Tag Archives: Parenting

Be the Very Best YOU, You Can Be

Posted on April 2, 2013 by | 39 comments

There’s a great deal of talk about acceptance regarding autism this month, which is a wonderful shift from all the talk about “awareness”.  As I think more about acceptance I am aware of how often I think about “embracing” as in embracing all that each of us is, without trying to mold ourselves to be something we aren’t.  What if instead of doing everything in our power to force our autistic children to behave like some imaginary and impossible non-Autistic version of themselves, we instead encouraged them to be the very best Autistic them they could be?  The same way we do everything in our power to help our non Autistic children be the very best they can be.

Isn’t that what all of us are trying to do?  Aren’t we all trying to be the very best we can each be?  So what does that look like, how do we do that?  Well, by recognizing what we’re good at, for starters.  One of my brothers is an astrophysicist and the other is a micro-biologist.  My mother was a chemist, my father a financial advisor and I don’t have a “science-y” gene in my entire body.  In college I did everything in my power to avoid both science AND economics.  These subjects are of no interest to me.  Were someone to tell me, well, you know, your most successful same age peers all love and excel at these topics, therefore you need to apply yourself more to them, and I was then forced to take these classes and was not allowed to pursue my love of art, drawing, design, literature and writing, I would be miserable.

I don’t want to spend my life crunching numbers, looking at stock portfolios, and peering through microscopes.  None of that interests me.  Hand me a book on quantum physics and I fall asleep.  The only good that comes from giving me books like that to read is the money I save on unfilled Ambien prescriptions.  I will never be, nor do I want to be, a scientist or economist, I accept this fact completely.  I don’t feel ashamed by my lack of interest.  I don’t feel this is something I should feign interest in.  I have other interests and talents; I focus on those and am very happy.  That’s what we all do.  We avoid the things we aren’t so great at, and often have little interest in, and focus on what does interest us and where our talents lie.  If we were lucky we also had parents who encouraged, supported and cheered us on in pursuing those interests.

Why should any of this be different for our Autistic children?  I don’t want Emma to try to be someone she isn’t.  I want Emma to be the very best Emma that she can be.  Which means I need to support her interests and help her find the best way to communicate.  Verbal language is tough for her, typing seems to help her access a part of her mind, that verbal language cannot, so we are doing all we can to support her typing.  How she communicates is not as important as that she be able to.  She loves to perform and sing loudly, so we have a variety of microphones and an amp that she can use to hone her singing skills.  She loves her books, so in between reading her favorite Miss Spider book, I am teaching her about arachnids, what they eat, how long they live, how many legs they have and how they spin webs.  Spiders are actually kind of fascinating. Even though Emma loves the Miss Spider books because one of them includes an electrical storm (lesson plan coming on that topic soon!) and Miss Spider has a great many big emotions, which Emma likes to act out, complete with wringing her hands and pretend tears and cries of anguish, there are a great many topics I can piggy back on, to teach her about things like – the weather, electrical storms, any and all big emotions, pretend and real, etc.

I want to encourage her to explore all of these things and more.  Last night she wanted to watch a really bad movie that she’d seen her brother Nic watching about a two-headed shark who attacks a group of teenagers.  And despite my misgivings about the content (and just awful quality of the movie in general… The acting is phenomenally bad, the shark is the best thing in the movie) it was age appropriate and I figured I could turn it off if it got too gory and awful.  There was a great deal of emoting and blood curdling screams, which Emma thought hilarious.  She kept saying, “Watch out, the shark is going to come and eat you!  Oh no!  He’s going to bite your arm off!”  Then she pretended to bite me.  Bad movie, great time was had by all AND I now have another lesson plan I intend to create regarding sharks!

Be the very best YOU, you can be.  Now that’s the kind of acceptance I can get behind!

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Practice

Posted on March 21, 2013 by | 6 comments

Everything takes practice.  Learning to sit with my fears, takes practice.  Learning to not say something that might be hurtful takes practice.  Learning how to best help my child takes practice.  Learning to disagree with my husband and not do harm takes practice.  Learning to feel compassion for those who harm me takes practice.

Everything I have learned in life, I’ve had to learn over and over.  I seldom get it the first time.  I’m a slow learner.  I know this.  I can admit this without shame.  It all takes practice.

Practice.

I am never going to do any of this perfectly.  But I will always continue to practice.

