Tag Archives: autism children

“It’s Mommy!”

Posted on February 24, 2011 by | Leave a comment

Every evening Joe, Emma’s therapist, and Emma pick me up from my store in town.  Emma pushes the door open and, upon seeing me says, “Hi Mommy!”  Then she points at me and says, “It’s Mommy!” as though this were the first time she’d seen me in a very long time.

“Hi Emma!”  I respond.  “I’m so happy to see you!”

Often she’ll stand back from me.  Looking at me with an expression of pleasure mixed with something else I haven’t been able to decipher, she usually says again, “It’s Mommy!”

It’s almost as though she doesn’t expect to find me there each evening.  As if she thinks I might be somewhere else and my presence is just a fluke.  Or perhaps it’s that she’s not used to seeing me at the store.  We’ve only been open a few months now and normally Joe, Emma and I are home in New York where I go to my studio each day.

After introducing Emma to whoever might be in the store when she comes, I almost always ask her, “What did you do today?”

“Go back to Granma’s house with Mommy?”  Emma will answer with an edge of anxiety.

“Yes, I’m coming with you,” I reassure her.  “What did you do today?”

Typically Emma will respond with a list of things she did.  Though this is by no means a comprehensive list.  Many times it’s not clear whether she is stating what she actually did, what she might have done in the last few days or what she wanted to do, but didn’t have time to.   “Really?”  I’ll say.  “You went bowling, sledding and skiing?”  I’ll ask, looking to Joe for confirmation.

Joe likes to let Emma speak for herself and so he usually will wait to see if she responds appropriately.  If she’s just said something completely outrageous he’ll interject, but more likely Emma will correct herself on her own as she did last night.

“No skiing,” she said.  “Bowling and wheel carousel.”

“Oh!  Did you find a real carousel?” I asked, wondering if this was a new addition to the Aspen area.

“Yeah!  Wheel carousel!”  Emma responded.

“Where is it?” I asked Joe.

“It’s a metal wheel in El Jebel,” Joe explained.

“Oh, like a merry-go-round?”

“Yes.”

“Did you have fun?” I’ll asked.

“YEAH!”  Emma said.  She almost always will respond to that question with enthusiasm.  No one can accuse Emma of not being happy.  She spends the greater part of her day in a state of bliss, always has.

When we drove home Emma waited in the back seat, allowing me to get out first to collar the dogs, before vacating the car.

By the time she appeared in the kitchen I had hung up my coat and was talking to my mother.  “It’s Mommy!”  Emma said, pointing at me as though she hadn’t just spent the last twenty minutes with me.

Then she held out her arms to me, indicating that she’d like me to hug her, which I never pass up the opportunity to do.

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Tiny Steps

Posted on February 23, 2011 by | Leave a comment

I keep waiting for the kind of miraculous progress you only find in movies or works of fiction.  Every now and then I’ll hear a story about a child who has recovered (or as they say in the field – lost their diagnosis) but these are so rare they fall into the category of fantasy in my mind.  Every now and then, when I find myself longing to wake up one morning and have Emma jump into bed with me speaking in full sentences, a look of cognition unmistakable on her face, I must remind myself of all the steps, the tiny steps of progress she makes everyday.  It isn’t just about making myself feel better, it’s about charting her progress.

Last night she went over to the phone in the kitchen.

“Hey Em.  Do you want to call Daddy?” Joe asked.

“Call Daddy?” Emma responded in her typically enigmatic way.

“I’ll say the numbers,” Joe prompted.

Emma dutifully found the right buttons to push and held the receiver up to her ear.  “Hi Daddy!”  Pause.  “Hi Daddy!”

I stood next to her, wondering if she’d gotten the answering machine.

“Hi Daddy!”  Emma said again.

I tried to listen to see if I could detect Richard’s voice.  I didn’t hear anything.  “Did he answer?” I asked Joe.

“Yeah.  He picked up.”

“I’m fine,” Emma said.

Silence.

“Yes.  Glenwood rec center.  Swimming, ice skating,”  Emma said into the phone.  A clear response to the question – What did you do today?  “Sledding, skiing…”

“No, you didn’t ski today,” I interjected.

“No skiing,” Emma said.  “Sledding.”

By this point I had my ear next to her cheek and could hear Richard’s voice.  “I miss you, Emmy,” I heard him say.

“I miss you, Daddy,” she said.

The conversation went on a bit longer, but I was so overcome by the fact she’d said – I miss you Daddy – in response to him saying, I miss you.  Usually when Emma repeats us she repeats us in total.  In other words she would say – I miss you Emmy.  An exact replica of his sentence to her.  But she didn’t do that.  She responded appropriately with the appropriate pronoun.  I was impressed.

