what would yoda do?

Posted on April 18, 2013 by marybethrew

i feel as though i have spent an increasing amount of energy getting groups of professionals to spend a diminishing amount of time with quinn, providing me with more and more far-fetched “plans of attack” for how to deal with his behavioral challenges, while they rule out in mere minutes that any of his challenges have medical origins. i am happy, in some ways, that his behaviors don’t appear to have a medical basis, because it means he is, as far as we can tell, neurotypical and we can move on with that knowledge. they are the doctors/ experts. however, that still doesn’t explain what is the problem.

~~~rant warning!~~~ also, i’ve had it up to here with overbearing advice about getting him back in school asap. (this has been coming from all sides including dhs, quinn’s counselor, and every professional or doctor we have heard from.) “he needs” those social interactions. yeah. we had a big social interaction on wednesday called homeschool group. it didn’t go well. after another mama had to take over my lesson on buoyancy so i could leave the room to attend to a half-hour tantrum which included him hitting me, it occurred to me that what was happening would be really, really, really disruptive in a classroom where there weren’t five other mamas available to pick up the teacher’s slack.

if it’s not neurological, what is causing him this stuckness that is literally debilitating in a classroom/social setting? what is driving the frequency and intensity of this stuckness? the proportions of this particular meltdown cannot be attributed to what actually happened: a combination of a change of venue for homeschool group, his chosen blue colored pencil being “floated” by one of the other kids in the buoyancy bin, and the subsequent final straw of me peeling the label off “his” plastic juice bottle in order for the kids to be able to see the level of water inside as we tested its buoyancy.

care for a water molecule?

so, assuming i am correct and that those items in and of themselves should not cause any individual to completely lose their $h!t, what is it?

we are seven months into trying to investigate this issue, culminating in the most highly qualified professional yet announcing a diagnosis of “disruptive behavior disorder”. i don’t know if you have ever had your child display disruptive classroom behavior and then spend seven months seeking professional advice only to have the experts arrive at the conclusion that his behavior in the classroom was, in fact, disruptive.

time to fire the professionals and go back to trusting ourselves to find our own solutions.

~~~

at some point in the future if quinn reads this post, i would like him to know that i do not in any way believe he has a “disorder” whether he is or is not neurotypical, is or is not behaving disruptively. i want him to know that i love him unconditionally, and that i want to help him feel like he can competently navigate these blue pencil moments without total meltdown, and that is all. i don’t personally care if he ever sets foot in another school, and i mean that sincerely, from the bottom of my heart. it would be fine with me if he wants to and is able to do that, but what i want is for him not to suffer. i believe, sincerely, from the bottom of my heart, that he suffered by attending school for two weeks, and that if we put him back in school now, he will suffer more. it is why i am opposed to doing so. if i could believe, as his father does, that being away from me is what is needed for him to “have the opportunity” to learn these social graces, i do have the capacity within me to let go and allow that path to unfold. but frankly, i have been paying attention here. i have not been asleep at the helm of the mama ship, and i have noticed that being away from me does not make these things easier for him, it only reduces the amount of support available to him to help him through the stuck moments.

people keep asking if my goal is still to get him in school, and i have to say, no, that is not my goal. it is not not my goal, meaning i am not opposed to him one day attending school, once he is able to. but i think we showed that a) it didn’t go well and b) we have not yet addressed the source of why it didn’t go well. after we have, then we can discuss school. am i just being an aries?

i don’t think the professionals expect to have parents with a grasp of propositional logic on their hands. i think they find me intimidating. it’s not my intent at all, but i can find all the holes in everything they say, and when it comes to my son, i am likely to point them out, politely, and ask them to connect the dots. i’m not trying to stand down a person who spent 8 years in medical school to sit in this room with me and tell me about a kid i have spent 265,680 times more minutes with than she has, but i am also not going to sit idly by and listen to blind assurances that school is the right thing for all kids at all times, and therefore it is right for this kid at this time, too. not without asking how school will somehow magically go a lot better this time around than it did the first time we tried.

and when i was told of behavior plans, and could not be given a fully detailed description of what they entail (though i conclude they are a combination of rewards and consequences for the child to motivate him to behave in class, aka the sticker chart approach), i couldn’t help but ask why they felt this would magically work, either. i also was the one single person in the room who cared how a child who is conditioned to behave appropriately through rewards and consequences will come to intrinsically understand the moral rightness or wrongness of his behavior. they seemed to be of one mind that we should just “fake it till we make it,” that it is plausible that the intrinsic moral knowledge will just follow, and that it is at least as important for him to be able to “do school” right now as it is for him to learn these morals intrinsically. yes, the doctor actually looked me in the eye and said that- though i could tell she had her doubts even as the words left her mouth. i respectfully disagreed and mentioned that i think this mentality is how we end up with school shootings, which i think might have not gone a long way to make me seem less intimidating. i ask hard questions, but i mean well. i really do.

i am writing this post because i am, myself, frustrated and feel like i could almost have a meltdown worthy of quinn’s worst moments. but what i want desperately is not to kick and scream, but to channel this aggravation and negative energy into something constructive and positive. i want so much to find a way to make things better for quinn. to somehow figure out how to let him know that he can handle these moments that frustrate him and jam him up so badly.

