), which forces water into the large intestine, making for mushier, easier to pass stool. (The mushier the stool is, the less sensation it provides, and the harder it is to retain.) We messed around a lot with the dosage. We messed around a lot with trying to wean him off of it. We struggled with our own demons about it -- we are a very firm NO MEDICATION sort of family, to be giving something like this just felt wrong. We read reports of Miralax causing a bevy of problems -- including being implicated as a possible contributing cause of Autism (then again, what isn't....). For a couple of years we tried everything in our power to try to get him OFF the Glycolax. But the truth of the matter was that pooping was SUCH a traumatic experience for Jacob, which only was made worse by our efforts to reduce or discontinue his meds, that we finally threw in the towel in favor of trying to get him OK about pooping again. A year or so later, he no longer seems as traumatized about it, and now actually tolerates us suggesting that SOME DAY he'll put his poop in the potty too.

One thing that helped us come to grips with this was when he was tested for Celiac disease. I haven't talked about that yet, and I will in detail at some point, because Celiac is something that I think every parent of a child with Autism should be aware of and have them tested for (and was something I'd never even had on my radar before it was pointed out to me by a woman with several kids with both Autism and Celiac). Jacob does NOT have Celiac disease. But in the process of having him tested for it, he had a complete rectal exam by a Pediatric Gastroenterologist. (Don't think THAT wasn't a fun experience.....) She was very reassuring about the safety of the Glycolax product, and the importance of the product in the scheme of helping these kids get over their bowel trauma. She explained in detail (with illustrations!) how the product pulls water into the large intestine, and graphically explained how it would be very rare -- except in the case of an actual allergy to the product -- for it to cause any undesired side-effects or lasting problems. I left that appointment committed to continuing Glycolax long-term -- all my guilt about it was left in that office. I no longer have any plans or schemes or dates to start weaning him off. I'm going to trust my gut as to when the time is right. And that certainly won't be until years after he's using the potty for ALL of his toileting needs.

The peeing on the potty is fairly new to us. For years the child wouldn't even set foot in the bathroom -- the room was just too overwhelming for him. Around his 4th birthday, I made a big effort to get him at least sitting in there regularly, on the toilet on an insert, since he was too big for a small potty seat. He almost never had any success (I think he peed there a total of 3 times over the course of the next year and a half), but we rewarded him anyway by letting him read books there. I read about every potty training method imaginable. Most of them I instinctively knew would cause more problems than they would solve. The only one that seemed even somewhat doable was a reward-based system, but Jacob was totally non-bribable -- there was just nothing that he wanted enough to motivate him to actually pee in that toilet.

Salvation came in a marshmallow form. My Mom, ever the optomist, stuffed Jacob's Easter Basket this past year with all sorts of candy that he had no interest in eating. But one of the items was Marshmallow Peeps (she figured I'd eat them in any case, as they were a childhood favorite of mine). Imagine my surprise when I walked in her living room to see him stuffing his face with them, making all sorts of horrifyingly satistfied sounds while doing so. He ate the entire package before I even knew he was doing it, and had a predictable tummy ache that night. But that hooked him on Marshmallow peeps. I hit all the post-easter sales and stocked my cabinets full of the disgusting treats, then told him that every time he peed on the potty, he could have one. Suddenly we had peeing on the potty once or twice a day! When, after a couple months, we'd worked our way up to several times a day, we started varying up the rewards -- sometimes a peep, sometimes a piece of hershey's chocolate, sometimes a few M&Ms. Eventually we started dropping the treats, and now he only rarely ever asks for one, using "I peed on the potty" as a catch line to ensure his success at getting one from me.

We still have to conquer getting him to go to the potty when he needs to, rather than when we tell him to, and we really need to get him to initialize that first morning pee, as he gets up a good hour before Zoo Boy and I do most mornings. And, of course, there's the whole poop thing still ahead of us, but we'll get there. The fact that he's wearing pullups -- and keeping them dry! -- during the day is satisfying enough for me, since it took us 2 years to convince him to try something other than his standard diaper (hooray for RDI stage 5!!). He's been wearing underwear over his diaper/pull-up for a year now, since Santa brought him a package of underwear in his stocking last year. He's yet to let us just put the underwear on him with out the pull-up -- even though he's not had a daytime accident in months. But one step a time, we'll get there eventually.

Now, lest anyone thinks that I'm pretty laid back about this, let me assure you, I've had more than my share of trauma over the whole thing. Remember, I've been at this for, well, a long time. He's 6. And Zoo Boy shows NO sign of having any interest in doing anything anywhere but in his diaper. And I have NO energy to deal with it right now. So right now I'm in coasting mode with the whole potty thing. I'm still glowing with victory every time Jacob runs in to use the potty at the McDonald's. He's even using their soap to wash his hands -- which is a whole 'nother story. But needless to say, he and I have both come a long way, baby!

what we're reading now

2006-12-27T07:46:00.000-05:00

Now that I'm all caught up with our homeschooling history (such that it is), I thought it would be nice to post each week about what we're reading. We read the same three stories all week long during our Family Storytime (which occurs at bedtime), usually these are books from the local Library, all of them are preschool-gauged picture books, and are based around our bi-monthly theme. The first book is introduced on Saturday, the second added on Sunday, and the third on Monday (so that they are not hearing more than one new book a day). We read the same books all week because of what Enki Education has taught us about the way young children learn -- they experience the book on a different level each night, at first just openly listening to it, then taking it in gradually, and eventually proccessing it fully (as fully as their level of development allows). We then make the book available for the kids to read and look at on their own for the next few weeks. It's important to us that these books are nourishing both in content and in illustration -- we want books that serve to feed their budding imaginations and fill them with wonder.

Since my family will be celebrating the Christmas holiday together this coming Saturday (the 30th), we're still working on the Christmas theme this week. Here's the books we've chosen for this week's Family Story Time, and a bit of a review on each:

"Who's That Knocking On Christmas Eve" by Jan Brett. A wonderfully imaginative nordic tale of a boy with an ice bear who helps out a girl with a troll problem on Christmas Eve. The 3-part illustrations tell several sides of the same tale at once (great for RDI perspective taking!), and the air-brushed background pulls it all together. Just fantastic for budding imaginations!