I know this is small, but to us, it’s HUGE.  A huge step for Emma to express emotions regarding another person.

Later I said to Richard, “That was completely unprompted!”

“Really?” he asked.

“Yes!  I wasn’t prompting her to say anything,” I told him.  “She said it all on her own.  It’s the Aspen air out here,” I said, referring to our theory that there’s something in the air out here, which seems to inspire an uptick in her language and cognition.  We have seen it every time we come here.  Blame it on Aspen, blame it on all the exercise she gets out here, blame it on anything, we’ll take it.

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Emma’s “Study Room”

Posted on February 22, 2011 by | Leave a comment

Every morning, since we arrived in Aspen, Emma wakes up somewhere between 5:30 – 6:00AM and comes into my bedroom to snuggle and sing songs.  At around 6:30AM I will say, “Ready to go to work?”

“One more minute,” is Emma’s usual response.

After a few minutes I’ll say, “C’mon.  Let’s go!”

“Time to go to the study room!” Emma will say in a sing-songy voice.

Emma’s “study room” is the room adjoining my bedroom with a desk, my computer, a fax/scanner/copier machine and a twin bed, where one of the children often sleep if they don’t feel well.  Though neither of them has chosen to sleep there for over a year now.

We go into Emma’s “study room” to work on writing individual letters, sequencing, and typing.  The letter “s” is difficult for Emma and she still needs occasional wrist support, but otherwise her handwriting is coming along beautifully.

“Good!” she’ll say after she’s made a particularly good looking “e”.

“Beautiful!” I’ll agree.

“No,” she’ll say after trying to make a “c” but the lower part ended up below the line.

Sometimes she’ll self correct and I’ll say, “No.  It’s okay Em.  That’s a fine looking “t”.

“Okay,” she’ll say.

Typically we then move on to typing.  I hold up a series of letters, which she then points to the corresponding letters on a sheet resembling the pad on a computer.  Same formation, same positioning of letters except they are all in lower case, just like the letters I hold up.  The letter “q” she confuses with a “p’, but other than that she’s doing incredibly well.  Then we move onto the computer itself, which is much trickier as the letters are all in upper case and she must translate them from the lower case letters I hold up to the correct upper case letters on the keyboard pad of the computer.

Finally we end with a series of sequencing exercises using colored tiles and letter tiles. Sometimes I have to cover the letters or colored tiles and she must remember what they were.  If they are random, say – red, white, yellow – she often can’t remember what they are.  But if the colors are in a pattern – yellow, black, black, yellow – she almost always gets them right.

“No, no, no,” she said, yesterday when she put the wrong tiles down, after I covered the four tiles.

“Try again,” I said.

“There,” she said when I lifted the paper covering the four tiles and she saw she’d gotten them right.

As the sessions go on they become more difficult, until eventually we will move on to reading.

We almost always end our sessions with quietly sitting opposite each other for a few minutes.  Emma calls this “deep breathing time.”  Except we don’t breath deeply, we just sit, hands in our laps and stare into the mid distance.  After we’ve sat for a few minutes, I’ll put my hands on Emma’s shoulders and say, “Good!”  She always gives me a huge grin, before running off.

A year ago, I would have been dismayed, had I been able to peek into the future and seen Emma doing these exercises.  Which just goes to show, I should never try to predict the future and never underestimate what she is capable of.

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Flying with Emma

Posted on February 18, 2011 by | Leave a comment

Emma is a joy to travel with.  Unlike most children, she sits quietly in her seat and is content to listen to music, look out the window, watch a video or look at books.  But there are certain misunderstandings, which inevitably arise when traveling with Emma as well.

Yesterday as we boarded the airplane leaving New York City to Denver, a nice woman behind us asked if Emma was 9.  I told her she was and she replied that her daughter was 9 too and she understood how hard it could be to travel with a nine-year old.  I said, “Oh, is your daughter autistic?”

The woman looked at me in surprise and said, “No.  She’s nine.”

It was one of those peculiar conversations where you realize you’ve misunderstood the intent of the other person.  I immediately thought, because Emma kept getting out of the line leading to the aircraft, that she knew Emma was autistic.  But it turns out she had no idea and was simply commiserating with someone who also had a nine-year old child and was flying with her.  My first impulse was to say, “Oh no.  Emma is great to travel with.  She’s not like that at all!”  But I decided it was best to keep walking and find our seats.

Later during the flight when Emma needed to go to the bathroom, the flight attendant said, “Poor thing, she’s still asleep,”  as Emma kept trying to push open the door to the bathroom which was occupied, despite my repeated attempts to stop her.  Again I just smiled.

Later on the flight from Denver to Aspen, (we were one of the lucky few who actually made it into Aspen yesterday!) the flight attendant leaned over to Emma and said, “Do you have your seat belt on?”

