by Mary on January 13, 2010
When we first heard about Signing Time [affiliate link], it was because I had read about teaching a baby to sign – that it reduced frustration for them to be able to communicate before they could speak. I ended up thinking that all of those children had to be BRILLIANT to be able to learn to sign, because even though the J-man loved watching Signing Time, he couldn’t (or wouldn’t) sign. He didn’t have the fine motor skills to pull off doing any sign that had finger movement or shaping.
The only sign the J-man ever used was “more” and I’m still not sure that he understood what he was asking for. The only time he ever used it was when we were playing a game where we carried him around and stopped suddenly, and he had to ask for “more” before we would move again. So he understood that we would start running again, but I think he just thought the sign meant something like “go.” Once the J-man was able to actually say the “g” sound (for GO!) he stopped with signing “more.”
In the span of something like 5 minutes, I just taught Dale Jr to sign “more.” He was sitting in his high chair eating (also something new this time around), and I asked if he wanted “more” or “all done” – signing each thing. (Our “all done” is like an umpire making the SAFE signal at home plate, because the other way to do “all done” looks too much like stimming for the J-man to ever differentiate.) Dale Jr would open his mouth like a baby bird in a nest, and I would pop in another Gerber Puff, each time signing “more!” before.
Suddenly, when I asked if he wanted “more” or “all done” he clapped his fists together. “MORE” I shouted, and gave him another puff. “More or all done?” Again, he clapped his fists together. “MORE!”
Then, before I could ask the question, Dale Jr looked at me pointedly, and clapped his fists together. “MORE!”
I called Tim downstairs to make sure I wasn’t reading more (heh) into the situation than it warranted, and Dale Jr showed Daddy that he could sign “more” with a bit of resignation – all, “I just want the dang Puff, people, so could you give it to me?”
And, we celebrated.
by Mary on September 23, 2009
During the last 2 weeks, the J-man has shifted into high gear. Suddenly, he can do some of the movements to the morning song at school. They’ve been singing this SAME SONG since, well, forever, and something just clicked. Now he is starting to follow along some of the movements with a slight physical cue (touch to his hand) or even a verbal cue (pat your head). He has been playing a game with one of his teachers, Mrs. Cindy. We call it “Pat, pat, pat, pat” at home, because according to what the J-man does at home, it starts with patting the legs 4 times, then clapping 4 times, then patting the legs 4 times, then doing Wonder Twins fists with the other person and bringing both arms up to say Blast Off! He is so proud of himself when he does that, and of course, we are proud of him too.
Think about how much motor planning that little game takes. Patting your thighs: make sure the hands are open, make sure both hands are doing the same thing, actually hitting the thighs but not too hard, and doing it 4 times. Then, SHIFTING to open-hand clapping (the J-man normally claps his fists but not in this game): hands open, arms moving in such a way at the same time to clap them together while SAYING “clap, clap, clap, clap.” Shift again, back to patting thighs. Then, put both fists out to touch the other person’s fists, bringing both arms up at the same time (still touching fists) AND saying “Blast Off” (or the J-man’s approximation of those words).
Now, try to imagine programming a robot to do those things. I know, you’re probably not a programmer, but think about all those steps, and how carefully each would have to be coded. Think about the pages of code that would take. Now imagine that each time something is repeated, you can’t just copy/paste the same code – you have to recreate it, and you don’t have your old code there in front of you, and in fact have trouble even remembering how you came up with that code.
That, I think, is how the J-man has to do it. He has to carefully think through EVERY SINGLE INDIVIDUAL MUSCLE MOVEMENT, big or small. He has to put all those single individual muscle movements together, but because of his motor planning issues, he has to re-think about how exactly one makes that muscle move. For everything. Every time.
I liken his motor planning issues to my inability to dance. I’m not talking about those people who say, “I can’t dance” and then go out and while not the best dancers, can at least do the Clap and Step of every junior high school dance. I mean, I have trouble watching someone do a step, and then repeating that step, because I have to seriously consider what FOOT they started on. Add hands, or any hip shaking whatsoever, and I’m lost. (I was an absolute riot in aerobics class the 2 times I took it.)
