kirstencan

Lego Maniacs

So, I think that Legos are THE coolest toy.  Period. 

I loved playing with Legos growing up (my brothers'), and it's fun now that all of my kids play with Lego bricks as well.  We have boxes of them - regular and Duplo, and they all get used often.

Lately, though, Thomas has been even more into them (which is saying a lot, quite frankly) it's turning into a kind of fixation -  kind of the way he used to be fixated on Thomas trains.  The new train table has been in constant Lego use.  Constant.  And the Lego catalogs and magazines are all over the house.

He has always taken his Lego models apart.  And I have no problem with that. He makes his own things up and they're cool.  That's what Legos are for.  After painstakingly putting together a helicopter, he immediately took some pieces off, and customized it - including adding wheels.  See, that's cool.

It is annoying when asked to help put one back together, and then he immediately takes it apart, but whatever.

 

But suddenly, he's leaving his models together.  It started with this police car he bought with his own money.  It's still together, a month later.

So Aaron thought it would be fun to put all of his Lego models back together before his birthday on Friday (7!).  So we've been spending hours sorting through the bricks, finding the ones that go to specific Star Wars ships, etc.  The kid is SO happy as he's seeing them come back together.  We're about half way there, I think.

 

I am not made for this type of meticulous work, though, I tell ya.  It's driving me crazy digging through the boxes for the tiniest of pieces.  But Aaron's right, it's the perfect thing to do for Thomas' birthday (well, besides another Lego Star Wars ship!).

One evening we were both sitting sorting through the Lego boxes and I chuckled and thought "Ten years ago we wouldn't have thought we'd be spending a Friday night doing this!" 

Except, yeah, we probably could have called it.  Heh - geeks.

....

*Oh, and thanks for the nice comments about my playroom!  Also thanks to Ohdeedoh for giving my playroom a shout out last week!

Bats and Pumpkins

Thomas always had a difficult time in the fall.  Well, the last couple of years anyway.  I blame adjusting to having to wear socks, long pants and jackets, and the last two years also having a hard time adjusting to frustrating school situations and schedules. 

But on top of that, he gets easily spooked about Halloween.

He has some anxiety issues about it I think (not surprising, really) and gets 'jumpy' for the rest of the day if he sees anything scary. 

Like, for example, me taking him into the Halloween Store.  As soon as we walked in I knew that that was a stupid idea.   Because we even have to skirt the Halloween area at Target.  Stupid - I totally wasn't thinking that day.

The hard/confusing thing is that Thomas actually loves Halloween.  He loves all the non-scary parts, like dressing up, the church carnival, the pumpkin patch, and watching Charlie Brown.  So he's excited about it, but... we have to be careful.

Anyway, I did want to up the Halloween decorations this year, since it's the first year that everyone is home full-time - usually we've had a preschool party at least to go to or something.  You know, just a little more festive.  And I'm planning a (VERY small!  laid-back! not-spooky!) party for the kids and a few friends.  And I do love party planning and decorating!

I made a Halloween bunting for the living room (close-up later maybe):

And I spent an hour or two cutting out bats on Sunday.  Various sizes, shapes, and papers.  I made a tissue paper bat garland (idea from here) and hung it over a window.  Then Thomas started getting jumpy again.

By 'jumpy', I mean that he literally jumps and sometimes yells if anyone talks even slightly loud, or sneezes in his general direction.  It's not a good thing.

So, the garland got rolled up, and the other bats got stuck in an envelope before they were hung up.  I'm thinking they might come out for the party - but that's it.

Aaron suggested skipping Halloween - but that's so hard to do.  And I LOVE Halloween!  And so do the kids.  Next year we might just get out the Halloween stuff a few days before the actual day, though.  None of this month-long decorating and celebrating (when did everyone start doing that anyway?).

Really, I don't even know if we'll do the Halloween Night at the botanical garden.  We were planning on it since it's been a couple of years since we did that and it was such fun last time!  We're sticking to Charlie Brown and Max and Ruby, too - probably no Ichabod this year.

At least the kid loved the pumpkin patch.

Loved it.  And is planning a Star Trek jack'o'lantern for his pumpkin.

And the bunting and quilt are still out, but that's it.  Darn it.

**********

p.s. if anyone out there is room mom for Halloween this year - I posted what I did in Thomas' kindergarten class last year HERE

Swimming

Remember last year when we tried Thomas at a group swimming lesson?  He wasn't quite ready for that.  This year I wanted to get him in a semi-private or private lesson.  The place where Princess goes wouldn't do that, but luckily, my mom has a friend who will do private lessons.  More expensive, but it's really what the boys needed.

It's been great, actually.  The boys have each made progress.  Thomas has some coordination trouble so in some ways Monkey surpassed him, but each progressed - that's what we were hoping for.