the one substantive recommendation the doctor had was to read the explosive child, a book i have so far avoided because of its condescending title. i still do not appreciate the title, and that goes for any book which labels a child something so negative, but now that i have cracked the book i think its innards are more consistent with my beliefs than i would have guessed. yet, i have already read quite an extensive list of books with theories and applications similar to or more advanced than the “collaborative problem solving” approach this book offers, and i do not hold out hope that this book will contain some magical nugget of truth inside that i have not already read about in another format or thought up on my own. this book is trying to tell me, as far as i can tell, that my child is doing his best, and that he lacks skills in some areas. thanks, got it.

~~~

almost without seeing quinn, the doctor decided he is not on the spectrum. she asked him who his best friend is, and he named a boy in our homeschool group who is close to his own age. she asked me if the child reciprocates the friendship, and i said he does. between that, and the fact that he has more than one interest and can play with things outside of his intense interests, and that he can hold a reciprocal conversation with her, she concludes he does not wear the aspie badge. (i guess i thought that since it was a spectrum, a child could have difficulties that weren’t as extreme and still be on the tail end of the spectrum, but maybe that is me getting carried away with logic again.)

best friends

she did spend a half hour with him, going over the standard developmental and neurological tests. he scored very high in many of them, related to cognitive and fine motor skills. he could not skip for her, and had some overflow motor stuff that signaled to her a potential minor delay in gross motor skills, but she attributes that to low muscle tone and large head size, neither of which is causing the problems socially/emotionally for him. and neither of which she thinks should we worry about. i agree.

perhaps the grittiest part of the evaluation was the beginning when the doctor had time with myself, quinn’s dad, and his girlfriend. coparent was as usual doing his level best to undercut my character, with snide comments about home birth and schools run out of some lady’s house. it is quite obvious that he still would like to believe the worst of me, and that both he and his partner are maintaining their story that quinn is abused by me. they had all kinds of evidence to share with the doctor, even some brand new ones they hadn’t brought up with dhs or at the previous meeting we attended about quinn. why, quinn had “just that morning” exhibited nursing behavior with his dad, and this was somehow made to sound aberrant and outrageous. the doctor certainly raised her eyebrows, and asked whether quinn has been around nursing babies lately, and i said that while he has been around nursing babies, he has not been around actual nursing to my knowledge (baby pancake goes in another room to nurse when they visit) but that i think it’s important to keep in mind that quinn remembers nursing, as he weaned at age 4. “almost five!” interjected his dad. wow, pin the worst mom of the century badge on my child-feeding chest. the doctor then relaxed, because this at least explained why quinn might do this behavior, “but that doesn’t address the social inappropriateness of it.” ok, well we all know where we stand on the spectrum of cultural uptightness about breastfeeding.

so while we’re all getting to know each other so well, let’s pop the “was quinn your only pregnancy?” question on mom!

exhale. i have not shared this publicly before, but quinn was not my only pregnancy. there was one before, a grand learning experience of my life, which i can say now that i can look back on it with almost a decade of perspective. it was not a viable pregnancy, and i won’t belabor the details but suffice it to say, this was, for me, an intensely personal question, laid out on the table with two people who were openly displaying aggression and animosity towards me in the room. i don’t know what they are teaching doctors these days about bedside manner, but it doesn’t seem to be considered a very important lesson. i would have preferred (understatement) her to ask me that question when we were one on one.

not to mention i kept getting interrupted when being asked about quinn’s pregnancy and labor and birth (home birth! scary!), and after the previous question had set me to physically shaking (i feel i handled it with a minimal amount of scene-making compared to the whirlwind of what went on internally for me, though i did turn to coparent’s partner and say, “well, i’m sure you have heard all of this already, so here goes.”) afterwards, i felt compelled to stick up for my right to answer the birth questions, as the one who carried him and pushed him out, without interruption. coparent stammered lamely, “well, i was there,” and i repeated that i would like to not be interrupted, and went on answering questions.

to her credit, coparent’s girlfriend held off, briefly, on muttering things about me when the first pregnancy question arose, and appeared appropriately taken aback that the question was asked in front of her. because i believe in public praise and private criticism, and because this is a blog about me and not her, i have not mentioned her since she arrived on the scene in our lives, when i believe i gave her ample benefit of the doubt, but i feel i would be remiss if by omission i led you all to believe that my initial impression has held up. i still think it is worth giving credit where it’s due, but this person has, far from my initial projections, done very little to make my life easy since not long after i made that post.

something about women tearing down other women has a way of getting me down like nothing else can. i don’t let anything get me down for long anymore, but i will say that it bothers me very much that a fellow ani difranco loving, oregon coast dwelling, hippie mama can harbor such hatred and ill will towards me. i don’t call it hatred lightly, but she is on the team trying to take quinn from me, and as another mama, i cannot fathom it. that is all i want to say on that, and i want it to be said that i harbor no ill will in return, and wish her well.

~~~

doot doo doo….

so quinn was, it is ironic to say but unfortunately, stellar the day of the evaluation. he played happily with a bin of mr. potato head parts in the next room for a good long while as we discussed him. at the end the doctor asked, almost as an afterthought, “so do you feel we’ve seen the real quinn here today?” i said yes she got to see the sweetness of quinn, but not any of the problematic meltdown stuff, so while it was really him, she honestly didn’t get the complete picture, or see firsthand the reason why we were there.

at the end of the evaluation was a group session including several other professionals from various family and disability groups (this was where i was doing my intimidating logic thing, as part of the synthesis of what was learned through the evaluation). one of the people took me aside afterwards and said, “you know, i totally get you on the intrinsic/extrinsic thing.” she had some good reminders of tricks i am already familiar with to help approach the morality stuff from a worldview of “it’s important for him to understand and internalize morals, not just comply.” things like social stories, making a story board or comic strip of the behavior; what went wrong and how to do it right next time. she specifically mentioned it in the context of perspective taking, which is an area where quinn seriously lags- understanding that other people have experiences and thoughts going on all their own, that are not the same ones he is having.

so rich and i sat down with him on saturday morning for about an hour, and we did some drawings of how things had gone at homeschool group. we wrote thought bubbles for quinn, me, the other kids and parents at the homeschool group, and tried to spell out for quinn what other people might have been thinking when he was thinking “i’m mad that it isn’t going my way.” we also worked with him to draw the alternative scenario, and let him come up with his own words for how it could go well, even when he has another time when he is frustrated like that day- because those feelings will come up again. we also encouraged him to come up with a “secret code password” for me to use, that will help him remember what we’ve talked about. we offered, “like one of the passwords to dumbledore’s office” or “how about something from star wars”? he was still stumped, so i asked, “can you think of anyone in star wars who is good at solving really hard problems?”

“oh, yoda. he can solve any problem, especially if it involves helping someone become a jedi.” perfect. what would yoda do? might become my new motto.

life has its seasons, and in the spirit of leaving no stone unturned, i am glad we did all we could to gather information during this season. it feels like some doors have closed, and more questions have arisen than answers, but it feels like this season is drawing to a close, as all seasons must. i guess it’s sort of like dorothy and her ruby slippers, and i had been carrying all the knowledge i was going to have all along, i just didn’t know it yet. i guess it’s time to return some books to the library, usher the experts out, pull myself up by my bootstraps, and forge ahead.

~~~

speaking of books, i received a question in the comments about one of the books i’d been reading and for my own record, as well, i wanted to make a list of what i have been reading recently. i’m not much for writing reviews, but jotted a few notes of things i liked…

returning to library:

the oasis guide to asperger syndrome; advice, support, insight and inspiration by patricia romanowski bash, barbara l. kirby and tony attwood

parenting your asperger’s child; individualized solutions for teaching your child practical skills by allan sohn and cathy grayson (i wrote a bit here and here about this one.)

the out-of-sync child; recognizing and coping with sensory integration dysfunction by carol stock kranowitz; i liked her “sensory diet” concept, and got some inspiration for adding more sensory experiences to quinn’s diet to help him integrate.

emergence: labeled autistic by temple grandin; she rocks. nuff said.

elijah’s cup by valerie paradiz; slow start but a fabulous read by a mom of a boy on the spectrum. awesome research on the topic of autistic culture. she and i are on the same page as far as abhorring terms like “disorder”.

be different by john elder robison; awesome book. everyone should read this. written by an aspergian who would be fun to have a beer with.

currently reading:

the brain that changes itself: stories of personal triumph from the frontiers of brain science by norman doidge; i heart neuroplasticity!

teach your own by john holt; what can i say about the father of unschooling? this is good therapy, empowerment, and affirmation for me right now.

the explosive child; a new approach for understanding and parenting easily frustrated, “chronically inflexible” children by ross w. greene; my assigned reading with its unfortunate title. i will keep you posted of any magical nuggets i unearth!