Sleeping Muse – Constantin Brancusi 1910

*Sleeping Muse

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“Splinter Skills” and Other Words We Use

Posted on March 20, 2013 by | 43 comments

When Em was not yet three years old we received her diagnosis and began the long trek through, what appeared to us at the time to be, the treacherous terrain of autism.  All the things we admired, her various abilities, all those things I had identified as wonderfully “Emma” were now reduced to a single word “autism.”  I remember bragging about the fact that Emma, at the age of 18 months had taught herself how to pump her legs on a big kid’s swing, only to be told after her diagnosis that “kids with autism will often display splinter skills.” When I then commented that my daughter was extremely independent it was said that her autism caused her to shun other children and people, thus reducing her independence to nothing more than, yet another example of, her autism.

After awhile I felt I didn’t know who my daughter was, other than “autistic”.  That word seemed to so thoroughly obscure her in the minds of so many experts and people in the know.  Autism, it seemed, meant lacking and less than and not capable.   Whenever my daughter displayed things that could not be neatly placed in the deficit box, it was tossed into the “splinter skills” box.  It seemed no matter what she did it was viewed as “deficient” even when it wasn’t.  I remember feeling I finally understood what people meant when they talked about their child being imprisoned or all those awful images that abound of children silently, sadly, standing behind impenetrable walls of glass or behind bars of steel,  their small hands gripping the cold metal as they silently watch the world go by.  All of this, the words and images, showing us, telling us what we could and should expect were like seeing train tracks descending into hell.  Who knew it would take me eight years to understand that so many of those impenetrable walls of glass were constructs made by us.

If we did the same thing to those who are born without Autism, if we talked about our non-Autistic neurology as a deficit and identified all the ways in which it would cause us problems and difficulty, would we not despair when our non-autistic child was born as well?  Take your own life as an example and imagine that when you were born you were seen as a great disappointment.  Think about how each time you did something well it was dismissed as a “splinter skill” and was seen as yet another example of all that was “wrong” with you.  Think about what it would do to your self-esteem if your interests and passions were spoken of as “obsessions” or actively undermined and limited because they were seen as “unhealthy”.  It’s a double standard we have.  We non Autistics are praised, admired, given awards and accolades for our passions and obsessive interests.  People describe us as “driven”, “ambitious” or any number of other words used to describe the things that interest us.  But think if instead we were denigrated, ridiculed and scolded.  What does that do to a person?

The way we speak of and about our children, the way we think about their neurology, the way we attempt to “help” them “fit in”, these are the things I hope will change because it is not helping us parent our children, who need our help, it is not helping educators teach our children, who need to be taught, but mostly it is not helping our children be all that they can be.   My husband once said, “People spend all their time and energy trying to teach their Autistic kids to be something they’re not, when they should be spending all their time teaching their kids to be all they can be.”

Emma’s favorite work of art “Railroad Nostalgia” at the Scope Show in NYC.

Train tracks

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Why Teach Age Appropriate Topics?

Posted on March 19, 2013 by | 44 comments

Someone asked me why would I teach my child age appropriate topics such as the American Indians, the arrival of Europeans to America, the Roman Empire and the difference between amphibians and reptiles, when tying her shoes, answering (whether verbally or by typing) a why question and riding a two-wheel bike has yet to be accomplished.

The short answer is – they are not mutually exclusive.  It is not that one thing gets taught and the other is left to languish.  I believe all these things are important for any child to learn; why shouldn’t my child have the opportunity to learn these things too?  But just to play devils advocate, let’s say that the questioner still asks, but why?  To them I say, because knowledge is freedom.   Knowledge gives us context, history provides us with choices, knowing how our government works gives us important information about leadership, honesty and conversely dishonesty.  Learning about geography gives us information about the physical world we inhabit.  Reading Wordsworth or Shakespeare or Susan Sontag, studying a painting by Rubens or Renoir or Basquiat, listening to music by Rachmaninov or  Ray Charles or, my daughter’s personal favorite, Gwen Stefani transports us, encourages us to think both analytically and creatively and enhances our lives.

Ralph Saverese, author of  Reasonable People: A Memoir of Autism and Adoption wrote a wonderful piece about a year ago, The Silver Trumpet of Freedom about his non-speaking, Autistic, son DJ who had just been accepted into Oberlin.  It’s a terrific piece and I encourage all of you to take a few minutes to read it.  I’ll wait.

Right here.

Seriously.

Go.

Read it.  

What many believe to be true about Autism is proving again and again to be incorrect.  What many believe to be true about those who are Autistic AND non-speaking is proving to be incorrect.  Our ideas about someone who has physical challenges AND is Autistic AND does not speak are proving to be incorrect.  Our incorrect beliefs are limiting how that segment of the population is taught and what information they are given access to.

This must change.

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To My Daughter…

Posted on March 18, 2013 by | 23 comments

You are capable.  I am sorry it has taken me so long to fully understand this.  You are smart and able to learn and know so much more than I ever knew.  You understand that sea turtles lay their eggs beneath the sand and then, once hatched, the baby turtles must make the treacherous trek toward the ocean.  An ocean many will never reach.  You understand this.  You understand that turtles live in and out of water.  We did not categorize them yet as reptiles, but we will get to that, possibly tomorrow.

