My Autism Insights

image by gmbmom on Photobucket

Gus and I have been playing a little game where he pretends to carry me on his back (like I do for him sometimes) and he collapses under my weight.  This came about because I said he couldn’t possibly carry me.

This morning, he took my hands and slung them around his shoulders and tried to start the game again.  When he collapsed I said, “What’s the matter am I too heavy?”

“Yes!”

After a laugh, I replied, “You’re supposed to say, ‘No, Mommy! You’re light as a feather!’”

Then I explained how he should never tell a woman she’s heavy; it would hurt her feelings.

“But some of them are!”

I can’t really argue with that.

I’ll have a more useful post later in the week after I finish with a monster deadline.  In the meantime, feel free to browse this blog & if you like it, why not subscribe?

Have a great day!!

There were so many supportive and helpful comments to my post yesterday , I felt they deserved a post to say Thank You!!  It always amazes me that there are just so many awesome people who read and comment on my little corner of the Internet - it really boggles the mind some days.

We’ve tossed around some of your suggestions, and obviously this will be a process of trial and error as he grows and develops social skills.  We thought about Scouts, but without one of us to be at the meetings & activities with him, aside from the fact that I don’t see how Gus would even keep up, I’m not convinced that he wouldn’t bolt at the first chance, especially if the local troop is a big one. A friend suggested that maybe they’d have someone who could act as a shadow/mentor, but before I trust my son’s well being to anyone, obviously I’d have to know them extremely well.  And even then, the trust is tenuous at best.  I can’t say I’m the most forgiving person when it comes to some things.

As for sports, I think there may be a couple of indoor soccer games over the winter, but in the meantime, I’m looking into a special needs bowling league.  He might like that.  And I’m going to see if he can hang out, maybe over the holidays, with one of the boys from his class who I think doesn’t live too far.

He loves to sing, so I’m thinking maybe a voice class or chorus might be an option also.

At any rate, I will certainly take all your suggestions and input into consideration, and again, I really appreciate the great response to my question!!

Have a great Saturday night!

As my daughter’s class explores questions of wants vs. needs, and we spend a laugh-filled, lovely evening with some of my husbands oldest and dearest friends, I am forced back to an issue that I often avoid thinking about.  How do I help Gus find a friend?  Are friends a want or a need, especially for a kid who prefers to be alone?

Listening to all the hilarious stories of a group of boys between the ages of 12 and…well, now, I was struck by how such simple encounters made for the longest lasting memories.  I realized just how dumb ‘tween and teen boys can be (No offense, C!  I love the stories and I’m honestly a little jealous of all the fun you all had!) but also that on a very tangible level, they need the wild release that they can only get from being around other boys their age.  The wildness seems to forge them into the men they will become.  There seem to be valuable lessons in that nuttiness.  Look at Mowgli from The Jungle Book.  He had all those adventures with Baloo, which cause Baghera endless headaches, but in the end he was able to become civilized.  He grew from those adventures.  What happens to a boy then who doesn’t have those formative, crazy-male-bonding experiences?

The trouble is mostly that he never seems all that interested in being friends with anyone.  He has, on the rare occasion, approached a boy his age, but it almost never works out and he ends up alone - happily I should add.  There are very few boys his age in the neighborhood, and they don’t have the patience for someone who can’t quite keep up or for someone who takes so much work just to have a conversation with.  I’m usually just happy they’re not mean to him when he’s around; they just sort of ignore him.  Every rainbow colored moon, they will play together if there’s an adult (my husband) facilitating a game.

If he’s happier on his own then, is it right for me to push him into situations where he has to interact with other boys his age?  Is it fair?  Is it setting him up for anxiety and heartache?  But if I don’t, he misses out on a huge part of male development, it seems.

This came up at his parent-teacher conference, and we all tried to brainstorm ways to get him into a social setting.  We thought of music classes or bowling.  Soccer, which is on hiatus now anyway, is too busy to allow for developing much of a friendship.  They run, they go home, end of story.  Bowling has possibilities, and I’ll call about a special-needs team in the area.  Music classes don’t strike me as the best social opportunity, although he does love it.  I won’t even get into the cost issue for music classes.

Should I get him involved in an online community for kids?  Maybe I can find a Pokemon kids forum or something.  A pen-pal would be better than nothing at this point.