~~~

thanks for listening! i welcome any feedback… especially in the spirit of trying to spin some gold from the funk, channel this energy towards something constructive. or you can poke fun at my aries-ness, either way i’m cool. just do it in a loving way- i’ve had my fill of hate for the time being.

where fedex fears to tread

Posted on March 26, 2013 by marybethrew

i love our home. i love the laundry running on the super-dry cycle by the woodstove. i love the christmas lights twinkling all around the rooms. i love the enormous trees surrounding our home like they are the world’s tallest sentries standing guard. i love the moss on the roof. i love the long gravel driveway, where fedex fears to tread. i love that our mailbox is a mile from our house, in a line with 15 other mailboxes. i love the newts peeking out from under the duckweed in their little pond haven. i love the kale that overwintered and is growing new lovely vitamin-rich leaves by the armload. i love the night air that is thick with the sound of peeping frogs. i love the lichen-covered tree limbs, the daffodils, the hummingbirds zooming around with each other at the feeders.

we have been watching a busy male rufous hummingbird as he dominates the social scene around our feeders and backyard. rich nicknamed him flash, due to his iridescent red throat coloring that looks dark brown or black from the side but if you catch him at just the right angle, in just the right amount of sunlight, he blinds you with shimmering red.

i’ve burned through two rolls of film trying to catch his flashy red throat, and eked out one or two representatives.

i used the heart bokeh trick that i talked about a while back, because sunny spring mornings with last night’s rain dripping off the trees particularly lend themselves to this photography technique. you need something in your background that catches enough light to make your hearts twinkle a bit, like the wet leaves of the trees catching sunlight in your own wooded paradise, if you are lucky enough to live in one, too.

the ups driver has no qualms about leaving a sticky note on the door indicating “woodshed” which is a natural location to leave packages around here, in my opinion. sure, the road has bumps you can lose an axle in and we have some curmudgeonly neighbors with big dogs… but it’s lovely out here. i’m not sure what fedex is worried about. perhaps they are just borrowing trouble.

borrowing trouble is the newest phrase i’ve introduced quinn (aka mr. literal-pants) to. we were driving and he was fretting about things in the backseat that will never happen and could never happen and clearly had his undies in a bunch. wanting to gently encourage him to de-stress a bit, i explained that he was borrowing trouble, to which he giggled his “i have no idea what you mean” giggle. when i spelled it out, however, he embraced it, and now will come up to me and say, “i was just borrowing trouble accidentally about….” and i give myself a psychic high five for helping him do a little less worrying – or at least, identify it as worrying when he is.

the joys of coparenting have continued to be… anything but joyous. however, there seems to be a local, less-intense means of obtaining an asperger’s evaluation (but still with highly qualified neuro-developmental-peditrician folk running it) and it seems like both parents are on board with that. there is also funding for it, which is the only way it was going to happen. not only that, but if occupational therapy is indicated by anyone with an m.d., that will be covered by state health insurance, too. because that’s how we roll in our backwoods state of oregon.

meanwhile we are dipping our toes into the curriculum pool (gasp!) and it seems to be empowering for quinn. i did choose things based on wanting structure that would help him feel contained and successful, and both the bob books for reading and jump math workbooks are proving to be what they claim to be in the area of helping bolster self-confidence.

still, even curriculum can’t hem in our unschooling-ness, and when he read me frog sat (book 8 in the kindergarten sight words bob series) the other day, we didn’t just read it, we acted out each page in our living room. also, when i commented to quinn after he blew through the first 13 pages of the first grade jump book that, “math is fun, huh?” he replied, “yeah! ‘cause you can do it in bed!”

in other homeschool kindergarten news, ewok technology is still a very hot topic.

just enough curriculum to promote self-confidence but not enough to take the simple poetry out of the boy. such as when i turned on the car after picking him up the other day and the intro to the beatles’ happy birthday came on the stereo. he had been tilting his head looking at something out his window, and then he excitedly exclaimed, “that was the perfect song for a seagull flying down the street!”

black and white

Posted on March 15, 2013 by marybethrew

i burst into tears yesterday over a passage (no, actually, it was a list in the sidebar) in the book i’m reading on asperger’s and parenting. the heading of the sidebar was behavioral manifestations of anxiety. all sixteen of the listed items applied to quinn. i hadn’t fully understood all sixteen of them as manifestations of anxiety, though, until i saw them all listed in one place like that. it has me experiencing a little anxiety myself, but i’m going to keep breathing and keep reading and see what i can learn. come along with me as i process…

one of the bits i keep hearing from professionals and books is that aspies engage in a lot of black-and-white thinking, and that abstract concepts are hard for them. quinn has his moments of being able to hang with abstract concepts, but he does often take things quite literally, he does often see only either/or options and fail to see the many alternative solutions to a problem, and he expects to be perfect at what he does, which is yet another form of black-and-white thinking. this book (parenting your asperger child, by sohn and grayson) is saying that the black-and-white thinking arises from anxiety, especially that caused by difficulty with understanding the world around him.

the book approaches things from a different parenting paradigm than the one i inhabit. trying to find a frame of reference for what we are experiencing compared to neurotypical children, to determine if quinn is other than neurotypical, i can find very little in the book to help me. when there is a list of motivations behind the behaviors of an asperger child, the afterthought is that these anxiety-driven motivations set the behaviors apart from those that are merely attention-seeking or “just plain misbehavior”; is that what the authors believe is more likely the motivation behind neurotypical children’s problem behaviors? that has never been my worldview. i’m more aligned with a ya-ya sisterhood view of children:

just what if god didn’t intend for everything to be perfect? what if he knew it was going to be a holy mess, and he loved us anyway? what if adam and eve weren’t sinning? what if that prenatal original sin stain on our souls is not even there?