"The Animal's Christmas Carol" by Helen Ward. This is a gorgeously illustrated verse about the night the animals spoke, and what they said. Despite not being a Christian family, we love the Nativity story and tell it frequently this time of year -- there is a magical quality to it that really grabs our kids, and a generosity of spirit which is our emphasis at Christmas time. This book captures the wonder and cooperative, giving spirit of the season, set in the stable on that magical night in Bethlehem.

"Nicholi" by Cooper Edens, illustrated by A. Scott Banfill. This is Zoo Boy's favorite book of the season, and I can see why. During a traditional Christmas Day snow carving festival, a gentle stranger, dressed in beautiful robes, arrives and carves a magical sleigh and reindeer, which he then uses to take the children of the town for a ride through the sky. When the ride is over, he and his team mysteriously vanish, leaving behind only the harnesses and Nicholi's clothing. They leave it to the children's imagination to identify who that myseterious strange may have been, which fits in with our RDI work just fabulously.

christmas past and present

2006-12-25T20:18:00.000-05:00

Christmas 2000: Jacob was 2 months old. I have a photo of him in his bouncy seat surrounded by presents. Pretty funny, actually, but hey, we were new parents and pretty excited about the holiday! We didn't bother with a Christmas tree, but my mother had made him a stocking.

Christmas 2001: Jacob was mesmerized by the Christmas lights, so despite the fact that we weren't going to get a tree, we did, and decorated it just with lights. He spent hours staring at them. He was new to toddling, so we kept the tree out on our deck.

Christmas 2002: I was pregnant with Zoo Boy, Jacob was walking, we had a gate around the tree to protect it, and Jacob spent 2 hours on Christmas morning opening and closing the door of the Blues Clues refrigerator that came with the playset we gave him. At my family celebration, The Map Man and I alternated spending time out of the room with an overwhelmed Jacob (who missed the first hour or so of the festivities because he'd fallen asleep in his carseat and we were afraid to wake him). This was before we realized anything was "wrong". He enjoyed the "christmas concert" put on by his cousins (mostly small kids playing toy instruments very badly), sitting in my lap, clapping his hands, and saying "that was good!" (a scripted sequence he'd memorized from a video) after every "song".

Christmas 2003: Just a few weeks prior to Jacob's diagnosis. I really don't remember anything from that Christmas, I had other things on my mind. I do know that at his 3rd birthday party two months prior to that, he spent over an hour putting a card in and out of an envelope. I suspect Christmas was much the same.

Christmas 2004: This was a couple months after starting RDI. As in the prior several years, it took us hours to get through opening just a few packages. Once opened, he'd focus on that one toy for over an hour, before finally being convinced to open another present. This was the year that he had an ugly burn below his lower lip in every holiday photo, from biting into a hamburger that was too hot (and which he was oblivious to). At The Map Man's parent's house, he jumped up and down flapping his hands while watching his cousins playing.

Christmas 2005: This was the first year that Jacob seemed to "get" Christmas. He fell in love with the idea of Santa Clause, and actually got close enough to Santa on an impromtu visit at a local light display for me to get a picture of him. He wouldn't sit on his lap, mind you, but he stood next to him and actually spoke a few words to him in response to my prompts. We wrote a letter to Santa, and he was thrilled to wake up Christmas morning to discover that he'd come and brought him what he asked for. He sat at the kid's table at Christmas dinner with his cousins, eating his cheese and crackers in lieu of what was being served -- but he SAT there, instead of with us at the "big table" or with him at the kid's table. It was a wonderful Christmas!

Christmas 2006: All I can say is WHOA. Jacob 100% "gets" the whole Christmas thing and is a full participating part of it, no scaffolding or assistance needed. He wrote his own letter to Santa, and sat on Santa's lap (during a planned visit) chatting to him (and left with a wave and a "thanks Santa!"), chatted with Mrs. Clause and some of the elves, making real, albeit simple, conversation with them. At Christmas dinner he participated in excited, reciprocal conversation with his cousins at the kids' table (still eating Cheese and Crackers instead of the meal, but actually offering to share them with his cousins). During our "concert" he sang and participated as enthusiastically (maybe more so) as anyone there. Upon opening his first present this morning, he asked what it was (a block and marble run), and when I explained it, he exclaimed "Oh! I LOVE that kind of toy!" When I asked him if he wanted to get it out to play with it, or open another gift, he chose picking another gift to give someone else: "I'll pick a present to give -- here, Mommy, here's one for you!" He helped Zoo Boy set up his new farm play set and the two of them spent a good part of the morning engrossed in pretend play. I heard no scripting. I saw no stimming. There was only a little boy engrossed in the spirit and fun of the season. I guess I can check off the first item on my Christmas wish list!

Here's wishing you all the very merriest of holidays!

no advice, please

2006-12-23T10:57:00.000-05:00

Oh, gosh, I don't know how to say this without sounding like a total witch. So I guess I'm just going to say it. Hopefully nobody will take this personally, and will understand that I'm just feeling particularly vulnerable about this stuff. Here goes.

I LOVE that people want to offer me advice, that they want to share what worked for their kids, that they want to help ME.

But I don't love getting advice about things we're having trouble with. First of all, I've read about it all, trust me. Most of it doesn't work for my kid, much of it has caused more problems than it's solved, and some of it is not supportive of our RDI program, so I would never try it to begin with. Secondly, I'm TOO EXHAUSTED to try anything new right now -- I already have some "answers" to some of our problems that I've just not had the energy or resources to address yet. I would love to hear what worked for your kids, truly I would! So in the light of, "here's what we did", please feel free to share. But please, PLEASE, don't tell me that I should try this or that or whatever. To me that feels like pointing and criticizing my "mothering inadequacies". Even though in my head I know that most of the folks who offer me advice are doing it from a "good" place, in my heart it wounds me, makes me feel defensive and inadequate. I don't want to feel that way, nobody does.

