Monthly Archives: September 2008

Yearbooks As Art Therapy

Those of us who have ever had some type of counseling or psychotherapy know how beneficial it is to be able to talk with a professional about what’s going on in our lives and how we’re handling it (or not). Therapy is also helpful for discussing past events, especially traumatic ones, how they affected us, and how we can work through them. But what if talking is difficult for you? Or impossible? What if you don’t process events and emotions verbally? ASD people encounter just as much, if not more, stress and difficulty while trying to function in an NT world, and many of them have past issues they need to work through as well.

Enter art therapy for autism. When thoughts and feelings cannot be discussed verbally, art therapy works wonders. It helps to stimulate imagination, regulate sensory issues, encourage hand-eye coordination, and express emotions (including stress). Other long-term benefits include developmental growth, recreation, and self-expression. But there can even be profound benefits from just a single session of art therapy. I witnessed this last night with my autistic son.

Ten months ago, I removed Nigel from the middle school where he had been mainstreamed. He had endured daily bullying, both physical and verbal (and, of course, emotional). This put him in a constant state of anxiety and agitation, making him unable to focus and learn, unable even to function. Soon after removing him from that environment, he became much calmer and was able to focus while being homeschooled. On a weekly basis, even though months have gone by since he attended that school, he mentions how much bullying angers him or mentions something in general about bullies. I’ve always assured him that he wouldn’t have to deal with that anymore. But what I didn’t realize was that Nigel had not yet worked through the trauma of his ordeal. He couldn’t really talk about it, other than his occasional comments, and that wasn’t enough. The memories were still painful for him.

Then last night Nigel brought out his yearbook. He showed my boyfriend a picture of a girl he liked, and my boyfriend joked about how he used to draw moustaches on yearbook photos. Nigel laughed and went back to his room. He came out an hour or so later with a Calvin and Hobbes book and showed us a series of cartoons about Calvin’s bully, Moe. In one cartoon, Calvin mimics an ape as he quietly walks behind Moe. Moe and CalvinNigel couldn’t stop laughing at the cartoon. He went back to his room and came out a few minutes later with his yearbook, showing us how he had used a ballpoint pen to make the face of his worst bully into an ape face. He laughed some more and went back to his room, where he proceeded to laugh non-stop for over an hour. Finally, his laughter subsided, and I went to him to suggest that he get some sleep. He proudly showed me his yearbook. Each page of every grade level had several ape faces drawn over the bullies, both boys and girls, who had tormented him. I fought back tears and didn’t want to count how many faces he had drawn on; there were many. I couldn’t bear to think of how horrible it really had been for my son, day after day. I’ve always known that the decision to homeschool him was the right one, but now I had validation. And it sickened and angered me.

But Nigel had found a way to work through his anger. He devised his own art therapy. He scribbled out his anger while eliminating the bullies’ facial features, and then he laughed while adding humiliating details like hairy necks and stupid grins. And he felt better. As I said good night to him, he told me, “Now I can sleep without thinking about the bullies.”

I’ll try to do the same.

Echolalia Strikes Again

The scene:  It is a beautiful sunny day. A group of four is having an early dinner at a bistro-style restaurant with outside seating. They are seated at a table near a walkway that borders a pretty creek framed by lush trees and foliage.  People are strolling by, looking at craft booths set up farther along the walkway. A young couple walks past the table of the four people, glancing at the teenage boy who is maniacally waving his arms around, yelling about bees. He gets up and runs off about twenty feet. The woman in the group of four, presumably his mother, coaxes him back to the table with a glass of soda, assuring him that the bee is gone. The boy reluctantly returns.

The young couple surveys the pretty, burbling creek. Their arms are around each other; they are enjoying the romantic setting.  They begin to kiss.

Teen boy at table says in loud voice:  Looks like we’re about to encounter a saliva exchange.

The other occupants of the table try to stifle their laughter, and the boy smirks and says, “That’s from My Favorite Martian.”