You know Christopher Columbus is said to have reached America in 1492 and that there were people already living here.  You pointed to an illustration of an American Indian and typed that this person was called a Native American.  You showed me where we live on a globe and then suggested we take a boat to England over the Atlantic Ocean so that you might visit an old therapist you still remember and speak of with great fondness.  You became particularly excited by the thought that we would have to stay in a hotel and inquired whether that hotel would have a swimming pool.  I know.  A hotel is not a good hotel without a pool.

You told me an insect has six legs and that a spider has eight legs and even though it kind of seems like a spider should be called an insect, it is not and in fact eats insects which is why all those insects in the Miss Spider book you love so much are scared of Miss Spider and that makes her cry.  You demonstrated your innate acting talents by pretending to cry about Miss Spider’s predicament.  It turns out Miss Spider is a vegetarian and happily eats the flowers offered to her much to the relief of all the fearful insects.  That made you laugh.  Then you remembered how “Bertie kitty” was admonished for getting on the dining room table and eating the flowers and said so, again in a very convincing and stern voice.  You are so talented.  I believed both your pretend tears and your pretend/scolding voice. Thank you for telling me you were pretending because you were very convincing.

You are so, so capable and for so many years I’ve been blind to just how capable you really are.  But maybe, just maybe now I have the tools I need to hear you.  Those tools I thought I was learning to use for you, it turns out are tools I needed for me.  I need them so that I can hear all the things you’ve tried to tell me for so long.

I promise.  I promise to keep listening.

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The Final Day With Soma and A Word About Methodologies

Posted on March 15, 2013 by | 38 comments

Yesterday was the last day of Soma Mukhopadhyay‘s 4-day training.  I wrote about it ‘here‘, ‘here‘, and ‘here‘.  Soma packs an enormous amount of information into four days.  She discussed everything from neural pathways of the brain to which parts of the brain are used during specific activities, to how to devise lesson plans and ways to physically position oneself in relation to the student.  There were so many surprising moments, but one that I never could have anticipated, was how helpful it was to learn about the actual brain function during moments that are emotionally charged or OCD.  Learning some of the basics in brain function demystified a great many things in a way I hadn’t before considered.

Given what we now know, and granted it isn’t much comparatively speaking, but is so much more than we knew even twenty years ago, it is astonishing that certain older therapies continue to be popular and used for autism.  Two of the most destructive phrases used with an Autistic person are the dreaded, “Look at me!” and “Use your words!” I cannot list how many times Emma has been instructed to “use your words” only to do so and be ignored.  It seems those who say “use your words” really mean, “use the words I want to hear”.   Add to that the insistence that an Autistic student have “quiet hands” and not stim because it is believed learning cannot take place while stimming even though by removing the stim no learning can or will take place because we’ve just taken away the one thing that was allowing the student to stay focused and attend, even if it did not “look” that way to us.  We non Autistics have a tough time understanding anything or anyone who is vaguely different from ourselves.  Before we start calling ourselves “experts” in Autism, we might want to become “experts” in our own neurology first, at least we’d have a better handle on our own limitations and see how those can so easily dovetail into how we are interpreting what we’ve decided is “the truth” about someone else.

I have written about methodologies before on this blog.  There are some that I find more troubling than others, but in the end, the thing I care about more than anything else is: is it helping my child?  Is she learning?  Is she safe?  Will the short-term gains be at the cost of long-term pain and even trauma?  What is this doing to her self-esteem?  Is respectful interaction being modeled?  Is she being humiliated, shamed, made to feel badly for the way her brain processes information?  Is she being taught by people who believe in her ability to learn?  Are her teachers believing her capable and giving her the tools she needs to flourish and be all that she can be?  Is she assumed to be competent or is she being forced to prove her competence?  Is she being taught the same equation, story, concept and terms over and over?  Is she seen as a human being with the same rights as any other person?  Would YOU want to be treated the way you are treating and teaching this person?

I don’t care what the methodology is, who created it or how many people believe in its efficacy, if it isn’t taking these questions into account, I am not interested in it.  I do not care what others believe, I don’t care what the “experts” say, I don’t care how many letters a person has after their name or who created the methodology or the various papers and/or books the person has written, if the methodology is not attempting to consider these other ideas, I am not interested in it.  I, as a parent,  am not invested in any particular methodology unlike so many schools.  And for that reason I have far more leeway than most schools do, to keep trying different things until we (I’m including my wonderful husband) find the thing or a combination of things that will best help our daughter learn, grow and become all that she can be.  In the end that is what we care about more than anything.