…when my boys were born, i looked at each one of them and said NO to that original sin shit. i looked at my babies and thought, you are pure, holy, perfect, complete and undefiled. and nobody can tell me different, not the pope his royal self. believe it now.

i’m reading ya-yas in bloom, by rebecca wells, to balance out my asperger parenting manual. i believe that children are innately good, that they want to belong and behave and thrive and are driven to do so by their own fully intact inner nature. i have never been a believer in “he’s just doing that to get attention” or rather, when children seek attention, i think they should be given attention. and i couldn’t resist the timeliness of the quote about the pope.

and i wouldn’t be doing my worldview justice if i didn’t mention ani:

when i was four years old
they tried to test my i.q.
they showed me a picture
of 3 oranges and a pear
they said,
which one is different?
it does not belong
they taught me different is wrong

the only other line (back to the non-fiction title now – sorry to jump around) that gives a frame of reference so far briefly mentions that the behaviors in an aspie might be more of the same you’d see with any other child, the difference being a matter of degree, intensity, or frequency. leaving me still searching for a frame of reference, alas.

i have been mindful of eliminating expectations from my life in an effort to reduce my own tendency to be uptight and resentful when things don’t turn out to match my search image. it helps me go with the flow to show up with a blank slate and discover the boy who is in front of me. if i had a real clear expectation in my mind of what a six year old boy was supposed to be like, and could clearly see how we deviated from that set of expectations, i might have a better grasp of this label business. i have a grasp of who quinn is, but not how he compares. i have a really deep sense of what makes him tick, and when i read lists of reasons for rigidity in an aspergian child, and can check off every single one of them for things i see quinn reacting to, i turn the page looking for how this is a deviation from a neurotypical approach. are nt kids never rigid? if they are sometimes rigid, is it because of the same motivating factors like fearing change and not understanding intuitively how a certain interaction is usually done? is it the same as nt behavioral motivations, only more intense? am i just over in some other city in italy, or am i way over in holland? i guess i am looking for the authors to state what must to them be the obvious.

i still think the book has something to offer in terms of strategies for introducing more flexibility when a child becomes rigid, and showing him how to see more middle ground, more gray areas.

let’s say, for example, that you have a list of guiding principles that you have developed together and discussed over time:

safe
gentle
honest (this is a newer one we’ve recently added to the list)
golden rule- treat others as you would like them to treat you.

and say you are working pretty hard on helping your son remember to be honest: even when you think we want to hear “yes” when we ask if you brushed your teeth, we want you to tell us “no” if no is the true answer. however (****gray area alert!!!****), there are things people keep in their head and are not technically honest about, like when you like the store waffles better than your mama’s homemade ones.

the one thing that really hits home for me in the published strategies for handling skill-teaching with asperger’s children is the need to take things step by step and explain even things that seem obvious. the idea is, there are things that are obvious to many of us that are a complete mystery to someone with asperger’s. quinn often needs things spelled out. there are many messages we receive that are subtly implied, things we just “take in”, that an aspergian is not “taking in”- they are not reading between the lines the same way that most of us are. if that makes him sound slow on the uptake then i am doing him a disservice with my words- quite the contrary, he can be told once and have something memorized for life, but if it’s delivered in the wrong packaging, he may never receive it, even if he is told a thousand times.

of course, there are things all children need to be told a thousand times.

it’s working out well for us because one of my conclusions about parenting early on was that it always seemed to help to state the obvious with quinn. i began doing this when he was very young and experiencing strong emotions, and whenever he did cry or get angry, i would name the feeling he was having out loud. “you’re feeling sad. you didn’t want to stop playing with that.” i think this is helpful in building any child’s emotional intelligence, but with quinn, in retrospect, it might be the reason he has an emotional iq at all. it is one of the many ways he doesn’t fit the aspergian mold: he can name his feelings. he still has a hard time understanding what other people are feeling. are there are lot of six year old boys who are experts at this?

sometimes i think maybe he is an aspergian with a lot of neurotypical quirks he has developed from having a quirky mama.

thanks for reading along while i process. i’m so grateful for all the thought-provoking comments and emails i’ve gotten about all of this, and as always would love to hear your thoughts, ideas, further reading recommendations, etc. have a great weekend!

p.s. experiencing driftwood block envy? go here.

learning how to love

Posted on March 12, 2013 by marybethrew

rich and i take turns leaving each other “reading assignments” from the newspaper. we both follow along with a recent series in the oregonian of “northwest love stories”. the most recent story i happened to catch first, and leave for him, but more often than not i am the one receiving these reading assignments, as he is much more thorough about reading the paper daily. i always tease him when he leaves mushy stories for me to read, or chooses romantic comedy movies for us to watch. he has a thick skin and is impervious to teasing, luckily.

anyway, ambrose and martha, the subjects of the most recent love story article, have been married for 73 years and are both turning 100 this year. they claim their secret to bliss (ambrose “ham” claims it, and martha affirms with smiles and a thumbs-up, as she is nonverbal at this point in her life) is “good eating and good sex.” i think it goes without saying that humor must weigh in as well. from the interview: “both are in wheelchairs. yet during our introductions, ham called martha ‘lover’ and complimented her hair.”

i’m still holding out for us to spend 98 years together, so it gives me hope when i read of couples like martha and ham.

***

how did you learn how to love someone? was it by following someone’s example? your parents? other couples you were close to? was it by trial and error? did you, like me, have a disproportionate amount of error in spite of having really good role models, and feel like you were never going to get there? do you feel like you are now “there”?

***

there’s so much we need to learn in life. i will be curious what the future will hold in store for quinn in the love department. i know all parents think of this. i spent several years going over and over with myself the guilt trip of “i didn’t manage to keep it together with his father” and how that is such an omen of doom for his future love life. but i have laid that to rest, and i know for sure that witnessing a working relationship like mine with rich (and like my parents, and my brothers and sisters-in-law, and other important couples in his life) will be much more beneficial to quinn than was the ill-fated relationship between his two parents.

i wonder what his quirks will look like as a teen, a young adult? it’s so hard to picture, as rachel put very eloquently in her recent post. will his future partner someday have to resort to telling him it’s time for the ewoks to jump in the speeder in order for him to put down what he is doing and get in the car to go someplace? will he still need to be persuaded to change clothes by imagining he is dressing in his hogwarts robes? will he talk their ear off at bedtime about the next lego set he wants to get, completely unaware they are falling asleep and want him to stop listing each individual piece, what each minifigure will be wearing, and what color light-sabre they will carry? when they go for a walk will he cover his ears with his hands and shrink away whenever a dog approaches? when they eat dinner will he insist on hot dogs, mac and cheese, or “skinnies” (his name for thinly sliced quesadillas)? will he, with his own children, assume inaccurately that his child is doing it “on purpose” when they knock something down or bump into him?