I truly believe that I am doing the absolute very best that I can for my kids. I've put a lot of effort into researching all the possibilities, have implemented what I can, and will implement what else we need when I am able. I write here to share where we're at and what has worked for us. I'd love to read about what works for you. But I try not to presume that I would know what would and would not work for anyone else's child. Please show me a similar courtesy and assume that I've researched the options and am doing my best.

Believe me, when I want advice, I'll ask for it! In the meantime, let's just stick to open sharing. I think that's what will best preserve all of our feelings of adequacy.

teeth

2006-12-23T09:02:00.000-05:00

After the personal trauma of posting about our eating woes yesterday, I couldn't handle talking about potty training quite yet. So I chose to talk about teeth instead. I'm not sure that's any less stressful. But I feel like if I get this all off my chest, maybe I can just post a week's worth of happy holiday chatter after this. Or maybe I'll be in this morose blogging mood for the remainder of the winter. (I can hear the collective groan!)

OK, so, we all know that kids with Autism and the Dentist is not exactly a match made in heaven. In fact, we avoided it for years. We built up a steady, progressive dental care program at home, and Jacob really came to enjoy tooth brushing and us messing around in his mouth in general. He would run screaming from dental floss, but we figured if we brushed thoroughly twice a day, at his age, what difference would it make. (I don't remember flossing until I was in my teens, and I was cavity-free until about then, and I wasn't even GOOD about brushing -- same with The Map Man, tho I'm guessing he was more attentive to his teeth than I was to mine.) I figured we were made-in-the-shade -- good genetics, good tooth care plan, why bother with the dentist.

When he was 5, I decided it was time to take him in -- that's the age my sister first took her son in, and we'd had a year of RDI under our belts, so I thought maybe Jacob could handle it if I found the right dentist. I located a Pediatric Dentist who has a grown son with Autism, and has many, many clients that have ASD -- AND that had an actual Autism Protocol. I liked the sounds of that! We tested him out with Zoo Boy (who DID have significant dental problems due to a congenital defect in his tooth enamel), and were impressed. We discussed Jacob with him and set up an appointment.

In March of 2006 we brought Jacob in for his first actual appointment. In January we had brought him just to play with the toys in the waiting room, and in February we met with the hygienist that works with the ASD kids, and she gave him a tour of the "special room" where he got to play with the chair, and the dental implements. She sent him home with various and assorted pieces of equiptment for us to familiarize him with at home. Methodically over the next month, we prepared him for his dental visit. We switched him to an electric toothbrush, we got him used to us touching his teeth with the scaler, we got him drinking out out the straw that sucks water away from his mouth (what IS the name of that thing??).

What I wasn't prepared for was just how successful this approach was going to be, or how truly skilled with kids with Autism these folks were. Armed with his own Tigger electric toothbrush, they swept him away from me the moment we stepped in the office, making it clear that I was to have NO part of this. I sat with massive trepitation on the edge of my seat, waiting for screams and crying from down the hall. What I heard was giggles, shreiks of delight, and laughter. 45 minutes later, the dentist came down the hall with a slew of digital photos showing a very happy, joyful Jacob having the time of his life while they examined, cleaned, scaled, and polished his teeth. HOW did they do that??? I was just amazed. And grateful. And relieved that our dental cleaning program had resulted in no visible cavities, tho the dentist warned me that until he feels comfortable taking x-rays with Jacob (he didn't want to push it this visit), he wouldn't know for sure if there was anything going on down deep. I brushed it away, jubilant in the positive exprience he'd just had. They sent him home with a book about his visit to the dentist, with pictures of him, the hygienist, and the dentist. It became one of Jacob's prized possessions. Every time we drove anywhere near the office, Jacob would talk about his friend the dentist and all the fun things he did there. Every time I mentioned going back at some point, he got excited and talked about how much he liked going to the dentist. Heck, I'd wished we'd taken that approach to his Doctor's visits (which NEVER go like that!).

The dentist had reccommended that we come back with Jacob every 3 months, so that he remembered his positive experiences and that we kept on top of anything that might develop in his mouth. But, here's the thing -- we don't have dental insurance, and this guy is EXPENSIVE. Well worth the money, mind you, but EXPENSIVE. And, um, we're broke. Beyond broke, actually, we're in debt beyond our wildest nightmares. Spending money for a dentist with a kid with a healthy mouth just didn't seem like a wise use of our widening debt load. So, we didn't.

Flash ahead to this past week. I tell Jacob we're going to the dentist, and he does backflips of joy (well, not literally, but he's pretty excited about it). He RUNS in, can't wait to get to the "special room". They review his picture book with him, whipping him into a frenzy of delight. Off he goes with his "friends" for his cleaning. The dentist comes out in a bit to yell at me for not bringing him back every three months like he told me to, but that everything looks good, and that they're in the middle of doing a flouride treatment on him (without my permission, mind you, which irked me a little, but in retrospect I probably would have allowed it anyway, since Jacob will not let us use Flouride toothpaste on him -- but still, if you're going to load a kid's mouth up with a controversial poison, don't you think it's a good policy to ask the parent's permission first??). He said he wanted to get a couple of x-rays too, if Jacob would allow it, and tried to send me on a guilt trip for not bringing him in every 3 months LIKE HE SUGGESTED so that he could have prepared him for the x-ray room and proceedure. I refused to feel guilty, and he went back to work. They got the x-rays no problem.

After the appointment, a happy, singing Jacob came skipping back down the hall to play in the waiting room. I chatted with the hygientist, she said everything looked great, and that they wanted to schedule him for sealing of his 6 yr molars, as they are particularly prone to decay, and we certainly didn't want Jacob to have to have cavities filled. So we started setting up the appointment (scrambling in my head trying to figure out where THAT money was going to come from), when the floor fell out from underneath me.

