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In my continuing (but completely useless because what is the point really?) efforts to be able to proclaim that Charlotte is not really Autistic (sorry, just being honest) I find myself (once again) having to step back and acknowledge that sometimes it’s just the Autism talking. Or, more precisely, it’s the Autism not talking.
[Aside: I'm not upset or bothered by Charlotte being Autistic (having Autism or Asperger's, whatever), I accept it. I guess why I jump on this train of thought periodically has to do with my hopes for her future. If she's not really Autistic, than she has a brighter future (or so I find myself thinking, foolishly I know, such is the perils of parenting a child who sometimes does and sometimes doesn't act all spectrum-y). Believe me, I know people with Autism have bright futures. But this is my blog and it's okay for me to be honest about my trains of thought, however foolish or unproductive they may be.]
Anyway, back to my point.
Ever since we discovered the link between dairy and Charlotte’s sensory-seeking and screaming and general wonkiness, it’s been hard not to analyze some of her usual ASD traits and wonder if it’s because of something she consumed.
Last week after 3 days of Children’s Tylenol coincided with some not good times, we made the connection that, hey, maybe it’s the Tylenol. Stopped that and wonkiness began to subside.
Then went straight into Halloween where she got all loaded up on artificial colors, which are not usually in her diet, and the wonkiness, albeit to a lesser degree, returned, mostly in the form of spaciness and reduced eye contact and not responding all that much.
Now we’re a few days past the candy and today she was all sensory-seeking, a bit spacey, not a lot of eye contact and, of course, not responding.
And as much as I’d like to be able to point to something she consumed as the reason behind it, I can’t.
I can only point to Autism itself.
This is what Autism looks like in our house.
This does not take away from the fact that, yes, dairy does have a whacked-out effect on her causing a lot of screaming and significant sensory-seeking. And, yes, Tylenol definitely ramped her up in those areas as well.
But a typical day in the life of Autism in this house has varying degrees of those behaviors: some days she has more eye contact than others, some days she is more communicative than others, some days she sensory-seeks more than others.
On those days where she is less of all those, those are the days that my patience is tested and tried. It’s much easier to be patient when I know that her extreme behavior is from some errant casein ingestion. But when, to the best of my knowledge, that is not the case, and she’s just “a little bit Autistic” – those are the days I feel like I can’t handle.
Those are the times that I need to, as my husband says, “put it in check.” Quit getting so frustrated. Stop expecting more of her than she is going to give. Capable of giving.
Dietary interventions are not a cure. (I don’t believe there is a cure for Autism, by the way.) They are just another tool, just like other therapies available, that work great for some kids and have little effect on others.
Dietary interventions help. They do. But it doesn’t change the fact that she is still Autistic.
This is something I need to stop forgetting. She is on the Spectrum. Period. Welcome back to reality, Mama.
Often times it seems like Charlotte’s strengths are measured in comparison to how far she’s come or in relation to her ASD-ness.
At school:
“She participated in the fire assembly and didn’t get scared.”
“She engaged with the other girls during Girl Scout meeting and didn’t wander off.”
“She had 4 (or 5 or 6) back and forth exchanges with another child in class. Look how far she’s come!”
At home:
The kids were playing in the playroom. The Dad and I were bustling about the kitchen. He said to me: “I got a flu shot at work today.”
“Oh, I didn’t know you were getting one.”
“Yeah, I did last year too. It was free.”
A couple of minutes later Charlotte yells out: “Daddy, were you brave?”
He asks, “Brave about what?”
“When you got your flu shot,” she responds.
Our jaws hit the ground. We couldn’t believe she heard us talking in another room, not directly to her, while she was busy playing, processed what we said, and inquired totally appropriately about it.
That was great conversation … for her!
Why did we caveat it? Yes, I know, it’s because a few months ago she wasn’t tuning in and responding to ambient conversation.
She really has come a long way and I will never stop celebrating it or cease to be amazed and inspired by her.
However, I even find myself caveating her reading ability. I end up explaining Hyperlexia and that it’s on the Autism spectrum. As if that explains Charlotte’s ability to read. Isn’t is possible she’s also just smart?