This weekend I will create a lesson plan for my daughter with age appropriate materials for next week’s  RPM session.  I am hoping I will be able to demonstrate, at least some of what I’ve learned, to Emma’s therapist and her teacher.    But I also know I will make mistakes, I do not expect that after four days of an intensive training I will do Soma’s method well, but I think I have a fairly good understanding of the basics so that I can start, at least, trying.

Wish me luck!

Soma Mukhopadhyay – March, 2013

3Soma

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Soma Mukhopadhyay ~ Day 3

Posted on March 14, 2013 by | 13 comments

It is hard to believe how much information Soma is able to pack into the first three days of a four-day training.  She has managed to cover the different learning channels and how to teach toward each one.  We learned about the various stages of development, left brain/right brain, the difference between an excitatory stim and a calming stim.  The importance of presuming competence, working through self-injury and highly charged emotional situations have all been discussed.  We were taught that social expression and gestures begin in the hypothalamus travels down into the body, then back up to the somatosensory cortex, to the pre-motor cortex and finally to the motor cortex and how at any point along the way, things can become disconnected causing the Autistic person tremendous challenges in behaving as we non-autistics might expect.  We learned about OCD and how to interrupt it by asking the student to spell a relevant word or introduce numbers and/or a math problem as a way of working with it while at the same time diffusing it.

Soma described how to implement a lesson plan around just about any topic, mental mapping and the different stages of rapid prompting method.  We went over methodologies and how to plan a lesson by using flow charts, listing objectives, relevant spelling words and key terms and concepts that need to be introduced, explored and learned.  She taught us the importance of teaching concepts, and the words used, as well as reading comprehension, spelling, grammar and such abstract ideas as time, symbolism, relativity, belief systems and throughout all of this Soma emphasized the importance of teaching age appropriate or above age level materials while filling in the gaps of what isn’t yet learned.

I’m exhausted, exhilarated, but exhausted and there’s still one day to go!  Today, the final day of the training, we are going to cover how to teach math and math goals, how to take and administer a test, how to teach poetry, literature and creative writing and the training will end in a review aka test. Tests have always been my downfall when I was in school.  I become anxious and overly nervous.  When I was in high school I learned to over study and even then I would become easily overwhelmed if I didn’t know the answer to a question and would get so upset that even the questions I could answer would go unanswered because I couldn’t move on from the one I didn’t know.  Writing all of this makes me aware of how similar my daughter is to me in this regard.  She also becomes fixated and upset when she gets an answer wrong.  She too has trouble moving on to the next question or topic, can become dis-regulated and overly anxious.  I will try to incorporate some of the exercises Soma has taught to see if I can interrupt my obsessive thinking if and when it happens.  So much of what Soma teaches could be used for anyone, even me!  I could write a lesson plan around that…

*5

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Soma Mukhopadhyay ~ Training Day 2

Posted on March 13, 2013 by | 22 comments

I’m halfway through a four-day training with Soma and I have filled more than half a legal sized notepad with notes.  Yesterday we covered Mental Mapping/ the different stages of RPM and Implementation.  I told Soma about my encounter with the child who didn’t want to work and immediately hit themselves.  I described how I’d had them spell “hitting” on the letter board and how this had immediately diffused the situation.  Soma then gave me more terrific suggestions on how to devise a lesson plan around an action such as hitting.  An example of this is (I”m making this up) “I would like to know more about hitting.  What else can you hit?  Do you hit the sky or a ball?”  Soma spoke of how when emotions are running high, switching to numbers and math, which have no emotion can be helpful during emotional outbursts.  “How many times can you hit the ball? Here let’s count.  1, 2, 3, 4, 5.  You hit 5 times and if you hit once more, that would be 87 times or 6 times?”

We spent a great deal of time discussing the ways in which one can learn about a student through their preferences, stims, what they’ve been exposed to, skill levels and abilities, tolerance levels, acquired knowledge and defenses.  Soma then covered how one goes about implementing all of this through lesson plans.  Each step of the way one presumes competence in the student’s ability to learn and be taught without presuming that they already know how to read, write, add and subtract.  Through the various activities it quickly becomes clear whether the student needs to be shown how to spell a word such as “hitting” or whether they already know the word.  On the first day one of the students, whom Soma had never met before, sat down and after working with her for fifteen minutes or so, was asked what his favorite color was.  She had him choose from one of two stencil boards for the first letter.  From that board he chose the letter “r”.  He then proceeded to type ‘r’, ‘e’, ‘d’.  The following day a number of the people  taking the training expressed skepticism that the student actually could read or write.  One suggested that red may not have been his favorite color.