There’s also the possibility that I don’t need to be so concerned about this and he’ll be just fine without my interference.  I don’t know - thoughts?  And my apologies if I’m rambly - that kind of day.

Sunday is the new Thursday this week

I am most thankful today because last week ended and it truly stunk.  As any mature adult named Andrea would do, I have blacked it off of the calendar and will just pretend it never existed.

I am thankful that Gus’s soccer game got cancelled yesterday.  It was a shame, because it was the last game of the season, but if I had to spend an hour and a half in the pouring rain, I think I would have had to be institutionalized, especially after the week that shall not be named.

I am thankful that Gus, with all his issues, acts like a typical big brother toward MM.  This includes getting thoroughly sick of her and doing everything in his power to escape her while she insistently follows behind him, rattling on, non-stop.  They’ve been fighting on and off all weekend, and he finally thought he was getting a break by going out with his Dad, until he found out that his sister was actually ready and we were coming too.  Oh, the horror!  The girls are coming!  It’ll be good practice for him when instead of having to escape a whining sister, he’s trying to get away from a nagging wife.  We can hope.

Hope you had a great weekend, and if you’ve got something to be thankful for, by all means, please share!

P.S. I’ll be extra thankful when November is over. My Nano wordcount is 28,541. A little more than halfway there.

We had a beautiful day for Gus’s soccer game yesterday and got a bit of a surprise.  A boy who he had been on the bus with two years ago was at the field watching his sister play.  The boy, T., was always a really sweet kid and so nice to Gus.  He’s in the 8th grade now and in “regular school,” which he was very proud to tell me.  It was great to see him!  T. sat at the sidelines with me watching the game, talking my ear off about any and everything, and volunteering to help out on the field if needed.  One of the players got a little tired out and lay down in the middle of the field.  T. was right there (he knew the girl) coaxing her back to her mom.  Really an awesome young man.

I’m having a bit of a dilemma.  T. does babysitting, and I will be needing one soon.  My biggest issue is that I have a general unease with leaving my kids with a) teenagers and b) males - any males (strictly my own issue and not indicative of any inherent inability of men to care for children) .  While my kids are generally good, especially for other people, you just never know when there will be an ‘issue’ and I always worry that one will crop up and the sitter won’t be able to handle it.  Now, one thing in T’s favor is that since he’s an Aspie and also knows Gus pretty well, he’d have a better insight into how to calm Gus if he got upset about something.  My concern would be pretty much the same as with any of the other teens I’ve considered hiring - attention and ability to control two rambunctious kids.  Also, T. doesn’t live very close, so having him babysit at night may be difficult.

On a completely unrelated note, someone forgot to give Gus the time-change memo.  He was up at 4, which was sort of 5, too early at any rate.  He’s back to the early rising and I’m thinking of trying melatonin to help with sleep, at least until we can get him into a pattern of sleeping a little later.

If you have any thoughts on either the babysitting issue or the melatonin, I’d love some input! Have a great Sunday!

It’s been a long week and some thankfulness to put things in perspective is in order.

1. I am thankful for the two nights of uninterrupted sleep I got this week.  The third night, last night, was not the charm.  We may have to start taking some other proactive measures before bedtime.  The second time Gus got out of bed last night, I tried taking the bad stuff out of his head - I put my fingers to his forehead and made a vacuuming sound - so he wouldn’t have any more bad dreams.  He seemed to go back to sleep after that.  I think we’re also going to take all these florescent lights out of the house.  They may be better for the environment, but I have a sneaking suspicion that they are not doing very well for him.  I find the noise they make very irritating, so I wonder if they are contributing to some of this.

2. I am thankful to have a husband and father for my children who is relatively engaged with his kids, especially now when the ‘boy’ issues are starting to emerge that I so don’t want to have to deal with.

3. I am thankful that we’ve decided to back off on the casein-free diet.   We’re not going whole hog back to dairy, but I’m allowing cheese back onto the menu.  The pure bliss on my kids’ faces over being allowed to have cheese again made it clear that we’d made the right choice.  It should always be that easy to make kids that happy, so I’m grateful to have been able to do something right by their standards.

Please feel free to share your thankfulness in a comment.  These days it seems more important than ever to remind ourselves of even the smallest blessings.