The mother doesn’t dare look at the young couple behind her. Signaling her son to keep his voice down, she holds her finger to her still-smiling lips and hopes that the food will arrive soon.

3 Steps to Ending Chore Wars

As the eldest of four children, I had a lot of household chores and responsibilities while growing up. I didn’t like it, of course, but I did what was expected of me. I had read stories about kids growing up in the country having many more chores than I, so I figured my lot wasn’t so bad.

Nigel sees it differently. He balks at the few chores I have him do, complaining about slave labor and communism. “Cleaning rooms is for nerds,” he says. Cajoling, begging, and trying to reason with him (“Everyone has responsibilities,” I say) is usually unsuccessful. So I came up with a plan:

1) Create a chart – a visible reference, like the schedules used in his early intervention classes. It lists what he does when, each day. It has spaces for star stickers or checkmarks to indicate when chores are completed.

2) Offer rewards – positive reinforcement for completing chores. He’s a teen, so it has to be something that will really motivate him. Two things he loves the most: renting movies and having friends spend the night. So when he receives a certain number of star stickers, he can rent a movie or have a sleepover.

3) Withdraw privileges – negative consequences for not completing chores. Two things he would miss: watching movies in his room every day and having computer time. For each day a chore is not completed, he will lose time doing what he enjoys.

This is an experiment – I’ll report back with how it goes! Unlike communism, I think it will work.

My Radar

After many years of living with my son’s autism, I feel like I know autism when I see it. It’s like I’ve got this radar, and I’m sure other long-time autism parents sense that as well. There’s a difference between a “terrible twos” tantrum and a sensory-overload meltdown. There’s the unmistakable taking an adult’s hand over to the refrigerator to open the door to get something rather than asking or pointing. The lining up of toys, the not responding to questions or comments. And yes, these are rather stereotypical signs. But it’s the child’s presence, and face, that I recognize more than anything.

A while ago I attended a child’s birthday party with a friend. It was for his co-worker’s three-year-old son, with many friends and family members present. Within minutes of observing this little boy, I knew that he had autism, not just by his mannerisms and the signs, but by his face. It was so familiar, and my blood turned to ice because I knew that his parents didn’t know. A few moments later, I turned to look at my friend, someone who had spent much time around my son over the years, and my friend’s eyes were wide. He knew, too. “I think he has autism,” my friend said quietly to me.

I felt strange. I was not close to these people. How could I go up to them and say, “I think your son has autism”? Or even the less-shocking, “Have you looked into speech therapy?” I was torn because I felt like I should do something to steer them toward early intervention, and to somehow convey to them that I understood. But it was not my place. I was an outsider.

I continued to observe the little boy and his family. There was so much love and acceptance, and so much accommodation of the autism that they didn’t know about. Was I obligated, as a seasoned autism parent, to say something? Part of me thought so. What if they knew something was different about their son? What if they were searching for answers? But a larger part of me just realized that, as a stranger, it wasn’t my place. It was a birthday party. I told my friend to give them my number if, in the future, his co-worker approached him to say that his son was diagnosed with autism.

The radar will always be with me, and I’m sure that other situations will occur throughout my life in which I find myself faced with the “should-I-say-something” dilemma. It comes with the territory. But so does a lot of support, knowledge, and understanding that I can offer down the line, when they’re ready. That’s my place in the picture.

Savant-Garde

A few weeks ago we enjoyed a visit with some long-time friends who live out of state. Our families have been friends for so long that we joke that our sons were “friends before they were born.” At one point, their NT son Jonathan, who is twelve, was talking with Nigel about how he (Nigel) learned to read when he was three and a half.

Jonathan: That must be your savant skill.

Nigel: My what?

A sort of chill permeated the air, even though it was about 105 degrees around the patio where we sat. Jonathan didn’t respond, his parents didn’t respond; I think everyone was waiting for me to jump in. It had never before occurred to me to talk to Nigel about autistic savants. I had never thought that his hyperlexia qualified as a savant skill. Sure, it was astounding at the time, but the sources I checked do not include it as a sign of Savant Syndrome.