From the other room, the booming voice of the dentist "Wait, this kid's got two cavities." I became paralized with fear. My breathing grew short as he came out, showed me the two ugly spots, deep between a couple of molars. He explained that they are not permanent teeth, but the location required filling, since they could effect both the bone growth of his jaw, and the development of the permanent teeth beneath. They were going to be involved proceedures, with novacaine. They'd do the sealing of the six year molars in a couple weeks, and decide, based on how he tolerates that, what the course of action will be. I choked back tears as I schedule the sealing appointment, whispering "but we've been so good about brushing". The hygenist said "It's not lack of brushing that causes those types of cavities, it's lack of flossing". ARGHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!

I recently had a lot (and I mean a LOT) of dental work done. While sitting in that chair for hours at a time every week for over a month, all sorts of sensory insults going on inside my mouth, one persistant theme kept running through my brain "Thank heavens this is ME and not Jacob. How would he ever be able to put up with something like this", the whole time patting myself on the back for being so attentive from the start to his dental care, waiting for the right time and the right dentist to work with. Building up all those positive memories of the dentist office.

And now that's all about to be undone, because of a lack of flossing. And of course, now Jacob is perfectly happy to have me floss his teeth. A little too late....

As I walked out of the Pediatric Dentist's office, feeling numb, the dentist's voice trailed behind me "you may as well get used to it -- he's got big teeth inside a small mouth, there's going to be a lot of orthodontic work in that kid's future."

the food thing

2006-12-22T19:27:00.000-05:00

I figure it's time for me to post about some of the skeletons in our closet, lest anyone thinks our life is a walk in the park at this point in our Autism Remediation program. The two biggies for us are food, and potty training. I'll tackle the food thing tonight, and if I manage to survive talking about that, maybe I'll post about potty training at some point too. Though I may need a few weeks (or months) to recover from the trauma of talking about food....

The food thing. This has been one of our predominant nightmares throughout the past 3 years of our lives. Just the mention of dinner invitations, the words "snack provided" on program descriptions, or an offer to get together for lunch, causes me to have a moderate anxiety attack. I specifically arranged for our little homeschooling co-op to meet between mealtimes. I've avoided lunch dates for years.

The problem is that Jacob only eats a small handful of things. It has nothing to do with being "picky", or "spoiled", or any number of other suggestions (mostly implying poor mothering on my part) that people freely offer if the topic comes up (and trust me, I try to avoid the topic coming up at all costs!). It has to do with Sensory issues. And Autism. Though at this point it's more a Sensory thing and less an Autism thing, even though it's much easier to blame it on the Autism. I've found in general saying "he has Autism" gets us out of a lot of uncomfortable situations. Or rather, it did, back when he obviously had Autism. Now that it's more subtle to see, most folks just think I'm crazy. Maybe I am. I'm definitely food-phobic! I just wish that translated into ME avoiding eating so much, instead of the opposite (stress-eating, one of my personal demons).

So, anyway, here goes, I'm rolling up my sleeves and laying it all out on the table for anyone who cares to read this. Here's what Jacob currently will eat (and note, it has to be EXACTLY as described, down to brand and variety name, otherwise forget it):

Orange Juice (Tropicana pulp-free with calcium)
Bananas (though only if they are VERY ripe)
Apples (on occassion)
Froot Loops (dry, no milk)
Cheese and Crackers (Wispride Spreadable Cheddar and Red Oval Mini Stoned Wheat Thins)
Oatmeal Cookies (Archway, NO RAISINS)
Graham Crackers (Honey Maid regular variety)
Yellow Cake with Vanilla frosting (we can get away with a bit of variety with this one!)
McDonald's Double Cheeseburger, plain
McDonald's French Fries
McDonald's Vanilla Shake
McDonald's Vanilla Ice Cream (frozen yogurt)
Dunkin Donuts Old-Fashioned Donut
Rold Gold thin pretzels
Hershey's milk chocolate
M&Ms plain
Marshmallow Peeps (you know, the disgusting Easter candy)

He'll also nibble other kinds of chocolate, and some other kinds of cookies, and will claim to "like" them, but will refuse to actually eat them.

So, reading through the above list, you will see that there are only 3 things that we can possibly make a meal out of. So we serve those three things every day, and here they are:

Breakfast: Banana, Froot Loops, Orange juice

Lunch: McDonald's Double Cheeseburger, Fries and Shake

Dinner: Cheese and Crackers, Orange Juice

Now, we DO mix in a really good liquid vitamin and mineral supplement (Brainchild Nutritonal's Spectrum Support II) with his Orange Juice twice a day (it's supposed to be given 3 times a day, but we do the best we can, and we figure twice is better than not at all!). And we mix rice protein powder in his spreadable cheese. The lunch doesn't thrill me, but since the cheeseburger is the only animal protein the kid'll eat, I go with it anyway. If only they'd drop the trans fats at McDonald's I'd be a much happier mommy.

(Incidentally, on a side note, I was the sort of pre-mommy who swore I'd only ever feed my kids organic foods, and that McDonalds' food would never pass their lips. I've lived to eat those words -- pretty much literally. Honestly, I feel like McDonald's has kept my child alive, and I am eternally grateful for their existance. So don't judge me for feeding it on a regular basis to my kids....until you walk in my shoes....)

For desert after dinner, we have cake that we make from a Duncan Hines (or whatever) yellow cake mix, but we add 2 TBSP rice protein powder and 2 TBSP ground flax seed. So it has slightly more nutritional value than "just" cake. We tried mixing cod liver oil in the frosting, but we just couldn't get that to fly.

The other items on his "will eat" list we try to rotate as snacks depending on the day, with the exception of the McDonald's icecream, which we have pretty much every day after lunch (given that there's actually calcium in there and the boy won't drink milk).

As you've probably guessed, eating over someone else's house is pretty stressful for us. Well, for me. I don't think Jacob's really notices too much (unless he's teased about it -- someone commenting on his food is enough to make him refuse to eat anything, and has happened to him more than once), so long as I bring along enough food that he will eat. But it's meant that he's had pretzels or graham crackers for dinner if we've stayed on the spur of the moment, which opens up my parenting skills to all sorts of criticisms. It's a constant sore topic with me, and one of the few things that I'm quite sensitive to. And it continously amazes me that people don't seem to think I see them rolling their eyes, or hear the comments they whisper to each other in the kitchen while getting dessert or coffee.