I mean, I know she’s smart, but when I tell someone she taught herself to read when she was 2, and they exclaim, “Oh my goodness she’s a genius,” I feel like I have to give a broader picture of her.
It’s kinda nice as she’s getting older and lots of 5 year olds can read. I don’t feel any need to exclaim, “But she can read chapter books!” No more explanations needed.
But you know what’s really nice? This hasn’t happened too often, but when it does, my heart feels like it could burst.
I love when Charlotte is acknowledged positively for something all on her own, unrelated to how far she’s come or ‘despite’ that she has ASD.
The communication notebook last week had this comment.
“Writing Workshop: Charlotte has a wonderful imagination for writing stories!”
The note went on to give the specifics of what they are working on (that stories have a beginning, middle and end), and also the other things she did that day.
But all I could see was that one line: “Charlotte has a wonderful imagination for writing stories!”
Heart bursting over here!
She’s being recognized and praised for talents and strengths that have nothing to do with her being an ASD kid or compared to some other time.
I could almost cry when I think about it. Why? Maybe because I’ve recognized that she’s a good story writer. Maybe because that’s what I was known for being good at when I was a kid.
Maybe, and I suspect this is at the core, it’s because I see this as the beginning of revealing the person Charlotte is going to become. A person who will not always be measured in terms of disability and progress. But just in terms of her own person.
As promised, I made a visual schedule for Charlotte and Sarah. My goal was to add a bit more structure to our day in hopes of creating new habits. Namely, cleaning up and practicing piano (a returning habit, I suppose).
I should confess, first, though that I did not make the schedule myself. I was volunteering in Charlotte’s class last week (actually, I was in the hall doing a project for the teacher) and I had the opportunity to talk with her Special Ed teacher for close to half an hour. Yay! That was enlightening!
She offered to make a visual schedule using the template that they use in school. She included a few picture cards for me, and then I used this website (which was recommended to me by this lovely blogger) to make some additional cards.
In addition to the aforementioned new habits, I decided to throw one more into the mix: potty before bed. Charlotte can be very stubborn (you may or may not have realized this) and so she will often refuse to potty before bed. Without fail, this leads to an extra load of laundry for me the next day.
We’ve tried many things to coerce her into going, but as we all know, there are some things we simply cannot control.
Yesterday, Day 1 using the visual schedule, was great. To be fair, she had started practicing her piano again (yay!) before yesterday, but because of the visual schedule she played all of her songs, when I asked, instead of just one.
And, joy of joys, she helped me clean up. I set the timer for 10 minutes and gave her ONE task which should have taken all of 2 minutes. She played with the toy she was supposed to put away for 9 minutes, and then scrambled the last minute to clean it up.
But she cleaned up! Wasn’t exactly FlyLady standards, but it was an effort heartily appreciated.
Sarah was a total rock star with cleaning up though. She was a little “clean up, clean up” singing machine. This, however, came after a mega tantrum about wanting “puh-wetzels” now! She so did not care that the Time For card said “clean up” and not “snack.” She wanted her snack then, dammit. And she got it. She cleaned up with a giant pretzel stick in her hand.
There was even success last night with Charlotte using the potty before bed: and no extra load of laundry today!
Visual schedules are great!
You know who else thinks so? I mean, really thinks so?
Charlotte.
First thing today she made up a little schedule for the morning. Breakfast, Play, Clean up, Piano, Snack, TV Show, Lunch.
After each activity was completed, she ran to move her picture card into the envelope and start the next thing. She even cleaned up again (same exact toy she cleaned up as yesterday, same exact manner, same dialogue -hello scripting).
She was so excited that she flew through the whole routine and the next thing I knew she was saying, “Time for luuuuunch!” It was 10:30.
My suggestion to play longer was not well-received.
We worked through it, though, and made a new ‘mid-morning to lunch’ routine and all was mostly well.
Tonight, however, she was less than impressed with her Daddy’s entreaties that “the visual schedule says Go Potty and so you must go.”
