Writing to friends

This will be short (my bed is calling), but I'll try to start my e-mail at least...
 
 

How can Hannah express her anger in an acceptable manner?
Well, I'm trying to teach her to talk (or even yell) her way through the
problem.  Just communicate in some way that doesn't involve using
derogatory comments, name calling or disrespectful behaviors (i.e. door
slamming!).

I asked this question because I was curious about what other people do - I get frustrated with Chance because I _try_ to teach him acceptable ways to express anger (and like you, I am willing to accept a little yelling at this point), but then he gets angry at every little thing. And then I am in the situation of telling him it isn't okay to _always_ express your anger, although I'm sure he is feeling angry and frustrated (even if it is accidental or a trivial incident). At this point in my parenting career, the hardest thing I am dealing with is trying to teach the boys how to handle disagreements, taking turn with toys, and compromising when they do have different goals/ideas about how something should happen. I tell you, Jack is more mature sometimes in dealing with his anger and frustration, especially since Chance can be such a pill to him sometimes. I also have the dilemma of having to come up with a physical way for them to express anger that DOESN'T involve hitting a brother, and stomping their feet is the only thing I can think of.  Mental picture...35 year old Chance stomping his feet in the research lab because a co-worker took the pipet from his bench....I can only hope that it is a gradual process of being to handle anger constructively, and that I'm not instilling lifelong habits. I do like how you tell each other you're not feeling respected, I'm going to try that (I stole "unacceptable behavior" from you a long time ago, and never thanked you, so Thank You!).
 
 

Kris, with the onset of the spinning, do you think that perhaps Chance
may be showing MORE of the asperger's symptoms instead of less?  Has the
self talk changed any since you were here?  He is such an intense child.

He isn't demonstrating all of the symptoms he had on the trip (he hasn't had a severe "anger" tantrum since we've been home), but the spinning is new, and his becoming very angry at little things is more prevalent than ever before. I'd get a professional evaluation, but AS is such a new diagnosis, that most doctors would only be able to work with the AS kids on the severe side of the autistic spectrum. It comes down to the fact that mild AS could also be considered as just a nerdy, socially awkward kid. And I am pretty comfortable with thinking of Chance as a possibly mild AS kid, although I could just be barking up the wrong tree completely, and I am keeping my options and mind open to that possibility. I'm sure I'll be boring you all to tears with updates!
 

Anyway, I'm
sure you can understand the trepidation going into tonight's lesson.
She was a champ!  She honestly "worked".  We discussed it all week ..
the whole "trying instead of crying" and she actually DID it.  Which
resulted in her mastering backwards swizzles.  So, hopefully she
correlated the work with the positive result.  Either way, her coach was
very complimentary and we all left on a high note.

That is wonderful! It almost makes you prouder seeing Hannah show fierce determination and an unwillingness to quit than mastering the backward swizzles(highly technical Olympic skating term??), don't you think? I'm not surprised at all, I know she's a toughie when she wants to be.
Susan, that is so cool about Matthew learning how to read! I hate to say this, but next to potty-training, getting your child interested in learning how to read is way up on the list of "Things that Keep Homeschoolers Up At Night Worrying".
Amber, you mentioned the exercise bike in your e-mail about the Wired article, I forgot to ask last time, are you where you want to be in terms of fitness and size? My aunt in North Carolina sent me to her personal trainer for the whole time I was there (which could be construed as an incredible insult, but she knew I've been _trying_ to get back in shape) and Hiro hooked me on the Stabilty Ball (also know as a Swiss Ball). It looks so gimmicky, but I love it. I have some Pilates and strength exercises for it, and it really works out the kinks and keeps me feeling limber and more flexible. I'd keep it just for the stretches alone. I've also been walking with John in the morning, but I need to start putting some running intervals into our walk, or do one of my step interval tapes. Just being nosy...
Off to bed, I hope everyone is doing well.
Kris

Thinking about Asperger's when Chance was little

Jill,
I am new here too and have a son much younger than yours, but your e-mail just really hit home with me.
I copied some of your comments that resonated:

but, my "therapeutic parenting style" as my therapist calls it
probably allowed him to progress beyond many of the usual tell-tale age
specific signs of the autistic spectrum (unbeknownst to me at the time).

I try very hard to follow attachment parenting (Dr. Sears), and I do believe this has helped my son a tremendous amount in providing an environment that minimized the stress for him (although I sometimes think that it has been harder on me). In fact, we just spent 3 months traveling to Michigan, Virginia and North Carolina, and with the resulting stress of being away from home and Daddy, he was showing far more AS characteristics than he had ever done before. It took at least a month of being home before he started returning to his _normal_ self.
 

When you live something
everyday, I think you lose perspective on what is unusual enough to warrant
pointing out to the professionals.