At this point, I'd like to bring attention to something. One of the most touted myths that gets thrown at me on a fairly regular basis is "no kid will starve themselves to death". This is always said by some mother who "knows better" than I do, and thinks I can "fix" Jacob's food selectiveness by just not offering him anything but what *I* want him to eat. Well, I have a newsflash for people that hold to this theory. There are a small number of kids who WILL starve to death rather than try something new. I suspect most of them have ASD. My kid is one of them. I have proof.

So anyway, to wrap up this long-winded, defensive rant about my child's eating habits, I just want to say that I am trying VERY hard not to worry about the food thing. He's getting all the vitamins and minerals and protein he needs. He eats enough of a variety of food to not need tube-feeding (and oh boy, do I EVER feel for the folks who have had to go that route!). There is a sensory eating protocol that I do plan on trying with him next year, but right now my plate (HA! Bad pun!) is too full and I've got all I can handle, the thought of starting yet something else is too overwhelming at this point. So I'll continue to muddle along the way I am, fending off criticisms and dirty looks from people who don't understand and possibly don't want to.

But now you all understand. So thanks for reading this. And if anyone wants to get together for lunch at McDonald's, we're available!

fall 2006 homeschooling, solstice celebrations

2006-12-21T23:40:00.000-05:00

Our late December theme has been the celebrations that take place around the solstice. This year we've focused mostly on Christmas, because it is what our families all celebrate, although given that today is Yule, there's been some activities based around that this past week as well. We'll do more with Yule in the coming years, but we thought one holiday was enough chaos for this year. So we've been reading books about Christmas (those that focus on simple celebrations, focusing on the "magic" of the season), singing Christmas and winter songs, decorating the house for the season, decorating Christmas trees, picking out our own tree (we'll decorate it tomorrow, we only put the lights up on it until after Yule), sending out holiday cards, wrapping holiday gifts, driving around looking at Christmas lights, attending a presentation of The Nutcracker. Oh, and watching the Christmas TV specials that we grew up watching, which has been fun and nostalgic for us.

There, I'm all caught up with homeschooling stuff too! Whatever shall I write about now?? Ahh, don't worry, I've still got PLENTY of stuff to say, on RDI, Homeschooling, Enki Education, etc. It'll be a long winter, I'm sure I'll be able to fill it with no problem!

fall 2006 homeschooling, snow is coming

2006-12-21T23:31:00.000-05:00

The first half of December was spent doing things related to the snow we were starting to see, though not as often as we would have expected for this part of the country at this time of year -- for the most part it was a very mild December. But there was enough flurries and squalls to get the kids in the spirit, and we read stories about first snow, early winter, shortening days, and chilly nights. We shopped for snow boots and pants and hats and ice skates. We sang songs about winter and snow. We talked about all the fun we'd have in the snow when we finally get a big storm. We caught snowflakes on our tongues, made and followed tracks in the snow. But mostly we spent as much time outdoors in the unusually mild weather as we could, talking about how once the snow came, we'd be spending more time indoors.

fall 2006 homeschooling, giving thanks

2006-12-21T23:27:00.000-05:00

The second half of November's theme was Thanksgiving and giving thanks. We read stories about the first thanksgiving, and pretended we were Pilgrims on the Mayflower or Native Americans bringing food to the big feast. We learned and sang songs of thanks. We cooked a really big meal and shared it with our family . We talked about the things we are thankful for.

fall 2006 homeschooling, getting ready for winter

2006-12-21T23:18:00.000-05:00

Ok, so the photo doesn't correspond, but this is a picture from a Homeschooling Group trip to a nearby Firestation. One of the firefighters gave a nice program on fire safety to the kids, then we got the grand tour of the fire house and all the trucks and equiptment. The kids got to sit in a couple of the trucks and try out some of the equiptment. It was a really cool morning.

But anyway, the first half of November's theme was Getting Ready for Winter. We read books about hibernation and how animals survive the winter. We hung out bird feeders for the birds. We sang songs about late fall and bears and the coming winter. We took turns pretending we were various animals getting ready for winter.

fall 2006 homeschooling, pumpkins

2006-12-21T16:43:00.000-05:00

The second half of October had a Pumpkin theme. We read books about pumpkins, visited pumpkin patches, designed and carved Jack-o-Lanterns, toasted pumpking seeds, made pumpking breads and pumpkin pie, had a pumpkin-rolling contest.

Here's the kids in a local pumpkin patch.

fall 2006 homeschooling, leaves

2006-12-21T16:40:00.000-05:00

The first half of October, we had a Leaf Theme. We read books about leaves, sang songs about the change of season and falling leaves, collected leaves on walks, did leaf-rubbings and leaf-collages, raked leaves, and of course jumping in big piles of leaves.

Here's a photo of one of an original "Leaf Man" that Jacob made in our yard, inspired by the book by that name by Lois Ehlert.

fall 2006 homeschooling, apples

2006-12-21T16:22:00.000-05:00

Now that I'm all caught up with our RDI story, I feel the need to catch up with our homeschooling story! I'll be breif, it'll only take a few posts.

Our homeschooling program this fall wasn't particularly involved. Keeping in mind that I consider this another "preschool" year for both of my boys, and the main "work" that Jacob is doing is Autism Remediation via RDI and Sensory Integration work guided by an OT, I'm not looking to bring academics in any form into the picture until next year, so much of our day was based on play and fun Master/Apprentice type activities. I did a lot of reading through our new Enki Education Kindergarten Materials, much of which I won't be using until next fall anyway, but I wanted to read about where we were heading, and get started on setting up our day in an Enki-friendly manner, since it's such a good framework with which to base our RDI lifestyle stuff around. A lot of the emphasis on Enki is keeping in tune with the natural environment (which feels pretty natural -- no pun intended! -- to me anyway), so we worked in themes in about half-month chunks.

