Listening

My son's selective hearing is very frustrating to our family.  We had his hearing tested & it's normal.  He can hear conversations that are none of his business.  He can hear crinkling in the kitchen that inspire him to investigate.  He can purposefully hear some silly  musical twists that make lyrics of songs hysterical & distorted from the original interpretation (I do that too!).  "You can call Me Al" is an old 80's song, can't think of the band right now, but I've always heard it as, "You can call MEEE--owww!"  Lots of people do this to lyrics, it makes life more fun.

When it comes to everyday jobs of getting ready for school, the bus, bed...  Well, I can ask him, did he brush his teeth?  He will either reply, "Okay"  or "In a minute." & continue reading comic books or building Lego.  He has done the social pattern of answering the question, but skirted compliance.  Let me tell you, this is really maddening when pushing 10pm & school the next day.  Time doesn't stop or wait, jobs still have to be done.  We've done all the parent tricks:  asking, repetition, yelling, begging, pleading, guilting, removing privileges, swearing...  Do not pass Go, do not collect any dollars.  Hold that thought, meaningful tangent coming.

Not that long ago he liked singing a really annoying song, repeatedly.  Did I mention repeatedly, in a horrible falsetto voice?  regardless of telephone conversations in progress, headaches, parent fatigue, REPEATEDLY.  The song was, "chicken wing, chicken wing, hot-dog and balognee, chicken & macaroni"  With the addendum of "Hanging with my homies" later on when he understood what a homie was (slang for a friend).  I have a really high tolerance for all things annoying.  I learned a long time ago that if I ignore the annoying current trick, it fizzles out because it has no effect. Didn't work this time, drats.  So, after putting up with this for a few weeks, it occurred to me, he needs to sing, he needs music, he needs reaction & attention.  I have never been great at playing by dictator rules, I usually duck & navigate my own way until the tyranny abates.  I finally had a "duh" moment, and thought, I can fix this, change the lyrics to words he doesn't like.  Well now, here's the new & improved lyrics: "Sexy things, sexy things, penis and vagina, boobies & _I forget the last word_."  We have a winner!!!  Every time the chicken wings song came out we would chime in with the new lyrics right over top, louder.  It took about 2 days, but it worked!

Back to the selective hearing topic.  My son was having trouble with stopping his preferred task of reading Calvin & Hobbes to get on task.  Who doesn't like Calvin & Hobbes? Thats great reading, normally a parents job is to encourage reading.  Its also somewhere in the unwritten job list to get children to comply on their own, to take ownership & responsibility for everyday tasks.  Now when I get the dreaded reply, "in a minute" or "Okay" I ask him again, with really syrupy sweet names.  "Honey Bunny, are your teeth done yet?" "C'mon sweetheart, its time to go!"  "Sweet'ums, get out of the tub please."  The more saccharin the better!  Now its a challenge to come up with sweeter & sweeter phrases with the added ante of saying, would you like me to open the front door for the whole neighborhood to hear?  Compliance achieved!  He got quite mad about this until I explained it to him this way.  He's dabbling between little kid & teenage independence worlds.  If he chooses to behave like a little kid, then I have to treat him that way.  If he wants his independence, then he should prove it by cooperating with these basic everyday jobs.

Read my face

Most people would say this cat, Boomer is mad about something.  Doesn't matter what really, but it looks like he's going to say, "If you don't stop RIGHT NOW, I will bite you!"

We learn to read faces with experience.  Temple Grandin writes that Ausperger people typically focus on the mouth, not the eyes when reading faces.  It has to do with paying attention so hard to what is being said because of listening challenges, that they miss other cues.  Regular people know to look at the eyes of a face first & factor in what the rest of the face says.  This is teachable, but if you don't understand the features of each emotion, its extra tough.

So, look again, see Boomer's pretty smile & nice teeth, its kinda funny looking isn't it, makes me smile, such an interesting face.  See how his eyes crinkle, its a big smile.  See his ears tip like he's going to do something fun?  OWWW!!! I just got bit.  How did that happen?