One of the reasons I wanted semi-private was so that both boys could be in the water at once.  I couldn't imagine the struggle it would be to keep one boy out while the other boy swam.  Torture, right?

But this particular school lets the other kids get in the pool while they're waiting!  And it's been great practice for them, too!

So, at one end you'll find a little monkey hanging out on the steps.

And the bigger girl (who isn't even taking lessons right now -she finished her session with the other school last month) plays with dive toys (over and over and over) in the deep end.

That's a great setup.

At first I wasn't sure if it would be worth the money, but we really wanted the boys to try swimming lessons this year.  You know what?  I think it's been absolutely worth it.

 

Yesterday, Thomas even let his sister try and help him with his floats when he was done with his lesson - now that's progress right there!

 

All three have absolutely loved these lessons. 

Well, mostly.

Self-directed

Monkey got out some paper, glue and scissors and was in the middle of his idea of a 'sticking' project, when Thomas came over and wanted in on that action.

Here's Thomas' project:  "My Family"

(L-R:  Dad, Mom, (Thomas), (Monkey), (Princess))

Note the very obvious glasses on Princess.  I love this.  All the more so for it being completely his idea, and 100% his execution.  He drew, he cut, he glued. 

I suggested he write the word 'family', but he declined.  That's okay.

Self-directed projects are the best.

I wish I could show this to the (good) kindergarten teacher who only taught him for a month last year: "Look, he drew!  And cut!  And glued!"

And he was so into it, that the next day I came downstairs from my shower to find both boys involved in another sticking project.  Unfortunately, this one involved the liquid glue, not the gluesticks, and 2 whole bottles of it dumped on top of a piece of paper on the table.

Wow, I nearly had a decoupaged table.  Aren't I lucky.

Yup, self-directed projects are the best.

The Logistics of Vacation

Kids with Autism don't deal well with change.  Which means that often they don't travel well either.  At least, mine doesn't.  To prepare Thomas for our vacation, we read some books about vacations and the beach.

 

We talked about how we were going to be in the car all day - and sleep at a hotel.  We realized halfway to California that we'd forgotten to warn him about the sound the ocean makes.  Again, we were pretty sure he'd love the beach, but you never know - so then we talked about how we couldn't wait to hear the sound of the waves, etc.

Because Thomas is on a gluten-free, dairy-free, etc. etc. diet, the travel food situation is much more complicated.  Eating out is really hard for us.  On the road, we made sandwiches in the car, and then stopped for dinner at the first IN-N-OUT Burger we saw.  Because they have gluten and dairy-free burgers (protein style) and fries!  Fries are the really exciting thing here.  Thomas was way excited to get 'restaurant fries'!

My brother and his family live in San Diego, and had told us about a cool pizza restaurant that had gluten-free pizzas on the menu - so we made a point of going there one night as well - what a treat! The last time we took everyone to a pizza restaurant we had to sneak in a GF pizza in my purse!

We booked a suite with a kitchen in our hotel, for the same reasons.  We ate breakfast at the hotel lobby (bringing Thomas' gluten-free frozen donuts or muffins with us and picking up a banana in the lobby for him), lunch was usually sandwiches in our room, and we cooked dinner all but one night.  The little kitchen had plates, pans, dishwasher, etc.  The freezer was actually the most useful - we were able to keep Thomas' GF bread, donuts, muffins, and the frozen pasta sauce and stir-fry that we'd brought for dinners in there.  And once, a few peanut butter covered knives that I left dirty in the sink magically disappeared to be replaced with clean ones in the drawer.  I love maid service.

The kids each packed a few small toys in their own bags, and I packed crayons and a new coloring book, Nintendo DS's and some Playfoam (our new replacement for Play Doh)for downtime at the hotel.  They also took their favorite snuggly toys for sleeping.  We'd planned on staying all day at the beach, but it ended up so much better coming back to the hotel for lunch and some quiet time before going back to the beach.

The suite ended up being a good idea anyway - having another room meant there was another place to go to if you wanted to chill.  We weren't all crowded in one.  Plus, when one of the boys got up extra early in the mornings, Aaron or I would get up with him and go to the other room  - which meant it didn't wake up everyone else!  Sweet.

A surprise for the kids was a day at Legoland.  It was awesome.  I can't say enough good things about that place.  I was so glad they listed nutrition information for their restaurants on their website!  Turns out, Thomas could have a burger (no bun) AND fries there, too!  So I knew in advance I didn't have to bring food in there for him - which was SO great.  We were able to stay in the park for about 5 1/2 hours, which is WAY more than we've been able to stay  at places like that in the past.  Thomas did great and loved the roller coasters - his laugh was hysterical and contagious.  He loved Miniland (with entire cities made of Legos on display) best of all.