We started the 2nd half of September by working around an Apple theme. We read books about apples, sang songs about apples, went apple picking, did some apple baking, made some simple apple crafts. This is photo of Jacob preparing apples for homemade applesauce from a recipe in the back of the "Apples Apples Apples" book by Nancy Elizabeth Wallace. Great recipe, very yummy applesauce! We also made apple pie, apple crisp, used cut apples dipped in paint to make apple prints, etc.

our RDI program today

2006-12-18T19:47:00.000-05:00

As I mentioned in yesterday's post, right now we are concentrating on Appraisal and Self-Awareness. What we're doing currently isn't neccessarily tied to any particular stage, but our general gist is around Stages 6, 7 and 8. The actual stage work isn't so important at the moment. Give Jacob chances to think about Appraisal and his own opinion about thing is.

I wanted to detail one of our recent holiday activities here, to provide a bit of a snapshot of how RDI fits into our day. (I apologize about the photo not matching -- I didn't take any pictures of the below activity, tho I did have the video camera rolling, so I just included another RDI lifestyle moment -- celebrating my birthday a couple months ago.)

The activity was setting up my parent's Christmas train under their tree. When we first arrived at my parent's house, Jacob had expected the train to be set up already for him to play with, as my mother had promised him the last time he visited. I knew already that my father's back had been bothering him and he wasn't able to set the train up, but I saved that info in order to let Jacob appraise and process the fact that it WASN'T set up, and come up with a solution to the problem.

Jacob immediately looked dissapointed that the train wasn't under the tree, but then looked around and saw that it was in it's box on the other side of the room, and he ran to it and began to take out pieces. I told him that Grampy's back was bothering him, so he couldn't set up the tree, and I wondered out loud what we might be able to do about that. Jacob floundered for a response, and I gave him time to think about it. Then I added a bit of scaffolding: I said "Well, one possibility is that we could just pack up the train and put it away and not use it this year." He immediately rejected that idea (no kidding, huh?), still floundering for a better idea. I gave it a bit more time, then added "or maybe someone else could set up the train for Grampy." to which he almost immediately offered "I'm really good at setting up trains!"

We then discussed whether to set up the train first, or the track first. He chose the train. I pointed out that if we set the train up first, there was no place to put it, but if we set up the track first, then we could put the train on the track (modeling appraisal). He changed his mind and decided that we should set up the track first.

Next, we had to decide WHERE we were setting up the track. Jacob said under the tree (well, duh), and I said "oh yeah, but look, there's nothing under the tree to set it up on." We left a pause for Jacob to think about that (working on appraisal), and then my mom chimed in that she had a sheet to spread, but she needed help doing it. Jacob immediately began helping her spread the sheet, coordinating his actions with her, moving out of her way as she moved towards him, referencing her for directions.

Then my dad suggested laying out all the track pieces to see what we had. So Jacob handed me each piece out of the bag, and I laid them all out on the floor. I then had him hand me all of the curved pieces, then I handed him all of the straight pieces, speaking my thought proccess out loud so that he could see/hear how I used appraisal to decide what was going where. I then moved to the other side of the tree, and he brought me the pieces I asked for by saying "Now I need a curved piece" or "Next comes a straight piece". I made many mistakes (most of them legitimately!), which gave him practice in identifying the errors (more appraisal), and watching me model problem solving for him as I talked my way through the problem. When we were all done, the track was too big (more appraisal work), and we had to take it apart and make it smaller (problem solving). My dad instructed Jacob to put the unused pieces away.

Then Jacob and I collaborated on a sneaky scheme. One of the pieces that Grampy wanted to use wasn't one that I wanted to use. When Grampy was called out of the room for a minute, I handed that piece to Jacob and told him to go switch it with one of the pieces he put away. He immediately "got" that we were being "sneaky" and broke into giggles when Grampy came back into the room and saw what we did, exchanging mischevious glances with me, delighting in our "trick".

We then put the train together, Jacob deciding which car to start with and which came next. The train didn't run right at first, and we did a lot of problem solving with the tempermental track. Then the train didn't have enough power, so we changed the batteries. (Appraisal and problem solving.)

When we finally got the whole thing running properly, my mom came out with a bag of town accessories to go around the track, and she offered pieces to the kids. Jacob took pieces from her and decided where to put them under the tree. (Appraisal and Self-awareness.)

This was two hours of RDI lifestyle, and is a pretty good example of how our current RDI objectives are fitting into our lives.

Stage 6 -- Co-Regulation

2006-12-17T18:16:00.000-05:00

In November we started looking at the Stage 6 objectives. Stage 6 is entitled "Co-Regulation", and is described as the child prefering "shared activities where he/she acts as a partner to add variations, while both partners equally maintain coordination through ongoing referencing and regulation". This is the stage that pulls together the skills from all 5 of the previous stages, so it's a pretty important one. And not surprisingly, if the child has had good mastery and generalization of the previous stages, they're going to come into Stage 6 with a lot of the skills already emerging.

I knew early on in the month that Jacob was looking pretty good with co-regulation, but we tested out the various skills with an eye towards making sure he really had them down. We ran races with ourselves and toys, with the rules constantly changing (we took turns changing them) so that our goal was different, our start/end point was different, the way we moved was different (hopping or spinning or rolling). We sang songs and changed them up quite a bit. We marched around in different ways. We built towers together, we built them seperately but at the same time. We built all sorts of stuff together. Throughout everything we did, I kept trying to be "tricky", but there was no tricking him, he did what he needed to do to stay coordinated with me. We were able to successfully play board games for the first time without having to scaffold the rules for him to keep up -- he could finally keep track of when his turn was, which direction his piece was moving, and where he was in relation to the rest of us in the game. Co-regulation is a WONDERFUL thing!

And I did a lot of just sitting back and observing him with other kids. I watched him playing on the playground, dancing at music class, playing ball with his father, playing pretend games with Zoo Boy. This is the stage that I finally saw him start to take an equal role in his interactions with others. Prior to this, his play with other kids was mostly him following their lead. Suddenly, I was seeing him not only intiate the interaction, but he also started running the show on occassion. And the more he plays with other kids, the stronger his Stage 6 skills get. This is the stage where I could finally sit back and enjoy a nice hot cup of tea and bask in the glory of our success!