Me: A few autistic people have skills like computing difficult math problems in their heads, playing music very well, painting or drawing something in great detail, and memorizing lots of information. They’re called autistic savants. But not every autistic person is a savant. In fact, most are not.

Nigel: Good. Because I hate math.

So glad that’s settled.

Getting in Gear

There are no bells, no forced schedules, no dress code. No busses, no other students, no anxiety. This is homeschool. And even though it is the ideal learning environment for some kids (like Nigel), it’s still school. And he’d rather not do it.

We’re relatively new to homeschooling, having started six months ago (and the past three months were summer vacation), but, knowing my son, I think that even if we’d been doing it for years he would still complain, as he did this morning. I pointed out to him that I was sure he’d rather be doing homeschool than be in a classroom with lots of other students bothering him. You’ve heard of fantasy football? Nigel wants to do fantasy school. He responded, “I want to do school on a video screen lying in bed.”

So, even for homeschoolers, it’s hard to get in gear. Maybe it’s because we don’t have bells and lockers and busses. I’m still working on our schedule because we’re waiting to hear back about the time slot for the social skills group meeting that Nigel will attend once a week at the middle school. And we’re waiting to hear back about checking out an eighth grade math book for the year.  So for now, we work with our tentative schedule, we do a review of last year, we go through the math and grammar workbooks, we discuss our plans for electives (Spanish, psychology, and judo), and wait for things to be ironed out. It’s our way of warming up and easing back into academia. Short of lying in bed with a video screen, that is.

Happy Humming

So often with ASD in the house (and especially away from the house), we focus on damage control and looking for signs of anger, frustration, and sensory overload, trying to cut them off at the pass before they mushroom into a complete meltdown. We instinctively watch for signs of escalation in our children and have learned their triggers, how to avoid them if possible and how to manage them if not. We are attuned to their body language, their sounds, their facial cues. We’ve got it down to a science.

Last night I heard Nigel’s laughter while he watched a funny movie, his hearty, sincere belly laugh.  And I smiled, enjoying his happiness. He also hums when he’s happy, a soothing little six- or seven-note tune that he repeats over and over again. Often I will walk by his bedroom as he is working on his computer, building Lego, or reading, and I hear his happy humming. And I remember when he was a baby how I used to hum while rocking him in the rocking chair, my humming reverberating near his head as we both rested. His current hum is not the same tune, but when I hear it I get the same feeling, the same serenity, as I did with my humming from his babyhood – ethereal, calming, and restorative.

The signs of contentment are just as important as the signs of distress. We may not need to attend to them, but we appreciate them, fleeting as they may be. Sometimes I think we need to pay as much attention to those moments as we do to the others.

Happy humming, everyone.

A Goonie Afternoon

Nigel’s Obsession of the Week, besides his impending Terminator Halloween costume, is the ‘80s movie The Goonies. He was introduced to this classic a few years ago and has loved it ever since. Being an extrovert, Nigel loves the friendship theme of the movie, and being autistic, he appreciates the befriending of the misunderstood, cognitively challenged character, Sloth. According to Urban Dictionary, “goonie” means “outcast” or “geek,” but also “good friend or homie.” Nigel considers himself a goonie.

After school today, he invited his NT friend Riley over to watch the movie with him. Nigel and Riley have been friends for six years, and I’m sure he has seen The Goonies with Nigel on several different occasions. Yet Riley comes over and hangs out, accepts the fact that Nigel talks and narrates throughout the movie, and just lets him be who he is. And of course, that is what good friends do. We all have our quirks, and some require a little more patience than others. But for a child, now a teen, to take it in his stride and recognize the needs of someone who’s different and care about him and spend time with him in spite of some pretty riotous quirks, well, simply put, I just love him.