this is the stuff that is all so ambiguous and vague that it could all be “normal kids’ stuff” or “age appropriate” and yet, it could also indicate asperger’s, or something else. i am still on the fence whether it matters what we call it. we call him quinn, and these are things we (or at least i) know about him. i am still unsure whether i think his brain is wired differently and we need to approach things differently than one would with a neurotypical child. yet, i already know for damn sure we need to approach things differently with quinn on many occasions; because he is quinn, and there are things about him that just aren’t a factor with other children, wiring aside. but then, this can probably be said for each and every child, can it not?

i’m never sure how severe what we deal with is, compared to other families. i get glimpses, but then i wonder if i am just overthinking things, as i tend to do. and comparison is rarely helpful anyway. yet sometimes i fantasize about this being another situation like the one where my midwife had to sit me down and tell me that no, in fact, i hadn’t been a complainer, “no mary beth, you had an unusual amount of pain.” i fantasize that somebody somewhere will acknowledge and validate that figuring all this out can sometimes be really friggin hard.

one conclusion i’ve come to, given what research i’ve done and what i know of quinn, is that there is definitely some knowledge to be gleaned from the asperger’s literature that does benefit quinn and is well worth delving into, regardless of whether he fits any of the scads of subtypes. there are strategies i am reading that either echo exactly what i already do that works, or are suggestions i am taking very seriously because i think they will also work. he may be simply a quirky, bright individual with sensitivity to loud sounds and anxiety about transition times, who struggles with things getting thrown or given away, who is off in his own head quite often when pragmatic life occurrences come along, who is insistent about being in charge of himself, who is more comfortable at home, whose word of the week is technically, who is a bit of a perfectionist and doesn’t do things until he knows he can do them well, who prefers having a heads up about what is coming next, who doesn’t really get all the jokes and can’t tell one to save his life, who runs a little crooked, who doesn’t seem to realize it stings when he tells me “store waffles taste better than homemade ones,” and who might not always interpret another person’s reactions accurately. or that unique collection of characteristics might be a subtype of asperger’s. does it matter? that unique collection of characteristics is definitely quinn.

to me it seems that what matters is that by the time he thinks about having a partner, he somehow has learned (in whatever way works for him) that even if you think the store waffles are better, when someone you love is making you something homemade, you keep that thought tucked away in your head.

my current read is parenting your asperger child; individualized solutions for teaching your child practical skills by alan sohn and cathy grayson. i liked the title, and consistent with their title, they have already made quite a few mentions in the early chapters of the way in which each and every asperger child will have some traits and not others, and that every child is, bottom line, an individual. no one is classic, everyone is a subtype.

parts of what i’ve read in this book resonate with me, others are making me cringe, but my hunch is that is mostly due to semantic clumsiness. i like their term “defender of reality” as one of the parent’s roles, but one of my things about parenting has always been to question the assumption that the parent is always right and the kid is always wrong. i do not assume i know better than he does in all circumstances (sure there are some…), and i shy away from the idea that i need to make him out to be wrong when his ideas don’t match up to the rest of society’s ideas. i do think it’s important for me to introduce him to what society thinks (that a couple means two and a few means three, instead of the other way around), point out where his ideas depart from those of society, and let him know how to navigate in that society, but i also think that can be done while preserving his self-knowledge. one thing about being a defender of reality, is that i’m aware of the subjectiveness of each of our realities (did i have an unusual amount of pain?), and it is hard to think that my own version of reality should trump his.

aside from the individualized approach, another thing that i find validating in this book is the idea that anticipation of problems is going to help immensely in someone with these traits. “too often, people wait until something goes wrong and then try to do something about it. this is a completely backward approach for an asperger individual. prevention is the key. anticipate problems, plan for them, and implement your plan before a problem arises.” this is where i think we could go very astray by abruptly tossing quinn into another school on his own, without a lot more thought and effort and guidance invested into it. the book emphasizes the anxiety that these kids can feel, and anxiety is a real one for my guy.

last night as he was finding it impossible, yet again, to fall asleep, and i was listening to his long speech about the star wars lego set that has his favorite monster (“which is made from not very many pieces, with two tentacles that you have to put together, and two brown pieces that look like they could be covers to cockpits, except they are just brown and not glowing, which you put together for the monster’s beak…..”) after the puppy relaxation story with backrub, after more hugs and one more trip downstairs to the bathroom and to say goodnight to rich, after more lego talk and after i finally received a stroke of inspiration and told him he needed to take his magic wand and draw all the thoughts out of his head and put them into his pensieve like dumbledore so that he could get some rest… after all of that, he looked at me and said, with such earnestness, “i love you as big as the sky, as big as the ocean, all the way to the moon and back again, um, like, three, to six, to twenty, to fifty, to one hundred, to five hundred years! and that many months! and that many weeks! and that many days! and that many hours! and that many minutes! and that many seconds!!!” at the end of the day, i think he has the love thing figured out already.

***
after i was back downstairs, rich was having some pie and with the big pie-eating grin on his face he told me he had saved his first piece (the one i had packed in his lunch) for right before his play rehearsal that evening. he let me know that store-bought pie has nothing on my homemade pie. (which he also happened to mention is how he feels about waffles.)

maybe all three of us are getting this love thing figured out.

team quinn

Posted on February 22, 2013 by marybethrew

all in all, i think team quinn prevailed on wednesday. but i really think it would be great if all of the 20 or so people who were in that conference room on wednesday would join team quinn.