I think we're pretty much "there" with Stage 6, though we're going to keep on working on it for awhile, while we start looking at Stage 7 objectives. One area he's still having problems with is being able to generate original variations on his own from scratch -- he's able to seemlessly use variations that are "standard" things we've used before, and he can also easily make choices from a list of possibilities, but coming up with something completely on his own is still a big challenge for him. So we need to work through that by strengthening his sense of self (self-awareness) and by working on his appraisal skills (his ability to assess a situation). I'll talk more about how we're working on that tomorrow.

The RDI stages are starting to get a little blurry -- it's becoming obvious how much work we're doing on higher stages without even intending on it, now that his brain is developing in a more dynamic manner, it's opening all sorts of previously obscured avenues, and we're taking little side trips down them all the time. For instance, I can already see how some of our "stage 6 work" has started morphing into Stage 8 (Collaboration) type stuff. At the same time, the RDI Stages themselves are going through a metamorphasis, as the "new" version of RDI prepares to be launched sometime after the first of the year. I don't know all the details, I just know it will be somewhat differently set up than it is now. I anticipate that we'll have to go back and fill in some "holes", so keeping track of stages at this point seems almost silly. And there's enough important RDI work for us to do right now without having to worry about which stage it currently fits into anyway.

In the meantime, in celebration of finally catching up to where we are now with our RDI program, here's a photo of Jacob teaching Zoo Boy how to catch snowflakes on his tongue during our first measurable snowfall of the season a week or two ago. Since then it's warmed up to record high temperatures, so that snow didn't last more than a day, but it gave us all a taste of the fun that lies ahead -- this is the first year that Jacob's shown interest in being out in the snow, and there's a whole winter world of fun and developmental opportunities to introduce him to in the months ahead!

social explosion

2006-12-15T18:59:00.000-05:00

Late summer of 2006 is when we saw Jacob's big Social Explosion --when his social desire and skills suddenly took off like they were fueled by a jet engine. The kid who was strictly a passive, often disinterested, participant in play with other kids suddenly started to become a real part of interactions, and even started soliciting attention from other kids. Mr. Flexible was ready to try out that new set of wings we'd been crafting for him, and he's been soaring ever since.

Two years before, prior to RDI, a typical scene of Jacob on the playground would look like this: A small group of kids are chasing each other around the playscape, playing games of tag, doing typical kid things. Jacob spins around a pole nearby, pretty much oblivious to anything else going on around him. Or he sits at a stationary game, working on the same game for an hour without lifting his head. Or he repeatedly climbs the same ladder and slides down the same slide. When there is a line for that slide, he stands patiently waiting his turn, hands subtly flapping.

Skip ahead to the same playground, late summer, 2006. Jacob waits patiently for a boy to finish eating his lunch, telling me "I'm going to play with that boy when he's done eating". The boy finishes his lunch and heads in the direction of the playscape. Jacob skips over to join him and says "C'mon, let's play!" The boy gives him a wary look and says "I'm not going to play with you, I don't even like you." Unphased, Jacob says "Why not?" "Because I don't know you" says the boy. "Oh" says Jacob, pondering that for a second, then coming up with a solution. "I'm Jacob!" he introduces himself, then adds an introduction of his brother too, followed by "So, c'mon, let's play". The boys proceed to chase each other all over creation, come up with a couple different pretend games to play, and have a rollicking good time in general, each taking turns adding variations and twists to their play, each coordinating beautifully with the other.

The sequence repeated itself all fall, in variations on the theme of Social Success, with me sitting in awe of the pure power of it.

It's RDI at work. Constantly. Each time Jacob interacts with another child, he builds positive Episodic Memories of having social success, which increases his competence with it, and gives him a base to work from the next time. Each little variation that happens adds to Jacob's database of how to respond to Dynamic systems, increasing his competence in that arena too, making him crave more variation. It's child development. Typical development, the way the textbooks say it should happen (just a few years late, but who's counting?).

The wheels have been set in motion, there's no stopping it now. His brain was busy working on Stage 6 co-regulation activities before I'd even had a chance to crack the book and read what they are. Those neural connections are developing at a rapid pace, all along the right pathways now that we've shoved them over there and held them in place for a bit with all the earlier stage work. Every time he interacts with another kid successfully, he adds to the network of connections that are laying the groundwork for the next several stages of RDI work. Sometimes it feels like I'm just floating along with it, caught in the current like a tiny inflatable raft. And Jacob's holding the lifeline. Confidently, with strength, knowing instinctively that he's at least partially in charge of where we're headed now.

Stage 5 -- reversals and transformations

2006-12-13T17:02:00.000-05:00

Coming back down to earth from my new homeschooling obsession, I set forth to examine Stage 5 on my October 2006 video tape for my consultant. Stage 5 is "Reversals and Transformations", and in overly simplistic terms means that the child enjoys massive variations in which things they previously knew to go a certain way suddenly change and don't go back to the original way.

So I set out to see what we might need to work on. We loaded clean dishes into the dishwasher and ran it. We threw clean laundry around the living room and then left for the day. We ate out of dog bowls and fed the dogs off our plates. We shopped the grocery list backwards. We played red-light-green-light in "opposite world" fashion (where the rules were reversed, so red light and facing meant run, green light and back turned meant stop). We played it so that "apples" meant run and "peaches" meant stop (and each round was a different set of rules). We drove backwards around the block. We spent some time saying "good bye" instead of "hello" and vice versa. We spent some time saying "green" instead of "hello" and "red" instead of "goodbye" for awhile. We played baseball with a golf club and a basketball. We made the goal of races to lose. We threw the ball to each other trying to miss. We ate breakfast under the table. We slept in our clothes and dressed in our PJs during the day. We charted out routes on maps, then purposely went the wrong way. We made out grocery lists and never bought a thing on them. We made out grocery lists for ridiculous things. We set out to go to one place and wound up at another.

Jacob thought it all was hilarious and played along readily with all the nonsense, even offering his own transformations. We were done with Stage 5, after working on it for all of a month.