“Umhmm,” Emma said, curled up on the seat by the window.

“Really?” he said.  Where?  Do you have it around your chest, your knees?  I don’t see a seat belt.”

Emma just smiled at him and nodded her head.

“Emmy, put your seat belt on,” I interjected as I could hear the growing irritation in the harried flight attendant’s voice.  She immediately did so.

“Oh!  So you weren’t telling me the truth, were you?” the flight attendant said.

I put my hand gently on his elbow and said, “She’s autistic and didn’t understand you.”

“Oh dear.  I’m so sorry,” he replied before quickly moving along the aisle.

And so it goes.  This sort of thing happens constantly with Emma.  People assume she’s fine, she looks fine after all, and respond accordingly.  There’s always a moment when either I say something or they begin to realize they are dealing with someone who is a bit different than what they thought.  It’s a surreal moment, when the other person is caught off guard, before they’ve had time to make an adjustment.  Usually people are incredibly kind, very occasionally we meet someone who isn’t.   I don’t have any one method of responding.  Often I say nothing.  I mean what’s the point really?

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Routine

Posted on February 16, 2011 by | Leave a comment

Emma is not alone in liking her routines.  She is most comfortable when she knows she will do something she enjoys or is use to.  What separates Emma from the rest of us is that instead of being able to adjust when her routine is disrupted, she is thrown completely off-balance to a degree that often catches even us by surprise.

Last night Emma went through her nighttime routine of getting ready for bed.  After her teeth had been brushed she came to find me in the back where I was reading.

“Just five minutes,” she said as she got into our bed.  “Just five minutes with Mommy.”

“Hey Em.   Okay five minutes, then you’ll go back to your bed,” I agreed.

About ten minutes later I looked up from my book and realized Emma had fallen asleep.  There was a moment when I wondered if I should just let her sleep and try to carry her into her bed later, but she’s gotten so big, short of carting her out on a gurney, this is no longer an option.

“Hey Emmy,” I whispered as I put my arm around her.  “You have to go to sleep in your own bed.”

She resisted me.  “Stay here with Mommy,” she muttered.

“Come on.  I’ll take you back to your bed.”  I held out my hand and waited for her to get up.

“Go with Mommy into the other room,” she said.

Ever compliant, she allowed me to lead her back to her own bedroom where she got into bed.  “Mommy sing a song?”

Having sung her a lullaby I went back to my book, relishing in the fact Emma was back asleep in her own bed without a fuss, something I am still consistently surprised by.

Half an hour later, cries from Emma’s room could be heard.  She tearfully offered us her flashlight, a gift from my brother, which glows in the dark.  “It’s broken,” she sobbed.

We tried replacing its batteries with no success and finally placated her with promises of repairing it in the morning.

Another half hour went by and then there Emma was, like a spectre, at the foot of our bed.  “Mommy come!” she cried.

This went on for about an hour.  Emma would tearfully return to her bed, one of us would sit with her for a few minutes, tuck her in, say good night and leave, only to have her reappear ten or fifteen minutes later, crying about something else.  It’s like watching a pin ball ricocheting around, from one thing to the next until eventually Richard took her back to her bed and for whatever reason, this time she was able to go back to sleep.

Emma is sensitive to the slightest variation in her routine.  It is something we know about her and do our best to accommodate.  When she was little we use to mix things up on purpose.  We tried to avoid routines with the mistaken idea that if she were not allowed to have any routines, she would learn to adapt to change more easily.  But this proved wrong and impossible.  Emma would go along with things as chaotic as they might be, but the instant we did something, anything more than a few times, she would become fixated on doing the same, over and over again.  In addition the children’s school, our own work requirements, all need a schedule, as do regular bedtime, meals etc.

There are a number of studies being done on the link between autism and obsessive-compulsive disorder.  I don’t know if Emma has a comorbid diagnosis of OCD, but until one witnesses such behavior, it is almost impossible to explain the panic, the sheer terror, disruption causes them.

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Monster Bugs

Posted on February 15, 2011 by | Leave a comment

Last night I pulled out the dozen or more non-fiction children’s books I have for Emma.
“Pick two,” I instructed, fanning them out for Emma to see.

Emma pointed to Monster Bugs & Escape North – The Story of Harriet Tubman, bypassing Volcanos, Whales, Big Cats, Thomas Jefferson and George Washington’s Dog. “This one?” Emma said.

“Okay.  Monster Bugs and Harriet Tubman, it is!”

“Say it with your mouth closed,” Emma said, putting her hand over my mouth.  “Monster Bugs!” she demonstrated with her lips together so that it sounded more like “mummerbum.”