Prepared

I try very hard to keep prepared & to teach my son this skill.  It affects everything, from cleaning up after yourself, to having everything ready to go to get out the door.  As we all know, if you don't put away your breakfast dishes, they will be there waiting for you later.  "I'll do it later," is the common thought right.  Well, then later comes, you have other chores to do, and other commitments to run off to.  Later never comes.  Next thing you know its tomorrow morning & there's the stinking dishes from yesterday, still sitting there.  This is typical action & consequence in real life.  Being prepared to get out the door has its own obstacles.  I have found that I have to break it down, every day, to the essentials.  If I leave it open to guess, stuff gets missed, like lunch.  The natural consequence for that is to go hungry and to play on your friends generosity to share their lunches.  When there's a lack of friends because of exclusion practices in play, who's going to share their lunch?  Then it snowballs into a hungry morning since there's nothing to snack on.  Then a hungry grumpy lunch time with nothing to do or eat while everyone eats their lunches.  Other kids can sense he's on the brink of not coping, so they tease his last nerve because thats what kids do (and its kinda fun to push him around a bit, power play stuff).  Then the afternoon is where the struggle really shines.  Being outside on the playground is usually okay, outside is nice, there's other things to think of and do.  Class starts again & the hungries set in.  This wouldn't bother a regular kid the same way because they would've mootched of their friends lunches.  My auspie kid didn't.  So now there is learning to do, behaviours to keep in check.  Again with other kids zeroing in on this, they quietly but steadily take turns bugging the last nerve.  It doesn't take long for a full on Mad to erupt, this ends the learning, the concentration, and the coping that was on thin ice anyway.  Off to the school office, where the Mad is out of the classroom, but needs to be vetted somehow.  No adult seems to know how to communicate or address the Mad, or defuse it.   Enter Yelling, and what looks like Uncooperative arm & arm with Defiant.  Or thats what it looks like to any adult that has no knowledge or comprehension of the backstory.  See, autism is invisible now.  My son has been punished like this multiple times every school year.  Despite multiple communications, extra snacks stashed in the backpack, and repeated occurrences, it keeps happening from time to time.  Sometimes it happens if he was busy minding the social interactions in play during lunch between his classmates.  Sometimes he's way off task & no one was around to check & cue him to get on with it, eat your lunch.  The fallout overflows to the school bus ride home, where other kids, even much younger ones, enjoy poking the last shreds of nerves.  Then if he's really lucky, he can't communicate it to the bus driver because he's so overwhelmed & fed up, HE gets punished by the bus driver with a disciplinary warning bus note.  Next transition is coming home, bang the front door, with Mad & Unpleasant in full power.  The cats know to hide.  I know that he needs to calm down but there's no way he's gonna snack at this point.  On goes happy cartoons, with my direction, "
on the next commercial, go wash your hands & face so you can snack."

This is just one day, that can happen several times a week.  I've seen it happen enough to know the whole sequence.  I've done the "sleuthing" the "planning" and the "problem solving."  It doesn't do any good to hide him from daily interactions or events.  Life isn't fair, or easy.  If an auspie kid is never made to go through the everyday challenges, how will they ever learn to figure it out themselves?  We've had lots & lots of problem days, similar & different to the one described today.  Sometimes all the planning & preparedness just goes out the window.  Thats life isn't it.

Bullying

This is such an unhappy topic everywhere.  There are school policies, there are unspoken social rules, there are rules of etiquette.  Kids don't follow rules on the playground.  Regular kids know how to bend around the rules, to lie, to partially lie, to "cover their butt" and to think on their feet for basic strategies.  Bullying is not new, it isn't getting better & it isn't going away.  It comes out in lunch treasures being stolen, exclusion, mean pranks,  name calling and soon escalates to hitting.  Teachers can't monitor it all, kids know this, they run the school-ground.  If the school isn't policing the name calling fiercely, the other behaviours wash in, like the tide the ebb & flow through the day.  I think that is impossible for an auspie to grasp so much inconsistency.  AND autism is mostly an invisible disorder so those kids are punished harder with these every day social interactions.  You can teach a kid to lick their lunch in front of the other kids to get them to back off, or to clearly reply, "What will you trade me for it?"  Not so easy if things are already missing.  So after 2-3 weeks of this going on you report it to the teacher who has a talk with the class about stealing and fairness it gets better for while.  Why does it take 2-3 weeks to get on top of?  Life, and that delightful child gap memory that filters & processes differently doesn't tell you until he's really mad about it.  So the stealing resumes and occasionally a desirable lunch item is laced with soap or hot sauce before it goes to school, with a hope & a prayer that no on will go out of their way to accuse of poisoning their kid.  The ones that complain loudest are often the ones enjoying delivering the unfairness.  They are hopefully learning a lesson that they should not take what is not theirs, to ask before taking, and that other people have rights too.