So imagine if my whole life was having to dance every day. I could definitely spend an entire year absolutely not getting a dance. I had to learn a dance in the summer before 10th grade, and I still remember it, because it took me having the instructor come over and actually MOVE MY FEET INTO POSITION as she broke down every step. I cried over it, because I was so bad. I can’t imagine doing that every day. It’s been over 20 years, and I still remember how hard that was for me. I wasn’t happy when I learned it enough to stand in the very back and not really let anyone see me, but I was relieved. I wasn’t proud.
And think… my kid does that every day of his life for every move he makes. And he smiles during it. And is incredibly proud of himself.
BLAST OFF indeed.
For quite a while now, the J-Man has been a Lego-maniac. We see this as a very good thing as he wouldn’t touch building blocks of any kind for forever – we suspect for a variety of sensory – particularly tactile – fine motor, and other motor planning/spatial relating sorts of issues. Like many other things, one day it just clicked and now he’s a building machine.
Our building fun currently comes with one significant issue we need to keep an eye on. He’s doing better and better with structured building activities based on a picture (build the simple structure in this picture – like six blocks of alternating colors in one column) or a finite number of blocks (assemble the blocks in this box in whatever way you want, but when they are all together, you’re done).
However, in ‘free build’ mode (here’s a bucket full of blocks, have at it), things can get much more difficult for him. He will sit there and essentially build the same structure over and over again until you stop him. It’s usually an impossible-looking, very tall (20-25+ Duplo blocks high often), skyscraper-like thing that is asymmetrical, defies many laws of physics and building codes, but that generally looks very impressive considering getting him to put two Legos together even a few months ago was nearly unheard of.
But since – despite his best efforts of steadying it with hands and even feet – the structure becomes too unsteady to stay upright. So it falls, breaks into several pieces, and then he tries to reassemble it back to where it was, which continues on to the same collapse of the same building and the repeat of the cycle.
One facet of this I’m not sure whether to be concerned about or not is the constant moaning he does while he’s building. He does vocalize in that way in other contexts, but not to the droning length it goes to while he’s building. He only pauses to breathe. I’ll admit it does wear on my nerves with a crying baby often nearby to add to the chorus. But besides that, this is an instance where reading his vocalization cues is hard for us.
Since he loves blocks so much, I feared interrupting this the other day, but I had to. His structure had the moment before collapsed into about four long sections, so I just took the open blocks bucket and said, “Time to clean up!” No real initial resistance, though he seemed to be largely ignoring me at first save for a brief interruption in the moaning. I just kept talking. “You made some awesome buildings today, and now it’s time to clean up! Daddy will start!” So I took a few extra blocks that were around the floor (not part of the original big structure) and put them in the bucket.
Then I said, “Now J-Man’s turn! Put in!” And much to my surprise, he hurriedly put those sections that had just a minute ago been part of that building and put them right straight into the bucket as they were. He then took what was left of the bottom of the building apart in a couple of quick motions and took the three pieces that left him with and put them in the bucket too. He grabbed the nearby lid, laid it on top of the bucket, and asked for help (“heh” or sometimes the halting but very interactive “Iiiiii wahhhhh heh”- “I want help” for the uninitiated) I pushed down on the lid until it clicked – and this bucket is hard to seal. In barely 30 seconds, the giant bucket of Duplos was cleaned up, mostly by him. Never would have predicted that one.
He sat there in his “I feel relieved” posture – upright, shoulders relaxed, eyes looking thoughtfully at something nearby, no stimming, no more groaning, and in a place receptive to maybe using some words if he feels like it. If he’s in a place where he’s really stressed and bouncing off the walls (literally), if we get him to where he’s in the relieved posture (through a whole repertoire of calming activities), it’s like J-man’s way of saying ‘thank you’. If you sit near him then, you can feel a real tenderness in his spirit that is the essence of who the J-Man is, almost like the real him underneath the stimmy wildman exterior.
OK, so one of the morals of the story. If you find your kids perseverating on something in a way that it seems like they’re stuck in an infinite loop, they may very well be stuck. Find a transitional cue and activity to end their loop and bring them to whatever the next thing should be. You may get resistance or meltdowns, both of which have happened here. But you also may discover what it looks like when you need to ‘rescue’ your child from their infinite loop. They may not know the way out, and if so, you have to show them. These are the sorts of decisions and actions they may rely on us to take for them until they can hopefully begin to learn that skill for themselves.
To the issue of Legos, a new Lego Store just opened here and I’m dying to go. I heard they built an 8-foot-tall Yoda for the grand opening. Squee!