I began reading in an animated voice, lips sealed as Emma shrieked with laughter.  “Hab you eber looked ab a bug up clobe?” I read.  Every time I opened my mouth to annunciate the words she would cover my mouth with her hand.  “Emmy stop!” I said, twisting away from her hand.

“Mouth closed!” Emma laughed.

“Okay, one more sentence with my mouth closed and then we’re going to read it the other way,” I told her.

Nic, who came to see what all the laughter was about, sat next to me on Emma’s bed.  “Don’t worry Mom.  I’ll make sure she doesn’t cover your mouth again,” he reassured me.

“You might see horns…” I began, as Emma clapped her hand firmly over my mouth.

“Emma!  Let Mommy read the story,” Nic said, laughing.

“But the beetle fires boiling-hot gas from its rear end,” I read.

“I love this book,” Nic said, peering over my shoulder at the picture of the beetle shooting gas into an unsuspecting mouses mouth and nose.  “That is so awesome!”

“Mummerbum!”  Emma laughed.

As we continued to make our way through the book, with Nic asking for clarification on specific bugs, particularly the more gruesome and scary ones and Emma repeating the words with her mouth closed, I thought of how when I was pregnant with Emma I looked forward to reading stories to both the children.  When Emma was little she didn’t have any patience for books and only was interested in them if we allowed her to hold them so she could flip through their pages.  The book and its pages interested her, the act of flipping the pages methodically without really looking at the pictures seemed far more interesting to her than the story within the book.  But in the last few years her interest in books has increased and now she seems to genuinely want us to read to her, even requesting specific books while rejecting others.  It was wonderful to see her looking at the illustrations, pointing to the hairy tarantula while saying, “Maranmula!” with her mouth closed.

Nic was impressed with the Stink bug and the Praying Mantis who cleans its face like a cat after consuming a baby bird.

When I finished reading Monster Bugs, we moved onto Escape North!  A quarter of the way through, Nic nudged me and pointed to Emma.

I looked over to see she had fallen asleep.

“We’ll finish this one tomorrow night,” I whispered to Nic.

“No!  Read me the rest,” he said.

“Okay.  I’ll read it again to Emma tomorrow.”

“Good idea, Mom,” Nic said snuggling down next to me.

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Pain

Posted on February 14, 2011 by | 1 comment

When Emma was a toddler, about a year old, maybe two years old, she had a little scratch from the tag on the back of her shirt.  It seemed so insignificant, hardly worth noticing, except that Emma screamed as though her entire body had been scalded.  I remember at the time thinking it strange, that her response seemed too extreme for such a tiny scratch.

There were other incidences which also caught my attention for the very opposite reason.  She would stub her toe or get scratched by a cat or have a huge knot in her hair, none of which would cause her to even gasp.  When she grew older I was terrified of the day when she would start to lose her baby teeth, convinced this would set off such cries of pain, with no remedy other than to wait until the tooth came out of it’s own accord.  However this was not to be the case.  In fact, Emma grabbed hold of the loose tooth and simply yanked it out of her mouth, dropping it to the ground, as though it were nothing more than an irritant, like a pebble in ones shoe.  Evidently her school bus is littered with her baby teeth as she would board the bus in the morning with a loose tooth only to come home and announce, “Threw it away,” when asked what happened to her tooth.

“Where?  Where did your tooth go?” we would ask.

“On the bus,” Emma replied matter-of-factly more than once.

About six months ago Emma was reported to have said to Joe, “Joe!  Pull it out!” and then opened her mouth so that he could remove the offending tooth, which he didn’t, so she did.  Joe was able to intercept the tooth before she was able to toss it in the gutter.

I don’t think we have more than two or maybe three of Emma’s baby teeth, despite the fact she’s lost at least eight or more by this point.  We tried to tell her about the tooth fairy, but she was utterly uninterested and wandered away before we had finished.  The idea a “fairy” would come to gather up her loose teeth, leaving behind money, was not a concept Emma had any use for.

Last Friday Joe called to tell me Emma was whimpering and saying her ear hurt.  I immediately called the pediatrician then looked at Emma’s throat for signs of strep.  Sure enough there was the tell tale white spot on one side of her throat.

“No say AHHH!” Emma said, pointing at her throat.

“Well, let’s wait and see what the doctor says, Em.  Does your throat hurt?”

“Yes.  Ears.”  Emma replied.

“Your throat and your ears hurt?” I asked.

“Yes.”

I remembered the last time I’d taken her to the pediatrician because her ears were bothering her, only to be informed that in fact she had strep, again.

Upon our arrival I proudly stated that I was sure it was strep and went on at length about how I couldn’t believe Emma had somehow contracted strep making this the third time since the school year began.  The pediatrician smiled and nodded her head as she examined Emma who kept insisting “No AHHHH!”  Meaning she didn’t want to have the doctor swab the back of her throat.