So true!! It has taken seeing Chance with other kids, and also observing another AS kid in our homeschooling circle to realize that Chance was more than just a little high-strung.
 

I can't leave him unsupervised with boys his age and
older.  Adults love him.  He's fantastic with younger children.

Again, the exact same situation here. He plays so wonderfully with his younger brother, but with his peers, he misreads the social situations, pushes when he should be pulling, and just doesn't "fit" in. His younger brother seems to be a different animal completely, Jack knows exactly what to do, when and how to talk to the other kids, and fits in wonderfully. I read in one article that AS kids like to be alone and avoid social contact, but Chance desperately wants a "best" friend his own age and is always going up to kids and asking them if they will be his "friend".
As for support Jill, what you've done for your son by keeping him home and homeschooling him is already a success story - imagine what would have happened if you had kept him in school. I am fervently hoping that as our kids get older, making friends and having a "life" will get easier.  It is funny, I took the boys to the Chabot Space and Science Center for their weekly Telescope Maker's Workshop (Chance is fascinated with astronomy and is just dying for a telescope), and I swear I met two men who, on the surface, seemed very AS (wouldn't look me in the eye, had to be encouraged to come and talk to us, but very friendly and helpful once we broke the ice). And of course, we've all heard the jokes about the halls of the companies in Silicon Valley being filled with AS adults!
Kris

Writing to friends

Cherri, I think you might be getting a taste of what the teenage years are supposedly like, ugh! I do have a thought though - not to be construed as unsolicited advice - but here goes. One, how can Hannah express her anger that is acceptable behavior? With Chance, I've worked on him to tone down his fits of anger and defiance of me by stating repeatedly "It is okay to get angry at Mama, and it is okay to disagree with her, but you have to find a way to do that is still acceptable behavior. Why don't you...".  In his case, since the hitting and head-ramming was starting to become a problem, I'm okay with him stamping his feet, yelling (but no name-calling), and having a little hissy fit in general. I will work on all of this long-term to tone him down, but for now, the alternative is not acceptable, and I'm willing to live with this in the short term. I just feel as if he _needs_ a way to physically let out his anger, and expecting him to deal calmly and rationally with his anger (like I can, hmmph) is unreasonable. Heck, Jack deals better with his anger better than Chance does!
Which brings me to my second point. When Chance is disagreeing with me wholeheartedly, he sometimes will yell things at me like "You don't make the rules in this house, I will not do ________!"  (we are most definitely working on his behavior and language for disagreeing with Mom, this isn't quite acceptable). Sometimes, those words rub me raw, and I blow up and make the whole situation worse by taking his comments personally and reacting on a personal level. When I can step aside and observe the situation objectively, I am more able to be calm and reasonable (without faking it, or doing that "calm on the exterior but I am about to blow up" tone of voice), and deal with him. I always feel like the worst role model by blowing up at him, because that is the same behavior I am scolding him about. So, I try not to take him or his language personally but see it for what it is, which doesn't mean going easy on his behavior at all, but just disciplining him, not yelling.
None of this might help at all, because like you said, you've talked to her until you are blue in the face, and I know you deal with her calmly and rationally most of the time,  but just know you're not alone!!
Gosh, I don't want to give you all the impression I am looking for problems with Chance, I only brought up the liking older kids issue because it has interfered with him making friends with the girls in our group who I think would play wonderfully with him if he gave them half a chance. He just spends the whole time following after the older boys like a puppy dog who gets occasional, condescending pat on the head from his master. Geez, I guess I'm raising a male chauvinistic pig! I would be delighted to have a little boy who is just a bit awkward and different, but there are just some days when that little warning bell goes off...but in the end, all the worrying and research might be for nought, although like I keep telling John, I see a lot of me in those Asperger's lists sometimes (like we can't all fufill the diagnostic criteria for just about anything at one time or another!).
I copied the following from the Asperger's list I just joined:
 

It is common for auties and aspies to have self-stimming..(he) used
to spin in circles, shake his head back and forth and hang upside
down for long periods of time if I didn't stop him. Nowadays he only does

them when sick or overwhelmed with circumstances. Now he's almost 
always making vocal noises, not necessarily words either and it gets 
on everyone's nerves so we're trying to nip that quick too.

These are both things he does, with the spinning being of recent vintage, but he does it 3-4 times a day, a few days a week. The vocal noises (Cherri can attest to these) is one of those traits that came out in full force on our trip, but is still present, along with talking inappropriately loud (working on that too). In fact, he has his own "language", where he talks back to me, says "No", calls us names and other wonderful conversational tidbits in these rhyming, long nonsense syllables that are gibberish to me (he is consistent, though). I actually sent him to the penalty box for calling Jack a name that I had no idea what it meant (he had made Jack cry three times in 30 minutes with these names, so Jack knew what it meant!).
I have to go take a shower, my XO of a mother wants me to go and see if the Container Store has drawers units we can use for the kitchen...when I dreamed of being organized someday, I didn't think it would involve torture and agony to make it come true! (she made us all troop through IKEA last night for 3 hours, after we had already been out doing errands for 4 hours, egads).
Kris

Writing to friends

Amber, I hope the mini-vacation was nice. Was LegoLand worth it? We were thinking about driving down in February, since they are having a day for the "Adult Fans of Lego" group (John's thing), and it should be relatively empty, one would hope.