When asked how they knew that he couldn’t read or write, they weren’t able to give specific reasons, it seems many just assumed he could not.  It reminded me of the years and years I spent believing a whole variety of things about my own child, which turned out to be untrue.  I had no proof that the things I thought were actually true, I had just assumed and then behaved toward her as though it were fact.  Perhaps one of the single most destructive things we can do to our children, students, the people we meet is to make assumptions about their intelligence and abilities.  Beliefs based in nothing other than unfounded assumptions and our own biases of those who look or seem to us as not being capable.  These assumptions are dangerous and can do real harm.  As I’ve said before ~ to presume competence and be wrong will do no harm, to presume incompetence and be wrong can and will do tremendous damage.

Soma – 2013

Soma

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Embracing Change

Posted on March 1, 2013 by | 17 comments

When Em turned two, I said, “I’d give a limb to have her ask for something.”

When Em was three, I said, “If only she could tell me what was wrong.”

When Em was four, I said,  “If only she was able to understand.”

When Em was five, I said, “If only she would sleep through the night.”

When Em was six, I said, “If only she would learn to use the bathroom during the night too.”

When Em was seven, I said, “If only I understood what she was thinking.”

When Em was eight, I said, “I just want her to be safe.”

When Em was nine, I said, “I want her to have choices in her life.”

When Em was ten, I said, “I think I’m beginning to understand.”

When Em turned eleven, I said, “Thank you.  Just thank you.”

Things continue to change.  We adjust.  I continue to change and my life gets bigger and fuller.  Em continues to change and her life gets bigger and fuller.  I didn’t fully appreciate or understand this when Em was first diagnosed, but I do now.

Everything changes.  I’m learning to embrace it.

sc000a5075

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The Dentist and Tiny Steps

Posted on February 28, 2013 by | 17 comments

“Take it out!” Emma said.  “Take it out!”

We were at the dentist’s office where she had just had a baby tooth pulled because it was obstructing the adult tooth from descending.

Five years ago when Emma had two cavities that needed to be filled on two baby teeth, we had to take her to the hospital and have her anesthetized as she could not tolerate having an x-ray let alone having a cavity filled.  The two baby teeth were capped and while she was unconscious the dentist applied a sealant to all her teeth as they are unusually porous and susceptible to cavities and plaque.  When she regained consciousness she cried, “Take it out! Take it out!  She then tried to pull the metal caps off her teeth.  I still remember sitting with her at the hospital, horrified as she screamed and cried and pulled at the caps on her two teeth, wondering what we were going to do.  After a few days, when she realized the capped teeth were not going anywhere anytime soon, she grew accustomed to them and stopped trying to pull them off.

Over the years Em has grown used to the dentist and dental visits and allowed him to clean her teeth without protest.  A year ago she sat still long enough to have multiple x-rays taken of her mouth and teeth.  This was a first!  Em was ten years old.  Now Em has four braces on her four front teeth and has a palate expander in place that she tolerates, though doesn’t much like.  (Who would?)  Two days ago she tolerated the dentist giving her a novocaine like numbing agent allowing him to pull her baby tooth.  This was a first and a huge milestone.

“Take it out!” she kept saying.  At first the dentist thought she was eager to have him pull her tooth, but I had a feeling she meant the numbing sensation.  “Do you mean take out the tooth or take away the strange sensation?” I asked.  “Take it out, Mommy.  This,” and she pulled at her upper lip, twisting it with her fingers.  “I know it’s an awful feeling, but it will wear off, Em,” I told her and then asked the dentist how long he thought the numb feeling would last.  The dentist told me it should wear off in about an hour, so I set a timer on my phone and handed it to her.  She held the phone and watched the minutes tick by.  Meanwhile I hoped beyond hope the dentist had given me a correct estimate and wasn’t being optimistic.

After the tooth had been pulled and the bleeding had stopped, he came by to check on her and saw Em with my phone and the timer counting down the seconds and minutes.   He laughed, “Uh oh, you’re going to hold me to it!”  Then he said, “You better give her something hot to drink, that will speed up the process.”

“Good to know,” I said.  “Hey Em, when we get home, I’m going to fix you some hot chai.  It will help that weird feeling go away.”  “Take it out!” Em said.  “Yeah, it’s going to make the numb feeling go away faster.” Em nodded her head and off we went with Em clutching my phone watching the seconds tick by.

By the time we arrived home there were about ten minutes left and Em kept repeating, “Take it out!  It’s okay, it’s okay.  Timer goes off and it’ll be gone!”

I fixed her some hot tea, told her to drink it and when the timer went off the numbness must have abated enough to make her less panicked.  About an hour and a half after the first shot she said she felt fine.