“Just ears,” Emma said repeatedly.

The instant the pediatrician looked in Emma’s left ear she looked up and said, “Raging ear infection.”

“What?” I asked, thinking I’d misheard, so convinced was I that Emma had strep.  “But what about that white dot on her throat?”

The pediatrician shrugged.  “Could be food, not sure, but her ear is bright red.  An ear this red should be extremely painful.”  She said looking at Emma.  “I’m surprised she isn’t complaining more.  It’s a really bad infection.”

I watched as Emma played cheerfully with the doctor’s stethoscope.  Observing her, one would never know her little body was host to a horrific ear infection.

“So that’s it?” I asked, still unable to believe she didn’t have strep.

“Yup.  Antibiotics will clear it up, but give her children’s advil in the meantime, that ear has got to hurt,” the pediatrician said.

By the time I had procured the prescription and the children’s advil and returned home, Emma was running around, playing happily.

“Hey Em.  How do you feel?  Does you ear hurt?”

“Yes.” Emma said before racing off down the hall with Joe in hot pursuit.  Shrieks of laughter could be heard.

One of autisms defining features is what specialist call sensory integration issues.  They can range from hypo to hyper and are often a mixture of the two.  In Emma’s case she has both and we still cannot anticipate which one we are witnessing.

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Visiting

Posted on February 10, 2011 by | 2 comments

“It’s Mommy!  Mommy come to visit!” Emma said this morning when she saw me.  It’s an odd feeling to have one’s own child, a child one lives with and sees on a daily basis, exclaim with apparent happiness that I’ve come to visit, especially when I am in my own home.  My first thought was that as Richard and I went out the night before and I only saw Emma for a brief period before we left, she was indirectly expressing her feelings that I haven’t been around enough.  Then I began to feel guilty and consoled myself with the fact that I will not be going out again in the foreseeable future.  “You came to visit!” Emma said, cutting through my thoughts.

“Well it’s not really a visit, when I’m here all the time,” I said in an effort to clarify and unburden myself of just a little guilt.

“It’s Mommy!”  Emma repeated, as though she were surprised.

It reminded me of a time not long ago, when Emma on one of her perseverative loops of anguish, kept running through the house crying out something none of us could decipher.

“What is she saying?” we asked each other more than a few times.

Emma’s upset became more extreme and ended with her biting herself.

Someone (it may have been me) then asked, “Why is she doing this?”

I remember thinking, “Umm, because she’s autistic?  Do we really need to look much further?”  But I didn’t say it out loud, okay so maybe I muttered it under my breath.  The point is, applying my own reasoning to Emma’s behavior usually doesn’t get me very far.  And often it is counter-productive.

“You came to visit!”  Emma repeated again.

“No Em.  I live here.  You visit someone when you go to their house, a different house to see them for a little while or when they come here, to our house, but then leave, then they visit you.”  Okay, so it wasn’t the best explanation I’ve ever come up with, but it was the best I could do in the moment.

Emma stared at me for a moment and then said matter-of-factly, “Have breakfast now.”

“Right,” I said.  Too much information.  Got it.

When Emma and I were in her bathroom, getting ready to brush her teeth, she stood on her little stool and while looking at herself in the mirror, put her arm around my neck, pressing her cheek against mine.  “It’s Mommy!” she said, pointing to my reflection.  Then she gave me a kiss on the cheek.

It was one of the moments you wish you had a remote control to hit the pause button on.  I thought of how it was such a typical little kid thing to do, how wonderful it was to see her do something like that.

“Let’s go visit Nic,” I said after she’d finished brushing her teeth – meaning we should go find him, see what he was doing.  And I caught myself.  I understood how and why she said, earlier – I was “visiting.”   Emma was hearing the word used and applying it as best she could in a similar situation.

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Ups and Downs

Posted on February 9, 2011 by | Leave a comment

I was reading an article this morning on RNA interference when the following quote by a pharmacology professor caught my eye – “A lot of excitement for RNAi was irrationally high to begin with, and now is irrationally low.”

It reminded me of how I have felt each and every time we have gone to South America for one of Emma’s stem cell treatments.  In the beginning I am elated, sure this will be the thing that causes her to crawl out from beneath the fog of her autism.  Then after we’ve returned home, I am guardedly hopeful, watching, waiting and after a few more weeks I’m convinced the whole thing was an exercise in heartache, stress and worry.

I go from the extreme high of wishing myself into believing this will prove a miracle to the low of believing it’s a complete waste of time or worse.  What I have not managed as well is that whole grey area residing between those two states.  Which is why the brain scans are so essential.  Though I have moments of disregarding those as well.  If I relied entirely on my perceptions, often clouded by feelings, desires, wishes, expectations, I would be making some very poor decisions.