We picked up a special pass for special needs kids that allowed us to skip the lines and schedule our rides, but we never even used it.  We went at such a perfect time, the lines were very short!  Thomas was a little overloaded by the end, so that's when we left - but we all had a great time there!

(Lego Guggenheim museum!)

So, yeah, a little more thought and effort went into this trip than a lot of vacations, probably.  I'm always so jealous of families that can just pack up and go without a lot of planning ahead of time - but the planning was worth it for us!

Working Together

Because April is Autism Awareness month, I feel like I should contribute.  But I'm not feeling horribly wordy about Autism at the moment.  So I asked my friend, Ami Chopine, if I could repost something from her blog.  She is one of my neighbors, and was Thomas' teacher at church last year.  I really liked this post (especially the end!):

...............

At church today, I sat with my class of kids in sharing time, when lots of classes are together doing music and having a short lesson. These lessons are basic, but this doesn’t mean adults can’t get something out of them.

Today the teacher held up a poster board with several simple pictures on it. The room was supposed to look at them all and then remember them when the pictures were removed from view. I know I didn’t remember them all. But between all the kids having looked at them, every single picture was remembered.

It occurred to me at that point that this is how we work in real life. So much more gets done when we all support and value everyone. Of course that isn’t any big revelation but I love it when we get reminded in little ways like this.

There was one picture, the last one, that only one kid remembered: the one in our group with autism.

This isn’t just about team work, workplace productivity. I think it has a lot of implications to the great search for truth. We all find different parts of it and we all gain more when we come together and share what we’ve learned. Everyone’s voice is important.

...........

Guess whose kid that was at the end?  Yup.  That's my boy.

I really liked this post because (it's just so true and) because it's about more than awareness, even more than acceptance, but the fact that we need each other.  Every one of us. 

Thanks, Ami!

Re: Autism + Homeschooling

ATTN: Nashville moms!

I saw a few hits coming here from a bulletin board for Nashville moms - where I was mentioned regarding a decision on whether or not to homeschool an autistic 4yo.  First off - welcome and thanks for the compliments - I'm glad if you find my blog helpful in any way.

And since I wanted to comment on something there, but in no way need another login/password to keep track of (and don't live anywhere near Nashville), I'm doing it here, and I hope you find this.

I've talked about the decision to homeschool here.

I've talked about homeschooling specifically Thomas here and here, and how hard it was to decide about kindergarten here.

I've never really talked about WHY we pulled him out.  Which I'm going to do today, because I see that (of course) socializing was brought up on that bulletin board.

I took him OUT of school because of that issue, actually.  More and more, when I'd visit the classroom I'd see behaviors in the other children that I didn't want Thomas copying (and he was).  But the clincher was when I was helping in the classroom and Thomas was getting teased - in a major way.  Not a friendly way.  We've seen friendly teasing, not-so-nice-but-not-really-mean teasing, but in this case the kids were MEAN.  And guess what?  It was right in front of the teacher, and she did nothing.  And it happened again, and she did nothing.

That was his last day of public school.

Kids on the spectrum have statistically higher chances of anxiety and depression.  I was worried about Thomas' emotional health.  Not to mention that there was no trade-off here.  The teacher wasn't very good and Thomas wasn't learning much at school anyway.

Now, don't get me wrong, you can have fabulous situations in public schools for kids with special needs.  Like this one.  We just didn't.  The teacher(s - remember they switched after a month?) didn't really know anything about autism, didn't understand Thomas and didn't set up any kind of behavior plan.  Thomas does have some behavior issues, and nothing was being done about them, so the other kids weren't liking him so well.  Because he looks normal.  So they didn't understand why his behavior was different.

It was just a bad situation.  And from what I've read (this book is really informative) many spectrum kids have similar problems in school.  That being said, the guidance and speech specialists at this school are fabulous and wonderful to work with, and we are still bringing him in for speech.  I just wish his classroom situation could have been better.

Also, school can be brutal for kids with sensory disorders.

No one knows your kid better than you do.  Or they shouldn't, anyway.  I think a lot of people put too much faith in 'the experts' having more knowledge about how to teach your kids (esp. those with special needs) than the parents do.  That's not always true - as long as you do your homework.  And if you have a kid with special needs, that is your responsibility (separate soapbox issue: I've met too many parents of children with autism who don't even know the basics of Autism.  It's frustrating).

And just to update a little more, Thomas is doing great at home.  He's calmer, happier, throwing less tantrums and learning more for sure.  We're happy to have him here.

Enough?  Let me know if you have any more questions.

Have a great weekend!

p.s. If you have a little time today, check out this post and give her some feedback.  The author is taking an issue (not autism - separate concern) to the school and district and could use your input!