Tiny steps, taken one after the other over time, can and do take us far…

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Tears and Love

Posted on February 25, 2013 by | 58 comments

This past Saturday we took Em to meet and have a session with Soma Mukhopadhyay, who developed RPM ~ Rapid Prompting Method for Autism.   I’ve written about Soma before, ‘here‘ and briefly on a number of other posts.  If you want to read those old posts you can put “Soma” into the search box and everything I’ve written mentioning her will come up.  A word of warning, however, those early posts show a very different mind-set regarding autism and my daughter than the one I now hold.  I find it difficult to read them because I had so completely bought into the Autism = tragedy mode of thinking.  As anyone who follows this blog knows, this is not the view I hold now.  It is good to see that my daughter is not the only one who is making progress!

One of the first things Soma did, (who has never met nor worked with Emma before) was comment to us that Em needs help to slow down.  This is identical to Pascal’s observations.  Em’s default is to script or point to the first thing she sees, whether that is a piece of paper or a key on a computer.  So despite the name of Soma’s program, for Emma this is less a literal “rapid” method and more a sustained level of interaction.  During the entire session Em remained focused and answered each of Soma’s questions appropriately.  There was no physical contact of any kind.  Rather Emma was asked to point to letters on a stencil board or to scraps of paper with different options on them.

Soma began with “I am thinking of a month when the leaves start to fall.”

Em then dutifully spelled “October” on the stencil board and my tears began to flow.  “I’m thinking of the season when the leaves grow,” Soma said.  To which Em pointed to the letters to spell “spring.”  For forty-five minutes Soma covered math, the seasons, an Aesop’s fable, reasoning, science and for forty-five minutes I watched with tears in my eyes as my daughter attended with focus while holding on to her string.  Every now and again Em would verbally respond to Soma’s question and then glanced up at her with a little smile.  By the end of the forty-five minutes Soma asked, “do you have any questions?”

“Will you come live with us?”  Was the only question I could think to ask.  I was kidding of course, but it was the only way I knew to sum up how I felt.  For years now we have been trying to find a curriculum that will help Em learn in an academic setting.  For years we’ve tried, her various schools have tried many different methods, none of which have worked.  Yet here we were watching a program that not only worked, but that I could see the potential and the potential is limitless.

Yesterday I decided to try to combine some of what I saw Soma doing with what Pascal has been helping us learn with supporting her typing by creating resistance to her.  I sat on Em’s right side and brought out our iPad.  I also had Nic’s old globe and we talked about how we live on a planet called Earth. I showed Emma where we live and then where one of her favorite people lives in London, England and how to get to London we would need to fly over the Atlantic Ocean.  Em typed, with me providing resistance, “We live on a planet called Earth.  To visit England we have to fly over the Atlantic Ocean.”

This was the first time I have supported Em’s typing and given her the proper resistance.  I could feel it.  I could feel her reaching for the keys.  I could tell when I needed to provide more resistance, I could feel when her body was tensing and when she was trying to perseverate or trying to script.  This was the first time I have worked with Em that I knew without any doubt that I was not directing her at all.  She went on to type that if she could visit any other planet she would like to visit Mars.  We then ended with her typing her full name, her age and where she lived.  She knows all of this and so much more.

And finally, just finally I know she knows.  I know, she knows, without any doubt.

Tears and love.

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58 Comments

Posted in Autism, Rapid Prompting Method, Soma Mukhopadhyay

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Goals and IEP Meetings

Posted on February 22, 2013 by | 30 comments

My goals for my daughter have completely changed since she was first diagnosed with Autism more than nine years ago.  I have been thinking about goals a great deal because her IEP (Individualized Education Plan) meeting is coming up and for those of you familiar with IEP meetings, it’s all about goals, both long-term and short-term.  The parent’s goals, the teacher’s and therapist’s goals, everyone’s goals are discussed and written down.  Except for Emma’s.  What are Emma’s goals for herself?  For those who have children with either spoken or typed language this is an easy enough question to ask.  For those of us whose children do not it gets a bit more complicated.  Still, I plan to ask, even if I do not get an answer, whether verbally or typed, I will ask and I plan to talk to her about her IEP and what that means as well.  I may even type out some of the goals we are thinking about and ask her if she agrees with them.

I have to admit that sometimes when I speak to Emma about things, whether it’s about privacy, our bodies and bodily functions, the power of saying no, the importance of self and self-determination, or something like explaining what is going to happen over the weekend or asking her what her goals are at an IEP meeting, I catch myself wondering if she really understands.  What I have learned, what I continually remind myself is that it’s okay to wonder, it’s okay to feel all those feelings, but it’s not okay to act or behave as though she does not understand.  I have to speak to her as though she does understand, even when I don’t know that she does.  In the end I have to do this, because to believe that she can’t/ won’t/ doesn’t understand and to be wrong is a risk I cannot take.