I’ll probably be doing that extra load of laundry tomorrow.
While we’re still in our infancy stage with using a visual schedule, I have to say that it is starting out well. Both girls have responded positively to it. Charlotte, especially, but I think it appeals to her strong need for routine and order.
I’m seriously considering making one for my husband. It would have visuals like “put shoes away” and “dirty clothes go in basket.”
You think it could work?
Remember a few days ago how I blithely and confidently write that Charlotte is doing awesome at school? And she is. No doubts.
She and I attended a birthday party today, however, and I started to feel reminded of her differences. She’s not socializing with the other kids. She keeps wandering off by herself. She’s standing apart from her peers (oh, the horror).
For awhile there I started to really get down. Why doesn’t she run and play and cavort with these kids? These kids who she doesn’t know other than the birthday girl herself, who is busy playing with the kids she knows from school and who all know one another.
Well now that just changed everything.
Where did I get this idea that Charlotte needed to accomplish some random and arbitrary goal of x number of minutes of social interaction at a birthday party with a bunch of kids she’s never met before?
In the midst of my sinking into sadness over this realization that Charlotte wasn’t doing what the other kids were doing, I started paying a little more attention (is that even possible?).
No, she wasn’t cavorting with the other 4 and 5 year olds, but likewise none of them greeted me or any other adult at the party. Charlotte, meanwhile, went up to every adult and introduced herself and inquired of their name.
I just can’t see it as something to worry about that she opted to hang, primarily, with me and the other adults. Plus there were babies and she needed to ask if they were covered in blood when they were born (this is of utmost concern to Charlotte).
This leads to my thought processes on letting go of the idea of typical or normal (a continual thought-in-process). I subtitled this blog discovering our version of typical because I don’t like the idea of working toward a pre-determined definition of typical. What is typical? Average? Who wants to be average?
Not me.
Not me anymore, that is. I used to spend a fair amount of time trying very hard not to stand out from the crowd. Not in a give-in-to-peer-pressure kind of way, but in a don’t-do-anything-outside-the-norm kind of way.
Being Charlotte’s mom, though, is opening my eyes to the fact that ‘the norm’ is not really a goal worth aiming for.
It’s old and tired and cliche to say vive la difference, but it’s so important to heed that command. I have to tell myself this all the time.
My nature is one that lends to sameness and not standing out. Probably a set of learned behaviors, but not lessons worth passing on.
So next time we’re at a party, and Charlotte is chatting it up with the adults while a group of kids plays nearby, I’m going to resist the urge to push her to go play with “her friends” (especially when she might not even know them). Instead, I’m going to vive la difference and just let her be.
Sometimes a person should just be allowed to be.
It seems like everything in my life lately is a trade off of one sort or another. It feels impossible to have everything that I want. So I prioritize and make lists of what is most important right now, while keeping the long term view in mind, and act accordingly.
There are the big trade offs (like staying home vs working and earning an income and therefore contributing to retirement and long-term savings), and the little trade offs (lots of driving this year so that Sarah can attend preschool and I get some quality time alone with Charlotte).
Have I told you about my quality time with Charlotte? Sarah is in morning preschool 2 days a week, opposite of Charlotte’s afternoon Kindergarten. Those 2 days I feel like I spend half my day in the car, but I get 2 mornings a week of just me and Charlotte. We are both loving it. She moves her booster seat up from the 3rd row in the back so she can sit nearer to me. She has me turn the CD player off so we can talk. I knew that it would mean a lot more time on the road, but the trade off for the quality time with Charlotte (which we haven’t had since Sarah’s arrival) makes the driving worth it (sorry, environment).
There are the complicated trade offs (special diet which means more work for me and less convenience opportunities, but results in a girl who is lots of ways different than before the special diet).
My favorite kind of trade off is the pleasant one like where Sarah now takes an afternoon nap while Charlotte is at school. I used to like her non-napping ways because she always went to bed earlier. She’s up later now, but I get 1 to 1 1/2 hours to myself each afternoon … heaven.