i am still trying to process what went on at this two hour meeting, which was called, it was stated, in order to “review quinn’s case plan” (whatever that is) even though part of me would rather be focusing on:

this last day of quinn being five

this day also marking 14 months of loving my man

celebrating quinn’s first tender weeks of reading his bob books

(catapult research underway)

still, i can honestly say there was potential good that may come of this meeting, even though it was tremendously arduous. once we got past the typed up lists from the other team, detailing their many bits of so-called evidence of me being a poor parent, once we got past the last ditch attempt of my coparent to dredge things from before quinn was even born in an attempt to garner support for his desire to have our dhs case delved into all over again (i took the high road and announced to the room that unless they wanted to hear a rebuttal, or a list of things my coparent did years ago that might cast him in a poor light, i would focus instead on quinn’s needs since it was my impression that was why we were all in that room), once we got past his therapist directly confronting me that i need to start working as hard on myself as quinn’s dad is working on himself, which was the one moment i did defend myself and confront her back on the fact that she knows absolutely nothing about my therapy history or how much work i have or have not been doing…

there was some apparent agreement, at least on the surface, about a few things having to do with quinn. topping the list is that everyone seems to agree that transitions are a sensitive time for quinn, and our parenting schedule was brought up. we have roughly a 2 day/2 day/3 day rotating schedule with almost as much time spent at coparent’s house as he spends at mine, and it was generally murmured that it seemed like it might keep him in a constant state of transition. while i agree with that, i also don’t think quinn is ready to be away from me for more than 3 days at a time. i also feel the awareness of quinn’s transition sensitivity makes it seem absurd that my coparent would want to drop quinn immediately in public school. (let’s do transitions twice a day instead of every other day!) our attempt at schooling (without parental support along for the ride) seems to me to have shown us that quinn might need a much more gradual transition to schooling away from a parent, and that he could also use a bit of extra support from a parent while he is making that transition, to help him navigate the social interactions.

some of the discussion focused on quinn’s teacher’s observations of (potentially) mild asperger’s characteristics in quinn, and what might be done in order to obtain funding to have an evaluation done using his state health insurance. the jury is out on whether we will be granted such funding, but we did learn that it is not out of the question, though it is a very recent thing and hasn’t been done more than a handful of times. it may not happen, if our current counselor does not feel there is a clinical need for this assessment, but at least it is on the table.

(birthday eve apple pie to share with friends)

his counselor spoke, describing quinn as extremely bright, using the example of his fine motor coordination being on a fifth grade level. she has noticed he is not always aware of the space he is occupying with respect to other people around him, and that sometimes he seems to be deep in his head and takes a while to answer questions. another positive step that has been taken (that i initiated a few weeks ago) is that his counselor has spoken with his teacher, and so i think at least she now has a better understanding of why an evaluation was something we wanted to consider. if nothing else, she put together that the behavior quinn was exhibiting at school that was problematic was more than once following an attempt on his part to gain a teacher’s attention and having to wait his turn. she could see why this would make sense, given he has always had mostly undivided attention from one of his parents at any given time.

it was not lost on anyone in the room that the best thing for quinn overall would be his parents having a better working relationship. there may be joint visits to the counselor in the next little while, something i cannot say i look forward to, but am open to trying.

i got two phone calls that evening, both letting me know i had handled myself very well, which was extremely validating, since that had been a concern going into the meeting. the first was from our child psych, the one who had called me to let me know about the meeting in the first place. the second call was from our case worker, who assured me the case is being closed out as unfounded, and that nothing said today changed her mind in any way. she said she had felt the need to call because even she felt uncomfortable in the room, and she said she couldn’t imagine how i must have felt. i thought it was a really nice gesture.

that afternoon, i went and met the little boy i am going to start nannying for soon. which is an odd juxtaposition, i guess, if you think about it. then yesterday i taught my first “all levels” yoga class all the way through (so far i have just been teaching the beginner class and segments of the all levels class) and i ended the class on this note:

this being human is a guest house.

every morning a new arrival.

a joy, a depression, a meanness,

some momentary awareness comes

as an unexpected visitor.

welcome and entertain them all!

even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,

who violently sweep your house

empty of its furniture,

still, treat each guest honorably.

he may be clearing you out

for some new delight.

the dark thought, the shame, the malice,

meet them at the door laughing,

and invite them in.

be grateful for whoever comes,

because each has been sent

as a guide from beyond.

~rumi, the guest house

in which i eat my words about labels

Posted on September 27, 2012 by marybethrew

on wednesday afternoon i picked quinn up from his dad’s. shortly thereafter, i texted my best friend that i had just realized i was now breathing again. until then i guess i had been holding my breath and when i had him back in my arms it was okay for life to resume. tuesday had been quite a day; my boss and i cried together in each of our offices, and then i had cried at a meeting with quinn’s teacher later in the afternoon. quinn was with his dad at the time, and for the overnight, and for the following day, right up until i inhaled that next breath.

quinn launched his school day review on the friday before with “i feel mostly mad and sad about my day.” after he filled me in on details, and was settled in listening to stories and coloring, i took the phone out to the greenhouse and gave his teacher a call and we arranged the tuesday meeting. what i thought we’d be talking about was her suspicion, based on her observations, that quinn may have asperger’s. then she told me she had asked his dad to keep him home that day, because some things had continued to happen on monday that she couldn’t have going on at the school. aside from her asperger’s observations, which would have been a big enough deal by themselves, she found that quinn was having some major issues with respecting personal space, notably with the teachers. she felt uneasy letting it go in case it happened with one of the kids. she was requesting that quinn stay home until he could get some extra support with working on his personal boundaries. (see priority number one: safety. i am in full support of her decision, as difficult as it is for me to swallow.)

her feeling is that because he may have asperger’s, he is more challenged when it comes to the social interaction aspect of the school day. i thought quinn was a kid who had two quirky parents and didn’t get out much into society when he was with his dad, and therefore maybe a little behind socially, but i hadn’t really put it all together as a diagnosis. he is also markedly ahead in some areas, more than ready for kindergarten in an academic sense, and although i thought he was a bright kid, i also hadn’t put that aspect together into a diagnosis. and i think you might remember me mentioning that i have this thing about schools and labels and diagnoses.

i eat my words

yet suddenly i felt this small percentage of myself that instead of rejecting a label on principle was nodding her head and feeling relief, because the observations of this insightful teacher really click for me. how useful is a label after that initial sigh of relief? that will remain to be seen, but my inner skeptic has opened up a crack since noticing that big sigh of relief. i feel like i need to eat my words a little bit here and acknowledge that i had been very closed to the whole concept of labels until i compared quinn’s teacher’s observations to the wikipedia article on asperger’s and found myself underlining so many passages.