 

30 Comments

Posted in Autism, Education, Parenting

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The Tug of The Unknown

Posted on February 21, 2013 by | 12 comments

Ever since Em was first diagnosed I have looked to others to tell me what was best for her.  I have read countless opinions.  I have read hundreds of articles written by self-appointed Autism experts, educators and therapists.  I have listened to organizations, I have consulted doctors, neurologists and developmental pediatricians.  Emma has had quantitative EEGs, hearing tests, vision tests, colonoscopies, endoscopies, x-rays, and more hospital visits than any child her age should have to endure.  She has been prodded, poked, examined, questioned and discussed.  She has had more “professionals” come and go in her short life than I have in my entire 52 years.

A year ago I began meeting Autistic adults and what they were saying and describing first hand wasn’t what all those experts, doctors, educators and therapists had been telling me.  In fact what Autistics were telling me was often in direct opposition to what all those other people said.  The more I listened to what Autistics said and how they experienced their childhoods and life now as adults, the more I saw how wrong most of the professionals were.  It’s not that any of the Autistic people tried to predict what my daughter would be like as an adult, or that I came away believing I’d just met an older version of my daughter, but I’ve gained a clearer picture of autism and I am not as afraid as I once was.  As a side note, I have yet to meet a single Autistic adult who has assured me my daughter would be just like them, quite the opposite in fact.  Each and every person I’ve personally been in contact with has made a point of saying they are not representative of any Autistic child.

When I went to the Autcom Conference in Maryland last fall I met a great many older Autistic adults.  People who are in their 40’s and 50’s, some had been institutionalized, others lived in group homes, some lived with their aging parents, others lived independently, but all were Autistic and while it was surprising to meet so many (the hidden Autistic adults that our society knows almost nothing about)  it was a relief too because the fear I had and to a lesser degree still have about autism falls away the more time I spend with those who are Autistic.

My fear is about the unknown.  My greatest fears are those I create in my mind.  I have to remind myself of this on an almost daily basis.  I have tremendous fear.  I have always been fearful.  Long before I had children or got married I have lived with fear.  Fear of failure, fear of success, fear of relationships, fear of rejection, fear of abandonment, fear of being hurt, fear of hurting others, fear of saying the wrong thing, fear of life, fear of being.  You name it and I can figure out a way to fear it.  I have mornings when I wake up and feel fear like a second skin shrouding my body and mind.  There are days I cannot shake it.  There are days when the best I can do is get up and just put one foot in front of the other.  There are days when I cannot even acknowledge how scared I am.  A good day is when I keep doing the next thing that needs to get done and not say or do anything hurtful to anyone who crosses my path.  Those are the days when the image of myself is that of being covered in a thick cloak.  I keep my head down, keep to myself and do my best to not cause others pain.

Then there are the days when even that is too challenging a task.  Anger is almost always the result of tremendous, debilitating fear.  This is just one reason why I so vehemently object to the way in which autism is depicted in the general population.  Just about everything that is currently written by non-Autistic people regarding autism is fear based and increases fear.  And where there is fear, anger is not far behind.  Fear and anger cause many to behave in ways they wouldn’t, were they not feeling terrified and/or enraged.  Fight or flight.  I do both, sometimes within minutes of each other.  Neither is particularly helpful.

I know I still have a tendency to look to the “next thing” that will help my daughter.  I know this is what I have a tendency to do.  I am trying to trust myself and her more.  I am trying to remember that I don’t always know what will help and, as it turns out, neither does anyone else, but I can make sensible, informed decisions.  I am trying to accept that no one can predict with absolute knowledge what will occur in the future.  I am trying to parent my children with respect for who they are, what their interests are and not what they may or may not become.  I am doing my best to be present, to enjoy the moments of joy.    When I go off into future, fearful thinking, I try to gently pull myself back to the present without admonishment and judgment, but rather lovingly and with kindness for my own faltering, uneven progress.

Em – 2002

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12 Comments

Posted in Autism, fear, Parenting

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Emma Knows Best

Posted on February 13, 2013 by | 21 comments

This past Christmas I bought Em a snow fort.  Em loves bouncy castles and the snow fort looks a bit like a bouncy castle.  It seemed like an excellent idea at the time, except that it was missing a key component – it didn’t bounce.  It’s one of those gifts that looks good when you receive it, but once it’s been constructed it’s not so interesting.  Even I wondered, once we’d blown it up and put it out in the snow, now what?  What exactly does a kid do inside a snow fort?   Em was a trooper and sat inside it for a minute or two before extracting herself.

Em's Snow Fort

“No, it’s not a bouncy castle,” Emma said shaking her head as she wandered back into the house.

I stood there looking at it for a minute before following her.