We have been working with Emma on her handwriting and teaching her to type using a program developed by a literacy specialist.  It has proven to be quite an incredible experience.  Emma is now writing legible letters and is able to match two and three letter words.  She is also learning to type on a computer keyboard.

A couple of things I’ve realized:

1) Most written words are written in lower case letters, yet most writing programs teach upper case letters first.

2) All the letters on a keyboard are in upper case, making it very difficult for a child to translate the letter from lower to upper or vis a versa.  Something I had never “noticed” before until we began working on typing with Emma.  She is getting the hang of it, but it’s been interesting.

3) The letters Gg, Qq, Ee, Rr, Bb, Dd and Aa are completely different depending on whether they are in lower or upper case.

As I am not a teacher – these rather obvious items I’ve listed are something I had taken for granted until now.  I am amazed how well Emma is doing.  She seems to understand the same letters can look different and yet are the same.   But, and I do need to say this, Joe and I have been working with her for a number of weeks now and I was feeling discouraged that she wasn’t progressing as well as she should.  She still has trouble writing the lower case letter e.  K is often difficult and she makes her lower case s too big.  We needed to tape one of my sessions with her to send to the literacy specialist who developed the program (Joe did a great job taping) and Richard was the one who transferred it into a file we could email.

When I got home last night Richard said, “I edited the tape.  Emma’s doing really well!”

“Do you think so?”

“Oh yeah.  It’s amazing!”  Richard’s excitement was so authentic, it made me wonder why I wasn’t “seeing” it.

“Really?” I asked again.

“Yeah!  She’s doing great!”

That conversation was one more example of how two people living with the same child can view that child’s progress very differently.  My expectations are something I need to constantly keep in check.  If I look at the tape of Emma and how she is moving forward in a number of ways, I can see the progress and it’s impressive.

If I then compare Emma to what Nic was doing at her age, I am back in despair.

“So don’t do it,” a friend of mine said the other day when I related this.

And that’s really the point.  Living in the grey is sometimes a lot harder than one would think.

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Intelligence

Posted on February 8, 2011 by | 3 comments

How can we know what’s really going on inside of a child’s mind who is unable to adequately express themselves?  For neurotypical children we have tests, we ask questions – all verbal or written ways of finding out what they know, whether they’ve learned whatever it is we are trying to teach them.  But what of non-neurotypical children?  How can we really know what they know?

It is this question which causes more confusion than perhaps any other.  Our methods of rating intelligence are deeply flawed.  IQ tests are notoriously incorrect when attempting to gauge the intelligence of a non-verbal person.  Over the years other tests have been created to gain a better idea of intelligence, but nothing we’ve come up with can adequately give us an accurate view of what these children know, what they may be thinking if they could only express themselves.

When confronted with a non-verbal person most of us immediately assume they do not understand and conclude they are not very bright.  Have you ever been to a country whose language you do not speak and noticed how you are treated?  Often it is as though you were an imbecile.  People tend to repeat the same words over and over again, turning the volume up in the mistaken belief your problem is one of hearing as opposed to understanding or being unable to verbalize a response.  We rate intelligence by verbal acuity.

Every now and then we hear of communication devices children have been taught to use, allowing them to communicate in ways they had not been able to previously.  We are astonished at what they say, how lucid and mature they sound.  I’ve read numerous accounts of sessions in which children “speak” to one another in complex sentences, children we would never assume had it in them.  Just because we cannot understand doesn’t mean the person we can’t understand isn’t intelligent or has nothing of interest to say.  All it means is we are not able to understand them.

When Emma was diagnosed with autism at the age of two years and eight months, much of the evaluation conducted by the therapist was directed at us. I remember at the time thinking the process a curious one.  They were evaluating our daughter by asking Richard and me questions which we often had very different answers to.

How many words does she speak?

“Between ten and fifteen,” I’d answer.

“No, no, she knows many more than that,” Richard would say.

And the truth was she did know a great many more than she was articulating, but the actual word count of recognizable words was probably closer to my answer.  So whose answer was more accurate?

Most of us want to feel understood and heard.  Can you imagine what it must be like to know that no matter what you said, it would be met with confusion?  Can you imagine trying to make your needs known only to have them ignored or misunderstood?  Can you imagine what it must be like to have a very complex thought process only to realize no one understands you?

I cannot imagine.  Everyday I am with Emma, I try to and I cannot.

What I do understand is how very lonely it must be.

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Progress

Posted on February 7, 2011 by | Leave a comment

At 2:30AM this morning, Emma appeared at the side of our bed.  “Carousel photos?” she asked, her voice tense with agitation.

“Em,” I began in a quiet voice.