Then there is the trade off that is outside the sphere of my control. Charlotte is doing awesome at school. Awesome. She is far exceeding my expectations in every way. I had a brief meeting with her team at school and the net take-away from them is that Charlotte does not stand out as different from her classmates. Every day her communication notebook says that she had another great day.
Awesome!
So what’s the trade off, you ask?
Home, not so good. Defiance is rearing its ugly head. I hear from my friends of same-aged kids that this is what they are experiencing too. Arguing. Lots of it.
“W-w-w-w-w-wait!!”
“No no no no no no no no NO!” (Apparently the louder this is said, the more effective she thinks it will be.)
“Mommy, stop talking! Close your mouth! I am talking now!” (Add a little sass in with the defiance.)
“Mommy, if you tell me no I am going to get angry and big upset.” (Thanks for the warning, kid, but the answer is still no.)
You know how we parents posit that our kids have tantrums because they don’t have the words to express themselves. It’s true!
Now that she’s clicking with using words to express her frustration and/or anger, the tantrums are slowing down. It actually works when I say, “Charlotte you don’t have to kick and scream and throw yourself on the floor if you don’t want to do something, you can just tell me. Use your words.”
(Believe me, we still have our fair share of tantrums, especially when she doesn’t like the answer I give her, but we’re working on it.)
But! She’s doing awesome at school. Last year she just WAS at school. Not great, not bad. Just there. Never fully engaged with the class or teachers. At home, things were a thousand times better. Why can’t they see what we see? we’d lament.
That has flipped and she is present and engaged and learning at school. Yay! The trade off has been a kid who is far more challenging to handle at home. But that’s okay. Far better we work those things out here than with a behavioral intervention plan at school.
Trade offs. Some good, some great. Some difficult. Fortunately, they are proving to be worth it.
This post could be about how articulately Charlotte answered a question about school today. We would celebrate her language skills, you would send me virtual high-fives, I would tell everyone who asked (and some who didn’t) how that was the best response I’ve ever gotten to the “how was your day” question.
Truly, some of her language today was spot-on. She is becoming so articulate. Her usage of grammar, her politeness, her (at times) bordering on verboseness, her specificity. Remarkable. She sounds like a, dare I say it, little adult.
I would end the post with a forward-looking, somewhat pithy statement about how bright her future is and how far she’s come.
All of that would be true. All of it is true.
But that’s not the whole picture.
It leaves out the countless times she didn’t respond to me at all. The times she wandered away while I was mid-sentence. The many, many times she didn’t even turn her head to acknowledge me calling her name.
That post would ignore the tantrum over wanting a chocolate cookie before lunch. And how I was *this* close to sending her to school without lunch but eventually chose to compromise so she wouldn’t be hungry.
There’s more, but it’s really just more of the same. A tantrum here. Some defiance there. My mom stopped by today and commented that lately it seems Charlotte’s defiance is getting stronger. She’s not defiant more often, just more defianter (new word).
Today, though, all of those things that I don’t normally write about on this blog, today it felt like a lot.
It felt discouraging.
I won’t lose sight of the good communication though. Of how she told me that she went to music class and Mrs. M was the teacher and listened to them sing and they played musical instruments.
And I will hang on to how she knew the last name of one of the kids in her class which must mean she’s paying attention and isn’t just overwhelmed by it all.
And I won’t forget how polite she was when her Daddy asked her a question while she was eating a popsicle and she told him, ‘Just a minute, Daddy, I’m still licking my popsicle.”
All good communication. Every syllable etched in my mind.
But today was still hard. It was tiring.
All I wanted was to get through a simple conversation about what to have for lunch. Or dinner.
Is that too much to ask?
For now, maybe.
The goodfountains, sans their captain, will be embarking on a week-long vacation this Friday. Our captain, also known as Daddy, will be staying behind (someone has to take care of the Guna pig).
My blogging activities will most likely be mega-reduced for the week whilst I’m away. Before I go, I leave with you some stories of the Genuinely Cute kind for your reading pleasure.
