by Tim on August 31, 2009
This has been an eventful week here in the Flashlight House to say the least. Late last week we celebrated the anniversary of Mary’s 29th birthday! And tomorrow the J-Man turns 4. I can’t believe it; time goes by so fast.
We don’t do much in the way of birthday presents or parties around here really. We’re a pretty low-key bunch. About all Mary and I do for each other is the one not having the birthday goes and picks up takeout, we try to spend some unhurried time together, and we each get some additional me time that typically involves one of us getting a couple of hours out of the house sometime around our actual birthday.
The J-Man seems like he really couldn’t care less about birthdays. Actually, birthday parties routinely upset him. We’ve gone to his friends’ parties, and – understatement warning – rarely does he enjoy himself much. Strange places, crowds, noise, lots of running kids, etc. just don’t do for him, which I can understand. We go because we feel like he needs some practice at social events, but we know when he’s had enough and adjust accordingly. I can’t remember any of his birthday parties where he didn’t just burrow into somebody’s shoulder most of the time.
The concept of presents to unwrap doesn’t seem to click with him either. His general lack of attachment to things doesn’t lend itself to being excited about gifts on his birthday, Christmas, or whenever. And in what seems endemic to autistic kids, he absolutely hates the Happy Birthday song. He covers his ears and retreats into himself. Somebody really needs to do a research study on this phenomenon.
So, we decided to forgo a birthday party for him this year and celebrate it more in his style rather than in the way I think people (and for a long time us, too) expect it should be. We bought him a new swing for the swing set outside, one with a high back and built almost like a small, plastic recliner. He can’t use kid swings because when he gets excited and stims out, he lets go of the swing and flies off. (Thank God for mulch…) Obviously he’s too big for a toddler bucket swing. This new one is rated up to at least 100 lbs and has a five-point harness.
The weather is supposed to be absolutely beautiful tomorrow afternoon when he gets home from school. (70s in early September?!) What will be our birthday party then? Swinging outside – just us and my dad. Simple gifts. But the kind he loves most of all.
These past few days have gone like that too – one small but unspeakably wonderful gift after another shining through even in the midst of the craziness of everyday life.
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And welcome finally to Part 3! This is the continuation of our series “What’s Your Autistic Toddler Like Now?”, a journey through what’s happening these days in the life of our autistic 3 1/2-year-old son and sequel to our very popular original article, “What’s Your Autistic Toddler Like?”. I meant to write this sooner, but illness has swept through the Flashlight household and rendered us all pretty useless this week.
If you haven’t already, go back and read Part 1 and Part 2.
I’m calling this group “Moderately Present” as these things are generally more common than not around here, but not as prevalent as the “Significantly Present” group from before. As with the previous posts, some of these are challenges for us and others are just things that are part of our day-to-day life. None of these are meant to be value judgments, just information about what one autistic toddler is like so you can perhaps see similarities in your own children or learn more about how these things are part of another family’s life.
I’ll be dividing this group into two parts. So we’ll finish this up in Part 4 soon.
Note: Wherever you see “DSM-IV” below, this means that attribute is part of the diagnostic criteria for autism spectrum disorders in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders – Fourth Edition or DSM-IV. In medical terms, a specific combination of those DSM-IV criteria is what brings about a diagnosis of autism.
Same obvious disclaimer as before: We are not advising you on how to evaluate your child. Go get them evaluated by professionals with extensive experience with autism. Don’t just rely on some random people on the Internet – namely, people like us.
And here we go!
Characteristics That Are Moderately Present
Fixation or attachment to a particular object or parts of objects (DSM-IV; hard one to nail down for us) – For some, this manifests itself as obsessive-looking hoarding and organizing of objects. You might also see this as what seems like excessive fascination about a particular object (looking at a particular train for a long time or staring at a ceiling fan) or part of an object (a spinning wheel on a car).
The J-Man is all over the map on this one. It has gotten more noticeable over time, but I wouldn’t call anything he does here a major issue. The object(s)-of-the-day rotate regularly through an array of toys. For the longest time it was wooden blocks. Then it went to pieces of his farm animals puzzle, and then on to flash cards, and then wooden numbers, and then stuffed animals (which was cause for much rejoicing actually!), and then plastic food, and then randomly back through the order, occasionally mixing in some other things.
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by Tim on November 9, 2008
If somebody knows of some spell – like from Harry Potter – that will automagically cut a terrified, frantic kid’s hair, we’d love to hear it.
We’ve long since given up going to the local kid haircut place since J-Man just screamed bloody murder, scared every kid in there, and required six people practically sitting on him to get through it. They were GREAT sports about it, and we’d recommend that haircut place to anyone, but we figured we could pull out our own clippers and just have him scream bloody murder in the comfort of our own home.
We now buzz his hair really short so we can go many weeks until we have to go through this again. He was just so scraggly that we couldn’t wait any longer.
It kills us to see him that frantic and upset…
That’s how we spent our evening. Yay.
Recently we have been laminating fools over here in the Flashlight household. The J-man has really been into his alphabet flashcards, so we decided to laminate them before he completely shredded them. While we were at it, we (OK, Tim) laminated eleventy-seven pictures of things for the J-man to do. Some were therapy related (the desk, etc), and some were fun/reward kind of things (the swing, the computer game). Tim posted them on a piece of posterboard using velcro dots, just like we did with the food pictures. That posterboard is now hanging in the kitchen, right at the door to the classroom. We haven’t introduced it at all, though. We haven’t even pointed it out.
I was bustling around the kitchen cleaning up and making dinner, and the J-man was running around doing his thing, when he came up to me with the picture of the computer game in his hand. I’m not sure if he had been pointing at it before, but he made SURE I knew he wanted to play with it. What could I do but set him up to play? Besides, it let me cook dinner without worrying about him being near the stove. SCORE!
Estee over at The Joy of Autism blogged today about knowing her son knows much more than he can verbalize. Seeing the J-man carry over his knowledge about how the food board works to the actions board reinforced our belief that he knows SO MUCH MORE than he can say. If he’s anything like his daddy, he’s going to be crazy smart, and it looks like he’s heading in that direction.
Also… we cut his hair again tonight. It was not NEARLY as easy as the last time. Sigh. Poor monkey. He didn’t even want to be near me afterward. Talk about your Mama Guilt!