“It’s okay,” she interrupted me.  “Take a deep breath, it’s going to be okay.”

“Yes, Em.  That’s right and right now it’s time to go back to sleep.”

“Photos!” she said with urgency.  It was clear, she felt I was not taking her seriously enough.

“Yes, I know Em.  We will find them tomorrow, I promise, but right now you have to go back to bed,” I said getting up.

“It’s okay,” Emma repeated as she took my hand and allowed me to lead her back to her bedroom where both the lights were on as well as a lit flashlight, lay on her bed, amidst piles of books and photographs.

It looked as though she’d been up for quite some time, before making her way into our bedroom as a last ditch effort to find the missing photograph.

She carefully took her blanket from it’s designated pouch and pushed all the books and pictures from her bed to the ground.  “Time to go to sleep,” she said.

“That’s right Emmy.  It’s going to be okay.”

“No school bus,” she said.

“Yes, you have school in the morning, but it’s time to go to sleep now and we’ll find your photo in the morning,” I said, turning out the light.  I sat with her for a second, listening to her breath.  “I love you Em,” I said and then I left.

As I made my way back to our bedroom, I marveled at the fact Emma was not screaming, not even a whimper could be heard from her room.  She had returned to her own bed, having obsessed about a missing photograph, which months ago would have been enough to set her off for a good two or more hours.  Perhaps even more incredible was the fact she went back to sleep, not to rise again until after the rest of us had awakened.

These are the seemingly small events, which added together create a larger picture of progress.

This morning when I got up I noticed a pile of her photographs on the seat of the armchair in our bedroom.  I picked them up and put them near Emma’s bedroom door.  About ten minutes later Emma appeared, carrying the pile of photographs.  “You found them!” She exclaimed.  Though I knew she meant that she’d found them and her relief was all too apparent.

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Emma’s Photographs

Posted on February 4, 2011 by | Leave a comment

Emma has found the camera on my iphone4 and is in love or obsessed depending on your definition.  Out of the hundreds, literally hundreds of photographs she’s taken, these are a few of my favorites.  To me, they exemplify her very specific  view of our world, and like Emma, they are beautiful.  But maybe I’m reading too much in them.

Our bedroom

Paintings

Buddha

Self-Portrait

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Some thoughts

Posted on February 3, 2011 by | Leave a comment

I have school photos of our two children on my desk in my studio, both are smiling, their blonde hair, much lighter than it is now.  Emma, like her older neurotypical brother, Nic, is looking directly at the camera.  Her two front baby teeth are missing, the adult teeth yet to show themselves.  It is one of the rare photos from that age when she was just five where she is looking at the camera.  I have spent hours staring at that photograph, as though if I looked long enough, some part of her mind will reveal itself to me.

I try to apply logic or project my own emotions onto Emma in explanation of her behavior and find I am wrong time and time again.  When I look at Emma’s brain scans and see the lack of symmetry, the bright colors, which should be dark, like a strange Rorschach test gone wildly awry, I try to detect patterns.  I try to make sense of what I’m seeing, but cannot.

“Emma’s brain is not like ours,” I remind my son, Nic in times of upset.  She does not think as we do.  She is decidedly “other.”  I feel as though I am a perpetual intruder in her life.  At times welcome, just as often not.

The stem cell treatments, like the myriad treatments that came before may not help her in the end.  Or they may not help her to the degree we would like.  Emma may not progress enough to allow her to live an independent life.  But I do not want to look back on these years and feel regret.  Regret we might have done more.  So we continue to wait and watch.

And while we do so, we work on her handwriting, her receptive skills, sequencing, her enunciation, we are teaching her to use a typewriter and we read to her.  It was suggested to us that we read books written for children that are non-fiction instead of the usual array of stories available to beginning readers.  At first I was reluctant to give up the Olivia books, which she took such pleasure in, Dr. Seuss, Go Away Big Green Monster, books Emma has been looking at and heard hundreds of times and which she continues to hear at school.  But at home out came the Learning To Read series about Pompeii, The Titanic, Dolphins, Hungry Plants, then I found other books written for children on such topics as Balto and Helen Keller.   She loves all of them.  She requests them, has asked me to read some of her favorites over again.  I am amazed.  But if I think about it, it makes perfect sense.  For a child who takes things so literally, non-fiction is a perfect fit.  The stories I am reading are for her age level and she enjoys them, which fills me with hope and happiness.

Just because Emma doesn’t process things or communicate the way we neurotypicals do, doesn’t mean she’s not intelligent.  Emma is exceedingly bright.  It’s figuring out how to tap into that intelligence in a way that speaks to her, captivates her and interests her – that’s the challenge.

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The Past Tense

Posted on February 1, 2011 by | Leave a comment

Last night as Emma was getting ready for bed, she said, “Remember, he took it.”  She looked over at me and then said, “He take – no, he took it?”