The brochure for the mega sports complex where Charlotte and Sarah take tumbling arrived. I was leafing through it while the girls hovered over me. I asked Sarah if she wanted to take a tumbling class again and she emphatically said NO!
“I want to take dance lessons!!” she cried.
“Dance? Really?”
She nods, with great gusto, and points to a picture of a girl wearing a tutu and says, “I want to wear THAT!!”
With dance, apparently, it’s all about the outfit.
Charlotte is realllly, reallllly, realllly into cars right now. She can identify so many different kinds just with a quick glance. (Ask me how thrilled I am to be embarking on a long car trip with a kid who is obsessed with pointing out every make and model of car we pass.)
I digress.
She and I get out of our car the other day and there, parked across from us, was one of her most favorite of cars – a Saab (I would say she has good taste here, but then I’d have to confess that other favorite car is a Chevy Malibu – go figure).
When she sees the Saab she very audibly gasps. Several times. I, of course, am clueless.
“Charlotte, what are you looking at?”
“A Saaaaaaaaab,” she lovingly sighs.
The woman walking past us, I have to say, had an amused, if not a bit perplexed, look on her face.
Sarah seems to have forgotten how to walk. She gallop/runs everywhere with her arms straight up in the air while singing some nonsensical words.
I’m not kidding. Everywhere.
Continuing with the car theme, Charlotte has named her various tricycles, bicycles and big wheels (yes, we have them all, and then some). Just yesterday while peddling around the cul-de-sac she was loudly yelling, “HI CHEVROLET! HOW ARE YOU CHEVROLET!!”
She looks over at me. “This is my Chevrolet, Mommy. My red one is a Buick.”
Speaking of Buick’s, getting to go for a ride in Grandma’s Buick – she’ll do anything for that. Car rides as currency – we’re working it.
And lastly, one more about Charlotte, less of the Cute, more of the Wow She Said That variety.
Charlotte has not been too interested in practicing her new piano songs lately. She still plays the piano often – many times a day – but when I ask her to practice the new stuff, she refuses. No reasons why. Just wants to play the older stuff.
I told her teacher this at her piano lesson this week. They go off to their lesson while I stayed in the lobby.
Her teacher tells me afterward that she said to Charlotte, “Hey, why won’t you practice Finger Trick 1? Don’t you like it?”
Charlotte says: “I’m having a little bit of trouble with that song, that’s why I don’t play it.”
WHAT?!?
That is not scripted from somewhere (that I can think of) and it’s such a fabulous answer to a question. Not silly (as she’s prone to do), not silent. Just a simple answer. Just wow.
We head for points south on Friday morning. I’ll have my computer and will try to read and comment, but likely no posting.
Toodles!
When Charlotte’s school handed down the Asperger’s diagnosis a couple of months ago, it was, as you might recall, no big surprise. However, I have maintained for some time that I’m not convinced Asperger’s fits as she doesn’t seem to show what I thought was considered one of the ‘hallmark’ criteria – an obsessive or special interest.
I’ve since come to understand that a) there really isn’t a hallmark criteria, and b) my understanding of special interest was limited. Special interest is usually described as knowing everything there is to know about a topic, which is usually more than anyone else, and talking incessantly about said topic and, usually, not recognizing when the listener is no longer … listening. Also special interests are often described in terms of collecting. Trains, stuffed animals, acorns, etc.
That does not describe Charlotte at all. First and foremost, she doesn’t have the language skills to bend anyone’s ear prolifically about anything. Secondly, she doesn’t have a subject about which she has acquired immense knowledge. Of course, she’s barely 5. And she does not appear to be a collector.
In the past months, since the Asperger’s was declared, I’ve spent much more time reading up on Aspie stuff. Prior most of my reading centered on Autism and PDD-NOS. I avoided books and articles with an Aspie focus because it never fit Charlotte, particularly with her delayed pragmatic language skills.
Accordingly, I’ve begun to think about Charlotte’s interests and play with a different light cast upon them. And now I have Sarah as comparison and that has shed some light as well. Sarah’s play is quite unlike Charlotte’s, although at the same time I can see the mimicry inevitable between siblings.