They were in the kitchen at one point, taking a snack break, and I overheard Nigel say, “Do you think we’re like The Goonies? You know, friends in the same neighborhood having adventures?”

“Yeah, we are,” Riley said, biting into an apple.

“Because I’m a goonie, but you understand my difference.”

“Yeah, Nigel, I do.”

Sometimes, my heart just overflows.

Our Hero

We are an arachnophobic family. Nigel certainly fears bees and other flying insects, but spiders head the zero tolerance list for all of us. Aidan recently wore flip-flops in the house for a week when a spider hit had gone awry and the intended escaped. We don’t take these things lightly.

Last night, Nigel came up to pet one of our cats, Sheba, who was very interested in something on the floor. Nigel bent closer to look and immediately jumped back, gasping, “It’s a spider!” Sheba, as if on cue, pounced on the smallish pest, then stepped back and proceeded to eat it.

Nigel chuckled. “She’s a good cat. She’s a good bug killer.”

Then he kissed her head and said, “You mad, impetuous thing,” and went back to his room, secure in the knowledge that we have an effective spider slayer in our home.

First Days and Sensory Processing Disorder

First days of school are nerve-wracking for lots of people, but especially for those with Sensory Processing Disorder. Most ASD people have some type of SPD (or several), but there are also many people with SPD who do not have autism. Aidan is one of them.

In the beginning, of course, I did not know this, but early on I thought he might have something I read about called “low sensory threshold.” He cried when I held him, he cried when I put him down, he cried in the baby swing, he cried in the car, he cried in stores, and he cried at home. He cried about 80% of his waking life. I did not know what to do for this child. The crying was so extreme that it prompted his two-year-old autistic brother to speak one of his first words: “cying.” He was trying to say “crying” but couldn’t get the “r” sound. “Yes, Aidan is crying,” I would tell Nigel.

Aidan was about one and a half when Nigel was diagnosed with autism. At the time, I thought about the fact that Aidan was also not making any attempts to talk and had very sensitive hearing, like Nigel. I wondered if Aidan also had autism. There were many who suggested that Aidan was simply mimicking his older brother, but the signs were there even when Nigel was elsewhere. Nigel’s autism was more on the severe side as a young child, fairly obvious once diagnosed, so if Aidan did have some level of autism, I thought it might have been PDD-NOS. Trying to be objective, I looked at the differences in my sons’ behavior. Aidan made eye contact. He knew how to play with toys. He did not stim. He was just always crabby about something. So PDD-NOS did not seem correct. But what, then?

When Aidan was three years old I was able to enroll him in the same early intervention program that had been so beneficial for Nigel. The therapists evaluated Aidan and informed me that he had problems with sensory integration (SPD hadn’t been coined at the time) and a developmental delay in language. They provided OT and speech therapy, which seemed to help him. But it wasn’t until he was five that Aidan seemed to tolerate his body and his surroundings better. He finally seemed happy.

Aidan continued to receive speech therapy until he was almost ten, and I could tell he was glad when that was behind him. He is now IEP-free (yes, I did the happy dance when I left the last meeting, because now I only have one child with an IEP) and does quite well in spite of the fact that he is the pickiest eater in all of southern Oregon (at least) and hates wearing shoes because “they smash my feet.” He constantly complains about smells that no one else smells, he wears the same clothes for days on end because they’re the only ones he feels comfortable in, can’t stand having his hair brushed, gets carsick, and won’t tie shoelaces or ride a bike. But at least he no longer cries 80% of the day!

And so I was a bit concerned about Aidan’s first day at a new school. School in general can be a pain for SPD kids due to the potential for sensory overload. I drove Aidan this morning so he wouldn’t have to “process” the bus yet, and I think that helped to ease him into the first day. He said the lockers aren’t so bad, and he assured me that he didn’t buy anything at the vending machines. He didn’t get lost, and he got on the right bus to come home. Best of all, he didn’t get carsick!

 

Added 9/13/08: an informative SPD site – click here