But it wasn't really just a month. I had inadvertantly (due to my own confusion over what was Stage 4 and what was Stage 5) been working on it for pretty much the past year. You know those times when Jacob got upset over my Stage 4 variations? Well, that's because they were really Stage 5 transformations. But in the course of the year, we'd worked our way through that, scaffolded and framed enough to make those new connections in Jacob's brain that we needed, and he now could handle as big a variation as we could throw at him.

We'd done it. We'd turned The World's Most Rigid Boy into Mr. Flexible. In just 2 years we'd transformed a kid that couldn't tolerate even the most basic variation to a real go-with-the-flow, enjoy-life-to-it's-fullest kind of boy. Or, rather, we stripped away that cocoon of inflexibility to reveal the joyful, fun-loving child beneath. The future loomed bright with promise. And Stage 6 was unfolding right before our eyes.

pretend play -- a young child's work

2006-12-12T07:44:00.000-05:00

I'm making a pre-new-years resolution to get entirely caught up on our RDI back-story before Jan 1, so that I can start posting about our daily happenings (which may or may not be of interest to anyone else, but is sort of the reason I started this whole thing to begin with!). So this post is going to sort of re-combine RDI and Enki Education and then I'll switch back to talking about RDI stages and the like for a week or so, then more Enki for a week or so, then hopefully I'll be all caught up! (And will have a tall glass of something yummy to celebrate!)

But before I shift back to RDI, I wanted to talk about all that "pretend play" time in our current schedule. As most child development experts probably agree, pretend play is the developmentally appropriate "work" of the young child. For some reason school systems these days seem to like to ignore that fact, and you hear stories about recess being eliminated in Kindergartener's schedules because their academic schedules are too stringent, there's just not any time for "play". How that makes any sense at all is beyond me, but it's a fact that it's happening. And no doubt is one of the things fueling the huge Homeschooling movement in the US now. Parents just like us are saying "uh, wait a second...." and looking for more developmentally appropriate options for their kids. I can't help but think this will change the way the school systems operate eventually, and I certainly hope so for those kids whose families have no choice but to keep them in public schooling. Fortunately, we have options, and we've chosen the options that make sense for our kids and our family.

So the focus of the daily rhythm for an Enki Education family with young children is going to be making sure the kids have enough opportunity to do their "job" of pretend playing. This is where the RDI comes back into things, because a lot of kids with Autism do not do any pretend playing, and those that do most usually do it in a developmentally inappropriate manner (perseverating on the same topics or items or details that are unimportant to others in general). Via RDI, the "pretend play" time in the daily rhythms would be filled with RDI activities instead -- "play" with an adult coach who targets RDI objectives. As the child moves along the RDI stages, pretend play starts to occur as part of the natural developmental proccess. And at some point (around mastery of Stage 6, from my experience and what I've heard from others), they are able to do pretend playing in a developmentally appropriate manner. At that point (the point we are at now with Jacob), the adult phases themselves out of the "pretend play" picture and lets it develop on it's own. The adult is still present to step in and "help" if needed, but having time to do pretend play on their own or with siblings is critical to the child's natural development at that point (prior to that, leaving the child on their own is only going to encourage more atypical development).

This is also the time that you start thinking about Dyad work for your RDI-participating child. This is when you match up developmentally similar kids and work on the RDI objectives with them so that they are able to generalize all that great stuff you've worked on with real kids in real life situations. RDI families with siblings of similar ages (especially younger siblings) is going to find this pretty easy to do, as the kids will sort of take over all of the pretend play with each other and will be hitting your RDI objectives all day long, getting tons of day in and day out practice. Familes without siblings, or with siblings that are no where near the ages of the target child, are going to have to go out and find the right opportunities with other children. That might not be as hard as it sounds (I know, easy for me to say, we've got Zoo Boy, the world's best built-in dyad partner). There are lots of opportunities in most communities to find situations where there are other kids, and I always target the younger set -- Jacob is 6, but I always look for typically developing kids that are around 4 years old. These are kids that are at the same developmental level as Jacob, so it keeps a socially even playing field, and increases our chances of positive experiences. These kids are Jacob's peers, not same-aged kids, who would blow him out of the water with their social sophistication. Other preschoolers, like him. They are easily found on playgrounds while older kids are at school, at libary programs during the school day (we arrive at the library at the end of the 3-4 yr old storytime session, that way I know the play area will be full of developmentally appropriate kids), at McDonalds for lunch during school days (I avoid playgrounds and McDonalds when school is not in session, because then those areas are jam-packed with older kids.) Most community music and sports programs will allow your special needs child to particpate in their programs designed for younger kids if you ask. Yes, you have to admit to your child having a "problem", but I've found "developmentally delayed" is usually enough without having to go into a whole big Autism explanation, especially since it's pretty hard to "see" Jacob's Autism anymore. I personally would rather shout it from the rooftops and let Jacob have appropriate social interactions than keep it a secret and have him shoved in with kids he doesn't have a fighting social chance with.

And of course, you can work with your RDI Consultant to find another child in an RDI program that would be well-matched for a Dyad or play partner. You can ask on internet support groups if there's anyone in your area with same-stage kids.

The most important piece of advice I can give anybody reading this is to look to the development of typical kids to see what is appropriate for your child during Autism Remediation. Typical kids start by doing parallel play -- that's playing in proximity to other children, but not interacting with them. If your child still stresses out at being near other kids (very common during the early stages of RDI), they are not even ready for that yet. Once they can tolerate being near other kids, do some RDI play activities with your child in the vicinity of other kids. Or let them do their own play (if they will) near other kids. That's parallel play! That's developmentally appropriate! As they move through the RDI stages, they will naturally start to become interested in what other kids are doing and want to get involved with them. Make sure those kids they are exposed to are at that same point in their development -- kids that are only in the parallel play stage are going to reject social attempts, and kids that are well beyond that are going to find your child's first attempts at social approaches awkward and unnatural. But with other kids that are just starting their social awakening too, your child will be free to explore their newfound social interests and experiment along with them to see what works and what doesn't work to connect with these other little humans.