We are all finally getting over the flu from the past few days - poor Chance had the worst case (103.5 temperature), but we've all been under the weather. We did manage to take him to the Lawrence Hall of Science for the last day of the roller coaster exhibit, so he was happy with that. We're getting back into homeschooling, amid all of the organization efforts (Finally moving all kid-related items out of my mom's room into the back room, yech! But now all of their art stuff is right next to the kitchen, so they will enjoy haivng something to do while dinner is being made. Otherwise they are both still on a Lego
kick, along with Knex, which has been ongoing since we returned home.

I did pick up the Wired issue with the autism/Asperger's article, and found it pretty interesting. I am still at an impasse with Chance, since he fits some of the criteria, but does not have some of the hallmarks, like insisting on playing alone for the majority of the time (he and Jack play with each other a lot), and not wanting social contact. He
does want social contact, and in fact is almost desperate for a friend, but he just doesn't know how to go about it. An example in point: on New year's Day, we went to a brunch given every year by an old work friend. He played with my friend's son's Knex, played on the piano and ate a LOT. He pretty much ignored the younger kids there, but was interested in the older kids (although they went outside for most of the party). As we were leaving, he asked a 7-8 year old boy named Justin (who happened to be getting ready to leave in the foyer at the same time as we were) if he would be his friend. Justin, being a very sweet kid, said, "sure". So then Chance spent the next 5 minutes telling Justin and his mom where we lived, a description of our house, and even directions on how to get there. Justin's mom thought he was very cute, but didn't understand Chance was being completely serious. Anyway, he talked about Justin all the way home, but I didn't think too much of it. Yesterday, on our way to the Lawrence Hall of Science, he says in the car, "Why hasn't my friend Justin come over to play with me yet?" My jaw just dropped, and I had to explain, "Well, Justin can't read your mind honey, he doesn't know that you want him to come over. making friends takes a lot of work, not just saying "Hi", and telling him where you live". I was ready to go on and on (a bad habit), but he just asked me to put the music back on.

It just sounds like he is clueless about the ways of the world, but I tell you, he has never demonstrated such a naviete about how the world works when it comes to non-social interactions. The only thing keeping from tearing my hair out in my quest for finding him like-minded kids is that I found a group for all ages at a local space center that meets
every Friday night and works on building their own telescopes, and a local Lego group that might have kids come to the monthly meetings. I feel like taking out an ad that says "Playgroup for Nerds inTraining - Calling all Knex, Space, Lego, and Electricity Fanatics"! If we can just meet one kid at this telescope meeting, life will be so much better for him. I would consider putting him into a Parks and Rec. "Kiddie Kollege" class again, but he is at the upper age limit, and the last time we did it, it was a failure. Should I be homeschooling him? It isn't as though he doesn't have the opportunity to meet other kids, like the ones in Campfire - but the othe rkids just haven't clicked (he really gravitates toward older boys, which is almost annoying, since there are three other
4 year old girls who would be perfect). I have high hopes for the telescope gorup, but I am also going to try to find people to expand our Campfire/nature/hiking group, and we might even join the city version of the 4-H club, along with music lessons.

Back to the Aspergers...is he just really socially awkward, or does he have a fundamental wiring problem in figuring out the rules of social engagment? The disturbing symptoms from our trip have mainly disappeared, so my problem is working with subtle clues and comparsions to other kids in trying to figure this out. I did join a Yahoo group with homeschooling parents of Asperger's kids, so I hope to glean a lot of useful information there. I keep thinking about what Lisa (a mom of a now seven year old Asperger's boy, who was in the original Campfire group before it split to accomodate different schedules). Adam was, at first glance, a very normal kid. But there were just little discrepancies in how he dealt with the other kids (come to think of it, he wanted to play with the other kids, not sit off on the side, watching), especially in conflict. Anyway, after about 5 meetings and getting to know each other a bit, Lisa just casually mentioned how much Chance reminded her of Adam at the same age (we never discussed the Aspergers), and I didn't think anything of it at the time - I just thought she meant the same interest in space and Legos. But now, I think she meant more in the way he dealt with other people. I am going to try to link back up with her casually (I actually really clicked with her),
and see if she'd be interested in more interaction with me and Lynne and our little Campfire/nature group.

I don't think I have anything else to write about right now, but we're doing fine here. Hope everything is going well for everyone!

Kris