Speech, the Library, etc.

So we were able to get Thomas in for speech at the school, even though we pulled him out  (yay!).  So once a week, we all head down to the school, and the other two hang out with me and read books in the school library while Thomas is working with the SLP.

It's not a bad way to spend an afternoon, actually.  It's nice to have an excuse to NOT do anything except read to my youngest.  We were spoiled for a while and had the library to ourselves for a few weeks, but lately we've been overrun by classes - big, loud, classes.  Not as much fun.

What else have we been up to...  Oh, we went to an art museum last week - the kids really enjoyed these cool installations that were there (that I wasn't allowed to photograph).

Princess and I pooled our allowances and bought a DS together.  A pink one.  So, am I a geek if I'm asking for Nintendo games for my 33rd birthday?

And we had an excellent brinner the other night. 

The End.

A New Year

I was a little late getting my photo calendars done this year - but now that mine has arrived... it's officially a new year.

And with the new year come changes.  Well, with children, there are always changes, but the big one here is that right before Christmas we took Thomas out of public school.  Without going into details, his situation at school was not so great anymore. Worse than I had thought.  We're working on still getting him in for speech services, but that's it.

I'm grateful that we are already homeschooling Princess - I am much more prepared for this new step.  While it came a little sooner than I had planned on, I'm glad to have all of my kiddos on the same page again.  Something I've learned over the last year or so is that it's hard to have kids in really different school situations. So while some people ask if it would be worth changing schools or even teachers, our answer is that the best place for him right now is home, and we're glad to have him here.

So we're 'doing school' every day. I have yet to work out a firm plan or come up with a really great reinforcement idea.  I still need to order a few things for him.  I know that he doesn't need to 'do school' much formally, I'm a huge believer in learning through play, but we are still trying to sit down to work on reading and handwriting.

Just like last summer when he was done with preschool, he's come home and had a great attitude change.  He's happier, and he's made a ton of progress with his reading in just a week.  He wasn't letting us work with him at all (rarely even doing his homework) when he was in school.  So that's a good thing, and I'm optimistic.

Last week was crazy stressful, though.  It just hit me (and how!) that this is going to be even harder than I thought.  And I expected it to be hard.  There were lots of 'How am I going to DO all of this?'  I'm not sure yet, but we're working on new routines for all of us.

Having to speak in church yesterday didn't help with my stress levels either, let me tell you - but that went okay.

So here's wishing for a happy New Year - changes and all.  And many more.

So far, so good?

Well, we've finished our first week of Kindergarten.  The first day, I hung around for a few minutes after school and made sure to catch the teacher to ask how it went.  She was brief but pretty positive about it - and said he needed to practice writing his name -which I knew.  The second day I got no information.  The third day we got extra cutting practice sheets in his backpack.  I have been used to getting notes from his preschool every day about what he did and how he behaved - so it's hard for me to not know what's going on! 

On Friday, I figured out the trick to getting his teacher to communicate:  show up early.  We got there early so Thomas would have time to play on the playground before school started.  His teacher is there supervising the Kindy playground, and totally started talking to me - apparently she's just not much of a talker after school.  Not all of what she said was positive, and she seemed surprised that he is still having trouble writing (or even tracing) his name.  This was annoying, as fine-motor skills are probably his biggest delay, and she should know this from his IEP (goals) and from the letter I wrote introducing Thomas that I gave to her before school started. We've been working on this for a long time.  One week of kindergarten is certainly not going to solve the problem.

But oh, well.  I'm just happy she is now communicating with me, and let's just say Thank Goodness for Playdoh.

Thomas loves playdoh.  Loves it.*  Many times it really calms him down when he needs some regulating.  He makes spaceships and trains, or just breaks it up into tiny pieces. We go through a LOT of it. On the first day of school I got him some new playdoh and he sat and played with it for two hours.  He needed some decompression time, and this really helped.  The rest of the week he still wanted to do playdoh after school, but didn't need to do it for as long.

And every afternoon, after he's had a good break, we head upstairs to his new desk to practice writing his name, cutting on the line with scissors, and do some math.  He's been pretty good about his 'homework'.

I'm already a little sick of school.  I'm tired of having our nice quiet summer mornings interrupted by having to be somewhere.  The walk to school is kind of nice, but depending on how the kids cooperate, getting out the door isn't always easy. 

BUT, so far, so good, I guess.  I've been working closely with him with writing on paper and using some paper letter pieces to form words.  Maybe it's time to look up dysgraphia?

*I hate playdoh.  Always have.  Don't get me wrong, I love clay - real clay, but I hate how playdoh smells so very much.  I can't even eat when I can smell it near me.  Ugh.