Behaviours

I've been struggling with my son's behaviours for thirteen years.  Some are cute, others are downright obnoxious.  The problem is they are often the same behaviour.  So a behavior that was cute or even funny, like hiding homework behind the class book shelf in grade 1, is now a longstanding problem in different variations.  It was silly, even smart at the time, now its a lousy habit.  That microsecond that I was human & approved the inappropriate behaviour with a small smile, well, now its entrenched.  yay.  It doesn't seem to matter which adult micro-approves, thats what sets it in place.  I can repeat myself, clearly, concisely, loud or quiet, threaten, bribe, or fine, yet we still struggle with everyday basic sequences.  I'm talking getting ready for school, getting ready for bed, getting out the door to get to an appointment...  Something is messed up with the transitions.  I know that to get through these trials I need to set the expectation that he will reach for independence.  The problem is the every day implementation of it.

Factor in that his behaviour & response are emotion driven, its not rational, just full on maddening.

Problem solving is like this, the theories are all well and good.  Not so helpful in practice.  I have to be lock & key with every move until its mastered before I back off.  Then we have a setback, or he forgets, & we start up again.  Every day is sort of like the movie "Groundhogs Day" with Bill Murray.  The day starts out about the same, repeatedly, and seem familiar but they're not.  Its nice in a way that if yesterday was a bad day, it doesn't taint the new day.  Its awful to every day be reminding of basic functional patterns like making sure he's got his lunch, backpack, planner, and house-key before bombing out of the house at the last possible second to the school bus.  It takes a looooonnnnnnngggggg time, but eventually he masters a sequence.  Occasionally he masters it quick.  Of course, we have setbacks & the sequence has to be rebuilt because it doesn't fit anymore.

Okay, here's a current functional problem solving in progress.  Getting out the door.  Thats what is understood to be a "transition."  Life is full of transitions, there's no avoiding it.  Going out, coming home, the movie ends, getting ready for the day, getting ready for bed, a car crash, losing a job, being late...  How do you teach "transitioning" when there is  a gap in daily memory?  We have lists to help give the responsibility, they're only good if referenced to.  Comic books, Leggo, TV, the cat, an itchy back, and more can all derail transitions.  So every day I am there to keep the reminders flowing to get out the door with everything needed to succeed the day.  Occasionally I am inconsistent.  Shift work does that & so does life.  Hiding human inconsistencies doesn't help an auspie solve everyday challenges, real life isn't consistent & neither are people.  When I back off & am less insistent on the everyday preparations for each day, he goes off into his own orbit.  I like his happy place, there's lots of interesting things going on there, I wish I could go there too.  But when the clock is running out, and its getting more pressure based, things get worse.  Bring on the Mom voice, asking, reminding, nagging, yelling, threatening, bribing...  Mostly none of that bag of tricks works.  Backing off & allowing natural consequences isn't always an option.  If he misses the school bus, well, now I have to drive him or he walks.  Driving him is kinda what he's after, more time with me.  I'm all about getting him independent in his life skills.  I have already said that if I have to drive because he missed the bus I will go in my housecoat, jammies & slippers and walk him to the front door, a public deterrent I hope.  He's still not quite on top of the whole strangers & interacting to let him walk alone regularly.  That would be better if he had another kid to walk with, but he's excluded a lot.  Thats another post later.