In our last IEP goals recap from last quarter, the J-Man had a great nine weeks overall and showed great gains. This past quarter just ended last Thursday, and our little superstar continues to make great strides toward what we thought were some pretty ambitious goals for this year.
As a refresher for those curious about how we do things around here, the quarterly evaluations are done based on how well the kids are progressing toward meeting their IEP goals for the entire year, and then they’re assigned an evaluation code based on the following scale:
1 – Insufficient progress to meet IEP goal by end of year; below expected mastery of goal at this point in the year
2- Skills are emerging; mastery of goal is still inconsistent; student needs support to meet goals
3 – Consistent progress toward goals; on track to meet annual goal
3* – Consistent progress toward goals + some evidence of application and independence (Not sure why they need another 3 score here, but whatever. “Application and independence” are definitely two words we like.)
4 – Annual goal has been mastered; able to generalize the skill independently in multiple settings.
As I mentioned last time, don’t ask me why they felt the need to add a 3* in between 3 and 4 rather than just fix the scale to begin with. But anyway…
We rounded the halfway mark of this year early in March, so in light of that, his progress toward goals he has a few more months to meet is awesome.
Here are those categories and all the great stuff he’s been up to lately.
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by Tim on December 15, 2008
Forgot to mention yesterday that J-Man gave us a great gift this weekend. This goes under the heading of ‘doesn’t sound like much to most of the world, but the rest of us understand how cool this is’.
For the first time in pretty much ever, J-Man actually participated in unwrapping his gifts at our recent family Christmas gathering. He wasn’t much into it at first – about the same as every other gift-unwrapping event in his life – but he warmed up to it and start pulling and ripping!
We go in age order and he’s the youngest of the five kids on Mary’s side, so he goes first. It seemed like he got the idea once the older kids started unwrapping theirs. He got right in there with them and had a blast watching them. Then he’d sneak in and start helping some! Yay!
It’s hard to tell whether he has any idea what occasion caused presents to appear in front of us, but he certainly seemed to enjoy himself. He also showed positive reactions to some of his gifts, which is quite unusual. It takes everything a while to get incorporated into his routine, so even his current adored toys are ones that sat in the ‘whatever’ pile for a long time before he accepted them.
Of course, it helped that one of the gifts was three Signing Time DVDs with pictures of Our Lady of the Beloved Rachel Coleman on the covers. I swear if we put her on a flash card, he’d carry her all over the house.
We also got a pretty good reaction out of his new Ming-Ming doll (Wonder Pets, baby!), which was a bit of a surprise to me. Usually dolls don’t register with him, at least not for a long time, though we’re working diligently on this. This morning, I asked him, “Who’s this?” and he said “Meh-Muh!” Good enough for me!
We’ll work on incorporating the other toys, which included a cool Weebles play set. Play sets like that take a while since imaginary play isn’t exactly his thing, but at least Daddy can have fun trying! Eventually we’ll hit on the right combination of things that will bring out some of those play skills, and it’ll probably be from stuff we currently have.
As always, he’s our favorite gift, and little – and not so little – things like this are what make life wonderful. And to think we have another on the way makes these gifts doubly good.
by Tim on October 14, 2008
You may already know that it’s pretty common for autistic kids to line up, group, stack, or otherwise organize things in their environment. Order can be a very helpful way of making sense of their surroundings and feeling more comfortable in it.
J-Man on the whole hasn’t seemed particularly concerned about this, though. Our house is generally chaotic-looking – to put it mildly – and this doesn’t seem to bother him a lot. He’s just not been a liner-upper. He tends to exhibit much more interest in the sequencing of events. He can remember pretty much entire stories and songs this way, at least in as much as we can tell how much he remembers. Using whatever technique he’s come up with, he exhibits extraordinary recall.
The occupational therapists we’ve worked with have intentionally tried to get him to stack like objects just to help him learn that more sophisticated – for him -level of fine motor control and planning. In the past, he’s either resisted it – out of principle I suppose – or just not been able to do it, or both. He’d stack maybe three blocks and then knock them down, or they’d fall down on their own because of how he stacked them.
Then all of the sudden recently, he started stacking his little wooden letter blocks through no prodding from us. These are the same wooden blocks he obsessively carried around with him for a while, and the same blocks he’s been able to identify some letters on. He now builds these impressive towers with them that almost defy gravity.
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