“It doesn’t bounce,” I told Richard.

“Right.  It is without bounce,” Richard reiterated.

“And it’s not even a castle,” I added.

“It’s an inflated dome,” Richard said.

“It’s basically a piece of colored plastic,” I replied.

“What were you thinking?” Richard grinned at me.

I could interrupt this dialogue by going on at length about how Richard has the single best smile of any human being I’ve ever met, how when he grins these little dimples appear that take my breath away, how I can become so distracted I lose track of time, thought, words… I could do that, but I won’t.

Theatrical pause and winsome smile.  

Now where was I?  Oh yes, thinking… what was I thinking?  Well, the truth is I didn’t think it through.  I was thinking about her love of bouncy castles and how this looked sort of like one.  I remembered over the summer how we’d gone to our local YMCA to play on the bouncy castle they’d set up for a limited time and how the guy setting it up didn’t know how to operate it and finally Emma had to tell him.  At first he didn’t pay attention to her, probably assuming she didn’t know what she was talking about because of her non-fluency with language.

“What’s she trying to tell him?” another mom asked me as we watched from across the room.

“She’s telling him that he needs to tie the other end and that he has the air pump attached to the wrong tube, but he won’t listen to her,” I explained.

“Should we go over?” the mom asked.

“I already did.  I told him to listen to her, but he seems to believe he knows what he’s doing,” I said.  “I’m betting on my daughter.  She is rarely wrong about things like this,” I added.

“I’m betting on your daughter too,” the other mom said.  The guy fumbled some more with the defeated looking, semi-inflated bouncy castle as Emma looked on with an exasperated expression.

Finally he did as Emma instructed with a little help from me and the other mother, and the bouncy castle was, well, bouncy as it was meant to be.  Emma was ecstatic and soon joined by a dozen other kids all screaming and bouncing together.

That’s what I was “thinking”.

Moral to the story ~ A brightly colored inflatable plastic dome is not the same as a brightly colored inflatable plastic bouncy castle.

Feel free to add your own wisdom to this story or add your own story…

21 Comments

Posted in Autism, mother/daughter, Parenting

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Mistakes Will Be Made

Posted on February 12, 2013 by | 18 comments

Over the weekend something happened.  I did something I regretted.  It was one of those “jokes” that isn’t funny.  One of those things that afterwards you wonder why you ever thought that was even remotely funny, because it wasn’t.  Instead it was hurtful and nobody thought it humorous.  I immediately apologized, but my apology wasn’t enough to make the hurt disappear.  Apologies are like that.  They’re certainly better than nothing, but they don’t erase the regrettable action.  So there I was holding this child who was understandably upset because I did something without thinking or stopping to ask myself “is this a good idea?” “If someone did this to you, would you think it funny?” I felt terrible.  The child felt terrible, but allowed me to tell them how sorry I was.  They allowed me to hold them.  They allowed me to witness their upset and it took everything in me to stop talking, to give them the space to feel their feelings without tramping all over them with words.

“Aw….”  Emma said as she embraced the child.  “_____’s upset,” Emma said, looking at me with concern.  “_____’s sad.  He wants to go to Sydney’s playground.”  Emma was doing her best to make sense of the situation, citing a playground long ago closed.

“No, that’s not it, Em.  I hurt ____’s feelings and….”  I looked over at Richard.  “Well I shouldn’t have done that,” I finished.

“Aw….”  Emma said again, wrapping her arms more tightly around the other child’s torso.  “It’s okay.  Take a deep breath.”

“I’m okay.  Thanks Emma,” the child said.

“Aw…” Em continued.  “Here.  Take a deep breath… It’s okay.”  Em looked over at me and said, “Then time to do yoga!”

It was one of those moments.  A moment where there are lots of feelings, lots of different emotions.  Sorrow and remorse for doing something hurtful to another person.  Proud of my daughter for being so kind.  Concern for the hurt person’s feelings.  It was one of those moments when you know you’re never going to do it all beautifully or elegantly or even well, but that you, like everyone else on this earth does things you wish you hadn’t and you can sit with that and hopefully learn from it so you don’t repeat it.

I watched Em hugging this child.  I watched this child feeling their feelings and I knew the biggest apology I could give was not one of words, but of honoring and respecting their feelings, without trying to undo or change or make light of it.  I know, once I make a mistake, I must not make more mistakes in an attempt to cover up the original one.  Once I make a mistake I have to own it.  I have to acknowledge the other’s feelings and respect them enough to give them space and the time they need to process, while being there if they want or need me to be.

As a friend of mine said –  if you don’t want someone to have bad memories of you, don’t do things to give them any.

Nic reading to Em – January, 2013

Nic & Em

18 Comments

Posted in Autism, forgiveness, Parenting

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