Looking back, I still can say that she doesn’t have (has never had) a special topic of interest on which she has acquired immense knowledge, and I can also still say that she does not collect things. What she has done (from a very, very, very young age), and continues to do, is have special (obsessive?) objects of interest, which has now morphed into special (obsessive?) themes of play.
13 months old and with the board book version of her favorite book
Her first special objects of interest (henceforth OOI) were undoubtedly books. Books in general and specific books. Her first beloved book was Hop on Pop by Dr. Seuss. I read it to her for the first time at 6 months of age and she was hooked. She sat through that book, all 72 pages, enthralled from the very first read. Soaking in the words (not the pictures) again and again and again.
For eighteen months straight that was her preferred book – we read it nightly and often many times throughout the day. In short order we had memorized it and just hearing a recitation of the book could calm her down if needed.
While there were many more book-specific interests in succession (after Hop on Pop she moved to Jane’s Animal Expedition, a lift-the-flap board book from the Baby Einstein folks, which was itself an OOI), books in general remained her primary interest. We took a bag of books everywhere we went, and she would be perfectly content. We used to comment that we were the luckiest parents in the world in that, as long as Charlotte had her books, we could go anywhere, do anything. And it was true.
Retrospectively, it’s obvious that her love of books was related to her love of words and letters, which is partly indicative of Hyperlexia, which is the spot on the Autism Spectrum in which Charlotte squarely resides. One could argue that the love, nay, obsession, she had with the alphabet was the overarching OOI and thus equates to Asperger’s, but I’ll leave that argument to someone else as it doesn’t matter to me.
Over the last year, she has lost the obsession with the alphabet, although she still spends a great deal of time reading. Her OOIs have moved into the direction of themes of play. There have been a few successive themes, starting with restaurants (remember her waitress costume of last Halloween) and moving into birthday parties and then princesses and now it’s a combination of princesses and weddings.
Charlotte, in wedding dress and veil, with her Prince and Sarah waving from their carriage
Her play always centers around weddings. Which princess will be marrying which prince, who will be invited to the party, which (of the many) wedding dress will be worn. She and Sarah act out the scenes themselves along with puppeteering the many-sized princesses adorning our playroom floor.
She also is very interested in (real-life) who is married to whom, and she likes to make future predictions about marriage (recently stating that the newborn siblings of 2 different friends would marry when they get older). As for her own wedding, she has eyes only for her prince – Daddy.
Despite my wanting, at times, for all the world to be able to de-label Charlotte (just being honest, folks), instead I find myself in the position of more firmly rooting her in the diagnosis.
Special interests, obsessive objects of interest, I find, are not things to be feared or to be wished away. Rather they are to be embraced. Books provided comfort in times of distress (and she taught herself to read from them). Restaurants and weddings and pretend birthday parties, while repetitive, have all been avenues of blossoming language and social skills. Knowing what she loves makes it so easy to know how to engage with her, almost like the antidote to the ol’ “marked impairment in social skills.”
And most importantly, Charlotte’s objects of interest have brought her much, much happiness, making each reading of Hop on Pop, each new Barbie wedding dress purchased, worth every minute and every penny.
Charlotte and Sarah both completed two weeks of daily swim lessons this summer. For Sarah, my expectations were fairly low. I knew if I didn’t sign her up for the class, she’d bellyache about not being allowed to get in the pool. Most days she started out in the water and participated with the rest of the class, but within about 10 minutes she was done. She did manage to work up the courage to jump off the diving board though – that was quite unexpected!
For Charlotte, I admit that I had pretty high expectations in some ways, and low ones in others. In the end, I had it all wrong.
There were 9 kids in the class and I was expecting, first, that she would be completely distracted. I worried she wouldn’t follow directions, or might float off on her own.
In this way, she surprised me. Every day, she was totally on it. They played games in the water like Red Light/Green Light and Simon Says, and she was 100% engaged. She followed directions – when it was time to kick her feet or blow bubbles or duck her head under water – she was right there. Leading the way, in fact.