A prayer

God, help me to tell the truth to the strong and to avoid telling lies to get the weak's applause.  If you give me fortune, do not take away my reason.  If you give me success, do not take away my humility.  If you give me humility, do not take away my dignity.  God, help me to see the other side of the medal.  Don't let me blame others of treason just because they don't think like me.  God, teach me to love people as I love myself and to judge me as I judge others.  Please, don't let me be proud if I succeed, or fall in despair if I fail.  Remind me that failure is the experience that precedes triumph.  Teach me that forgiving is the most important in the strong and that revenge is the most primitive sign in the weak.  If you take away my success, let me keep my strength to succeed from failure.  If I fail people, give me courage to apologize and people fail me, give me courage to forgive them.  God, if I forget you, please do not forget me.

Mahatma Gandhi

Media

I learned when my child fixates on something to the exclusion of all others to be cautious & seriously question it.  Video games are designed to be addictive.  They're repetitive & reward based, solve or conquer.  They're fun, but they need to be limited.  Its hard to be the one to always take the high road, to do things the hard way.  I have to set limits on TV, computer time, & video games in our home.  Its not reasonable to exclude them, but I can teach boundary setting a little at a time.  I'm a mean Mom that way.  Occasionally I let the video games go on for a whole afternoon, thats okay too.  I received good advice to allow it once in a while because the body sets consequences of boredom, frustration hunger, thirst & bathroom breaks that cannot be ignored indefinitely.  The fallout of a grumpy boy is not sweet, downright nasty usually.  Thats where the hard road fits in, sourcing out the root of the tantrum is usually hunger & fatigue.  Snack time, quiet, distraction & later discussion of the frustration sometimes helps.

So, electronics are addicting but repetitive and socially acceptable.  Stimming is not.  Stimming is self stimulating at a primal level to relieve stress or anxiety.  Sometimes they are referred to as "ticks." Some kids spin, rock, self harm, knock, hum,  click or grunt.  It is hard to be vigilant for stimming because it changes.  Is biting your nails, tapping a pen, clenching your jaw, licking your lips, blinking repeatedly or flinching stimming?  The clue lies in the behaviour.  Is it impossible to stop mid stim?  Is it tantrum status if interrupted?  The problem I've found is that the bigger a deal I make about the stimming, the more anxiety is created & the more entrenched the stimming becomes.  Thats a vicious circle no one wants to be in the middle of.

Happiness

So if stimming brings happiness, what else can be substituted?  Repetitive non-stressful things like crafts, puzzles, pets, bike riding, sports, baking, or other hobbies....  Okay, how about spinning your own yarn? weaving?  Spinning & weaving is commonly associated with crazy.  The perception is wrong, not the interest.  A strong analytical mind is naturally drawn to pattern seeking, mathematics, and music.  Weaving is a rhythmic, repetitive pattern based skill.  Spinning fibres into yarns is also a moving meditation.

Why is society hung up with creating things?  It is not on trend.  Look around you, someone had to figure out how to make the fibre, & then the math to create all the common textiles today.  Pattern based minds figured out the best weave structure to make denim fabric for the jeans that are everywhere.  Try it.  Go get interested in a new hobby, and try to discuss it among other people.  Watch them glaze over with boredom, or their attention wander away.  Weaving is associated with something tedious, hard to do, time & labour intensive.  What does all the TV & video gaming produce?    Why does "crafting" have such a negative stigma?  Something to do with the language; Home made vs Hand made.  A home made pie or cookies are well loved & have yummy romantic associations.  A home made craft brings forward the idea or feeling of something crappily made or kids immature art projects.  Picture a crochet doll cover over the toilet paper or crochet toilet seat cover.  Does that compare to a hand made card or a home made afghan blanket to cuddle on the couch with.  How about ripping old sheets & making a rag rug out of them?  Well, now there's some social approval coming through. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.  Its hammered into us, repeatedly, almost brainwashing really.  Caring about how we use our resources should never have become a trend, why isn't it just normal.  It wasn't that long ago there was another mantra: use it up, wear it out, or do without. That's been obliterated by cars & appliances that have built in obsolecence after 5 years or less, they break, and it costs more to repair them than to replace them.  Our landfills can't handle it.  Consumers demand lowest prices, best value.  Manufacturers cut corners with a 4cent part that should've been a 9cent part & then the product quits prematurely.  Rant rant rant.  Do you think an average mind will have the patience to sit down & figure out how to fix this broken DVD player?  An autistic detail oriented problem solving mind can.