a set of characteristics are not the entire child, and i will be the last person to reduce quinn to that. but i would be lying if i said it did not feel good to know we might be struggling with some things for another reason besides my quirky parenting style. don’t get me wrong, i think my son is delightful and i experience much more joy than frustration in our lives together. and i know everyone has struggles with their children, every child has areas where he or she excels and other areas where he or she needs more support. i guess there have been just these few little things that have been such a struggle with quinn, while the rest of him was absolutely flourishing, and i just couldn’t really get my head around that disparity. the few things were big enough that my partner and my close friends, basically anyone who had witnessed them in action, had all expressed their opinions and concerns that it was not quite normal, maybe somewhat worrisome. one result was that these were areas where i have come up against self-doubt, though i know the only way to parent is to trust myself. i have always leaned away from advice or opinions that began with statements like “but what if he’s still doing it when he’s 15?” okay none of my friends put it in those terms, that is just an inside joke for my fellow long term breastfeeding mamas. sometimes it was more of a “shouldn’t he know better than that by this age?” or “five year olds shouldn’t be doing that still” or gentle suggestions that i might need to be firmer or impose consequences. i have held onto the principles of the way i choose to parent, and that has helped me to maintain my patience with quinn’s larger behavioral issues and remain nonjudgmental on the basis of a certain age having arrived or a certain behavior not having gone away yet. i’ve never found deadlines particularly useful with parenting anyway. i’ve continued to try to work with these challenges using non-coercive methods, but it gets increasingly difficult to justify to others “just talking” with a child who is hitting his mama at age 5 and a half. i can justify it with myself. but justifying it to a partner who is watching it go on…. and on… and frustrated with the lack of progress, is hard. i don’t want to be defensive with rich, and so it’s also been a dance of hearing him out on his very real concerns, of not taking his insights too personally, of validating each other while still maintaining our core values.

just talking? well, yes, and no. my response to hitting (which is a behavior he does only with mama, and is not the problematic behavior at school) is to get us both safe (being hit by a child of 45 pounds is becoming unsafe for me, even though i am a big strong mama of six feet tall) and then to attempt to work through the emotions quinn is experiencing. you see, i learned to identify my own emotions roughly 3 or 4 years ago (um, yeah. the previous 31 years, not so much on the emotional intelligence.) this was right around when quinn was beginning to have strong toddler emotions and learning to communicate verbally. communicating about emotions has been at the forefront of my parenting approach ever since, both due to the coincidence of us learning emotional weather reporting skills at the same time, and the fact that i think it is one of the single most important life skills anyone can learn. it turns out this is probably extra good news for quinn, because aspies do not always know how to identify their feelings, whereas quinn has had lots and lots of intentional practice. did you catch how he was feeling both mad and sad about his day at school? my inner psychologist cheered when it heard him identify that without prompting. he can be downright poetic at times about his emotions, such as when he told his teacher on one of his first days of school that he was “hungry to get to some playing”. and me? i’ve felt upset, relieved, confused, i’ve had moments of feeling defensive, and mostly what has risen to the surface have been feelings of certainty, strength, and, this is a relatively new one for me: self confidence.

so yes it pretty much does boil down to just talking. i have always found that connection, empathy and validation were the best way to get through difficult moments. it seems like he’ll be more likely to learn those skills with others if he experiences them. i believe punishment or rewards, consequences or any other form of coercion, would detach the outcome (behaving the right way or making a good choice) from his own internal motivations, and artificially attach it to some other stimulus. i’m a stickler on this point between my son and i (to be clear, i’m not a stickler for you! this is a blog about me, not what i think others should do.) if it doesn’t come from within him, it isn’t the real deal. i value connection above correction because i think an intact connection will ensure that the correction will eventually fall into place, whereas i believe one can correct a behavior but damage the connection in the process. i’ve been okay all along with his schedule being a little different from other kids’ because i was taking a different path to achieving the “results”. i think this past year i have started to have to work harder to surrender to his schedule, to unattach from the desired outcomes (non-attachment being a useful state when parenting this way) and maybe even had a shadow of a doubt creep in now and then. but i see punishment being a way to just escalate drama with quinn (i should say, it does escalate, from my less stellar moments when i have used punishments or threats) and the power struggle gets us nowhere towards resolving the “behavior”. i feel as though this time of stepping back and assessing things has given me a frame shift that makes quinn’s schedule seem tenable again, and gives me back hope that time and maybe some extra focused attention will help us reach our goals.

what is an aspie?

frankly, i am no expert, and though i have a few friends who have aspie family members, i had never really studied it. i had a vague sense that it was disputed whether asperger’s is on the autism spectrum, and his teacher mentioned to me when she was introducing the idea to me that in her opinion, placement on the spectrum dilutes the meaning to the point where it is much less useful. while there are some characteristics that overlap, and there can be dual diagnoses with a form of autism and asperger’s, those who are purely aspies have some pretty big distinctions from autistic folks. i have no idea how to resolve this spectrum vs non-spectrum debate, my own issues are more that i want to shy away from the words “disorder” and “syndrome” which seem like they want to tag along. hence i keep leaving it hanging as just “asperger’s, and i will acknowledge that intentional omission here. a collection of traits that describe a certain kind of quirky person does not constitute a disorder in my mind.

his teacher described a lesson she was teaching on money, and how quinn became furious with her over the fact that dimes are smaller than nickels, but worth more. he was pissed at her, and was not going to go on with the lesson no way no how. she validated his thoughts on the size of the money, telling him of a friend of hers from korea who had felt the same way when she first came to our country and had to learn about the different coins. once he moved on from his anger, he nailed the lesson in two seconds, sorting the coins impeccably and completing a worksheet about them as well, while other kids were still scratching their heads saying, “what’s this one again?” the other kids were doing that, however, without a major emotional meltdown.

in those moments when things get rough between quinn and me, i can refuse to accept them, refuse to submit to a world where mean people make the small coin worth more than the big coin, or i can accept what is. i can refuse to accept a reality in which my son is “still” hitting me, or i can accept it and work on it. here we are again, my son is hitting me again, and my first principle of parenting is still “i love you no matter what.” what am i modeling for him if i refuse to accept what a given moment is presenting me?

some of his characteristics….

he is intensely focused and super driven in a couple specific areas of interest. this is textbook asperger’s but is also, well, a smart kid. he is so driven and focused that he excels in some things far beyond his age level. like…. chess. like…. dinosaurs.

he’s amazingly ahead of kindergarten age with pattern recognition. he painted the picture below at school, filling the whole page with paint, and even where the grid sort of goes off the page, he painted the alternating colors “correctly” on the half-squares, whereas kids his age normally don’t grasp that yet, according to his teacher. but quinn is into patterns, chess boards, drawing/coloring very thoroughly, etc. one of his recent interests is coloring little squares and making patterns on graph paper.