All this engagement came in the midst of half the kids screaming their heads off at being in the water. Not Charlotte (or Sarah). She tuned them out and focused on the class.
I couldn’t have been more proud! She exceeded all my expectations socially.
Where my expectations were high was with the skill of swimming. Prior to starting lessons, due to the sheer fact that we were at the swim club we joined frequently, Charlotte was, it seemed, turning into a fish. Completely on her own she began jumping into the pool by herself (last year too afraid to do that), fully submerging her head, “swimming” underwater in the kiddie pool.
I fully expected that coming out of lessons she would have nailed it. She would be a swimmer.
Not so, friends.
Swimming is comprised of three things: big arm strokes, kicking your legs, and putting your face in the water. All at the same time.
She can do any combination of two of those things, but not all three at once.
She took one half-hour private lesson as I thought the one-on-one instruction would help things click for her. It was the most frustrating thing for me to watch. Individually she is awesome at each skill. But she simply cannot put all three together at once.
How reflective of life is that in general? Conversation with a friend requires listening, processing and responding. For the longest time, she couldn’t do it at all. She’d listen but not process, so her response would be completely off topic. Or she’d listen and process, but couldn’t come up with a response in a reasonable amount of time (or at all).
Throw in a variable like eating or any number of distractions, and we’re down to just one side of the triangle operating.
Fortunately, through practice and just plain old growing up, she can maintain conversations for a few strokes before giving out. I suspect that she will continue to improve.
This also plays out in her fine motor skills. With writing she has to grip the pencil a certain way (“pinch and shelf”), keep her wrist down and know how to make the letter. Rarely does that trifecta ever happen. The wrist is up but her grip is correct and her letters are perfect. Her letters are illegible but her wrist is down and she’s holding the pencil right.
Times like these force me to acknowledge that although her Asperger’s is on the so-called mild side of things, it makes its presence known. In small ways like taking longer to learn how to swim. In larger ways like appearing to ignore a friend.
What impresses me the most about Charlotte, though, is how she never quits trying. She loves to write. She never gets annoyed when I say, “Pinch and shelf” or “Put your wrist down.”
She never gives up on talking. For a kid who had to really learn how to have a conversation, and half the time isn’t really doing it, she never stops talking. Never.
And so it goes with swimming. She’s at the pool right now practicing.
“What are you going to practice, Charlotte?” I ask.
“Kick my legs!”
“And?”
“Put my face in the water!”
“And?”
“Big swimmy arms! All at the same time!!”
That’s right, my girl. I know you can do it.
In the world of quirky, autistic language, we are presently living in the land of questions.
Not the annoying curious ones like, “Why is the sun yellow?” and “Why do birds fly?” that those typical four and five year old kids come up with. Nope. No, we live in a land of the inane questions.
Who is that?
That’s Sarah.
What is she doing?
She’s sleeping.
In the bathroom after piano lesson and at Red Robin and at the swim club: What is that?
That’s a potty.
What is that?
That’s a sink.
What is that?
That’s the wall?
What are we in?
We’re in the bathroom.
Sometimes it gets interesting.
Do you love me?
Do I love you?
Do I want to eat chicken for lunch?
Do I need to go potty?
Does Belle want to marry Gaston or the Beast?
Does she love Gaston? or does she love the Beast?
As one can imagine, I tire of the interrogations.
Who do I want to give some hay to?
Silence.
Mommy, who wants some hay?
Mom-meeeee! Who?! Wants?! Hay?!
Charlotte, you know who you want to give some hay to. Just go give him some.
A new strategy today.
She is currently very much into makes and models of cars.
Is that a CHEVROLET??
Charlotte, you know what kind of car it is. So you can say, Hey look, there’s a Chevrolet!
What is my sister got?
Charlotte, you know what she has. You can say, Hey, look, Sarah’s playing with her baby doll!
I’ll probably regret this strategy. Before you know it, everything will be “hey look.” “Hey look!” “Hey look!”
Still. I have to try something to break her off incessant inane questioning. Otherwise…
Hey, look, is that another beer in my hand?
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