“Took.  He took it.  That’s right Em.  You had it right the first time.”  I was dismayed to hear her correcting herself.  I’ve never heard her do that before.  There have been countless times, Emma has used the past tense, but this was different.  She was using the past tense, then playing with the present tense as though she were trying it on for size and coming to the conclusion the past tense was what was needed.  And she was correct, which made it all the more incredible.

She smiled at me and repeated, “Remember when he took it.”

“Who, Em.  Who took it?” I asked.

She ignored me and continued, “Remember then you running – you ran.”

“You’re remembering our day at Bounce U, aren’t you?”  I said.

“Mmhm,” she answered.  “Mmhm” is new.  It’s something Emma says now instead of “Yes,” which she often said in the past, even when she meant “No.”  Now she says, “Mmhm,” or however you write out the sound of agreement people make which is less than “Uh-huh” and more than “Mmmm.”

“That was a fun day, wasn’t it?”

“Mmhm,” Emma nodded her head and added, “He took the picture!  You have to give it back.  You ran.  That’s funny.”  She sat up and began giggling.

I realize a little explanation is needed here.

On Emma’s birthday – which she shares with Martin Luther King – Richard, Joe, Nic and I took Emma to an indoor playground filled with inflatable structures.  It’s way out in Brooklyn and appropriately named, BounceU.  Emma loves the place and since we’d celebrated her birthday with a party and friends the day before, it seemed the perfect setting to spend her actual birthday.

Once we arrived, we ran into a friend of Emma’s from her school who was there with both her parents, Ryan and Susan.   Ryan had a camera with him, which Emma immediately wanted to take pictures with.  It quickly became a game with Becca’s good natured dad chasing Emma as she ran around taking shots of – the carpeting, people’s feet, her own face, etc. before he caught up with her and took the camera, often hiding it in places she could see.  Emma would then try to sneak the camera away while Ryan pretended not to notice, the whole thing was hilarious and Emma has referred to that day many times since.

Emma continued to giggle.  “He took it.  He want to take a picture.  You ran!”  She was laughing so hard she had to catch her breath.  “No!  You have to give it back!”  This last was said in a stern voice.  “Emma!”  Then she doubled over with laughter and said, “Remember?”

At this point I was laughing too.  “Em, that was such a fun day, wasn’t it.  And you got to spend time with Becca.”

“Yeah,” Emma said, before starting to giggle again.

Em & Becca

Emma’s self portrait

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Snow Day

Posted on January 27, 2011 by | Leave a comment

Our son Nic has been anticipating this day ever since a month ago when a snowstorm was predicted, but never arrived.  When he woke this morning he had a huge grin on his face.  “It’s a snow day!?” he half asked, half shouted with glee.

“Yup!  It sure is,” I smiled at him.

“Yes!” Nic said, pumping his fist in the air.

“Hey Em,” I said, looking over at Emma who had returned to the comforts of her own bed, having gotten into ours earlier.  “Are you excited it’s a snow day?”

“No school bus,” Emma said in a worried tone.

“That’s right.  No school bus.”

“It’s a snow day!   Do you know what that means, Em?”  Nic asked.

“Yes,” came Emma’s reply.

“Really?  What does it mean?” I asked her, curious to know if perhaps she’d picked up on some of Nic’s excitement and had overheard our explanation that Mayor Bloomberg had declared it a snow day.

Emma snuggled deeper under the covers and said nothing.

“It means there’s no school today because of the snow storm,” I told her.

Interruption alert

I wish to take this moment to say – when we received the THREE phone calls this morning at 5:00AM informing us Mayor Bloomberg had officially declared today a snow day and as a result all public and private schools are closed, I muttered something derogatory about New York City being wimpish and if they wanted to see snow, they should really take a look at what constitutes a “snow storm” in Colorado.  And then fell back asleep feeling more than a little self righteous and indignant.  Upon waking later when Emma crawled into our bed declaring, “someone turned the lights on outside”, I learned Central Park received 19” of snow over night.

“Wow!  Really?  That’s almost a storm by Buffalo’s standards,” Richard commented peering out the window.

When I told him what I was writing for the blog he said, “Yeah, you might want to temper your indignation.  That’s a lot of snow.”

Interruption over

“Yes!” Nic said again.

“No school bus,” Emma confirmed, nodding her head.

“Exactly.  No school bus, no school, no…”

“Stay home,” Emma cut me off.

“Yes, stay home,” I agreed.

“So what do you guys want to do today?” I asked.

Nic said, “Stay home” just as Emma shouted, “Go sledding?”

“Okay.  Stay home first and then sledding,” I suggested.

“Snow day,” Emma said.

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