focused is an understatement with quinn. as everyone who knows quinn has witnessed, he listens very intently to chapter books and has been doing it since age 3 or so. the hobbit, mrs. frisby, james and the giant peach, winnie the pooh, nim’s island, peter pan, the jungle book…

that intense focus seems like sort of the keystone of asperger’s. other characteristics he shows include physical clumsiness. i know all parents hold their breath when kids do stunts, and some of us try to be more continuum concept about it and let them learn from falling and so on… i am a breath holding mama, and i feel lucky in some ways that quinn is a careful guy. he is not timid, and will try stunts, but he is not cavalier about it and he seems to know his own limits pretty well. his overall walk/run is less coordinated than his peers. i think it will take him a while to ride a bike… he delayed walking until 15 and a half months… those all figure in. i always associated these things with his size (he was off the percentile charts for his first two years) and he’s just a little bit less athletic than some kids, but that awareness has never concerned me.

sensitivities…. his teachers noticed quinn likes to rub on others’ skin, and while all kindergarten age kids are touchy feely to some extent, it makes the list. quinn has also always been very sensitive to sound, and his first reaction when he is scared (whether it is a loud sound or anything else) is to cover his ears. sensory stuff is pretty characteristic. he is sensitive to changes in schedule, is sensitive to transition times, such as switching from my house to his dad’s… which is to be expected, but again, is a hallmark of an aspie.

empathy… again i figured it is an age 5 boy thing to lack a wellspring of empathy, but it is definitely something i have thought about- how to encourage him to understand other people’s feelings… and it’s been a struggle, albeit one that i thought was just part of the normal deal…

one that sticks out to me, is that aspies have trouble with nuance/teasing aspects of language. they are somewhat more literal in how they use language. i figured this was an artifact of his dad and i not being big teasers, and so when quinn encounters someone who does tease, he sort of freezes. rich will say something like “oh i bet you want some of this salsa with the hot peppers in it. i heard you really like spicy hot peppers!” and quinn stops dead in his tracks. you can see his wheels turn: he knows that rich knows he doesn’t like spicy stuff, so he can’t figure out why rich is saying this false statement… this is a common occurrence with quinn. i am usually there to explain to him “s/he’s teasing you honey” and walk him through why it is funny, and then he laughs and gets it. he cognitively “gets” what teasing is, but in the moment, it doesn’t flow for him. aspies often can cognitively grasp what a social interaction is supposed to be like if they are coached through it, but the ability to flow with it the first time around, doesn’t always come naturally.

“may engage in one-sided, long-winded speech about a favorite topic, while misunderstanding or not recognizing the listener’s feelings or reactions, such as a need for privacy or haste to leave.” i can see a bit of quinn in this (quoting the wiki article). he does get very talkative about his favorite subjects, and does not catch that the person listening is less interested than he is. his priority is finishing what he is saying (and he is very thorough with his treatises), not necessarily achieving a good give and take in the flow of conversation. all of these things to me could just be a combo of a- he’s intelligent, b- he’s got weird parents and c- he hasn’t had a ton of social interaction.

i hold labels at a cautious arms length

quinn is a lot of things, but quinn is not a list of symptoms. he is a whole child. after not breathing for 24 hours, i picked him up and he was still undeniably, irrevocably, my son quinn. same kid as ever. same love bug with a million things to tell me about dinosaurs. so he happens to have absorbed an enormous amount of knowledge about dinosaurs, more than most five or six or seven year olds. on the flip side, he hits his mom more than most four or five or six year olds. these are all things i have had an awareness of, which is why when his teacher started listing things about quinn, i knew i had to take her assessment seriously because of her accuracy. it’s validating on many levels.

oh and speaking of validating… two separate friends pointed me to this lovely blog post within days of the teacher conversation, and i especially found this quote to resonate with my own experience: labels “provide an opportunity to go within and find our own true voices in the midst of a choir.”

a label will always be less than the whole story about a person. there will always be things about quinn that defy labeling. and a label is only useful insofar as it helps. if it increases our awareness, great! it’s already been helpful in that way. but in many ways we were already aware of the areas quinn excelled in and the areas he needed support in. i will be the last holdout on any evaluations, poking, prodding or testing that anyone else decides is in quinn’s best interest. they will have a long uphill climb of convincing to do with this mama. hopefully we don’t have to even go there. i would be just fine with him possibly having asperger’s and never knowing for sure.

so much good news

so we need some therapy at the exact moment my health coverage is going to run out. it feels a little like when i asked my midwife if i had seemed like a total wimp to her during my labor, and she looked me in the eye and told me, “mary beth, you had an unusual amount of pain.” it was very validating. quinn’s teacher basically said the same thing to me yesterday. “i know a lot of families, but you, you are really dealing with a lot here.

but i am not going to throw a pity party. in other ways, i really have it good. tuesday night i went home and talked until after midnight with rich, who had just happened to buy me brandi carlile’s latest cd on his way home and made me popcorn for dinner and held me while i cried some more.

quinn can go back to school as soon as he has some extra support in this one area. his teacher is undaunted by asperger’s, if that is even what we are looking at. if we are, it simply makes our choice of school that much more perfect. an article on schooling children with asperger’s notes that it is essential to protect aspies from teasing and bullying, and that it is almost more important to work on social training than on academics. quinn’s teacher considers the social-emotional aspects of schooling her strongest area. she sees quinn’s sweetness and goodness and loves him for who he is, in spite of the difficulties of the first weeks of school, and is proving to me that she genuinely cares about each individual child. quinn now has an educational plan that includes seeing another “teacher” one on one to work on his weakest social areas in a focused way. no one is interested in shaming quinn or separating him out as a set of behavior problems. everyone involved is on the same page. even his parents.

i have some time off from work to spend at home with quinn. glass half full…

one of my friends validated me in such a meaningful way on some other good news about the way i parent. she said, “i know there is more to intervention/therapy & education (including parent & caregiver education & support) than i know about, for instance i assume that there are specific concrete ways to support issues with sensory integration that are common (at least with autism), but as far as i have seen, a lot of the ‘how to respond,’ ‘how to manage transitions/issues,’ and ‘parenting strategies’ tend to be the stuff you’re already doing. (for instance, a big part of intervening to help families with an autism diagnosis involves putting across the idea that ‘what works for neurotypical children just doesn’t for kids with autism’ and presenting a less punitive focus that doesn’t rely on imposing consequences, etc.)”

also good is how this reinforces the hyper healthy local-fresh-free-of-chemical-crap diet i feed this kid, if the truckload of information on the internet about diets for kids on or near the spectrum is any indication.

so even if i had a minor mama meltdown over the fact that my son got kicked out of kindergarten after just two weeks, the bigger picture outlook is really great. after all, he is in the company of such wonderful possibly-aspies as albert einstein, henry david thoreau, mozart, van gogh, robin williams and bob dylan. he is still the mighty quinn, still just as destined to do amazing things as he ever was.

mb

magic & bioluminescence

Tag Archives: asperger’s