Category: kids

My friend Jennifer found a series of pictures of her son Zane (1) and Bede (some number of months). At the time we had no idea how similar the boys were – both are highly intelligent, hyperlexic, and autistic.

(The last picture cracked me up!)

One of the boards I read has a thread going right now titled “You know you’re a special needs parent when…”

My contribution:

You decide fictional characters have conditions similar to your child. “Remy from Ratatouille is so on the spectrum. He’s not into the social aspect of his rat colony at all, he has extreme sensory sensitivities, he perseverates on gourmet food and cooking and he has vivid mental ‘conversations’ with Auguste Gusteau, the chef he is obsessed with.”

Bede built a house out of blocks today. He built it up, then looked at me and said “House!” It’s the first time he’s ever made anything like that.

Here’s a picture.

Trixie is pushing the dining room chairs around the living room. She likes them to be resistant to her pushing, so she lines three of them up together and pushes them like a train. She also likes to lift the futon mattress. I got a couple bags of yarn from a friend who got them at an estate sale, and Trixie is also dragging them around.

Ladies and gents, we have another sensory sort of kid in the family.

Bede’s our prime example: dislikes clothing, loves water, craves muddy/slimy textures but hates dirty hands, runs in circles, likes jumping and rough and tumble play. All of those things to a great extreme not seen in a typical four-year-old. Mostly sensory seeking with some avoidance.

Then there’s my sweet Abby: mildly claustrophobic, hates tight clothing, closing her eyes, kisses and other light touch, hair washing. Likes being held, but not restrained. Mostly avoidant.

And now the Trix. Wonder what else will pop up? Ah, parenting…

“He doesn’t want to see you make changes.”

Faith said that, about Bede. They were playing in a dim room, and I flipped the light on. Bede immediately ran over and turned it off, with a disapproving glance at me.

Smart kid.

Bede, Gilbert and Faith have been playing bumblepuppy together for the last few minutes. As usual, Faith is the glue. She’s so great with them. She said a bit ago “I’m glad I have an autistic brother and a regular brother because both kinds are fun to play with!”

What a great kid she is.

We just got Ratatouille today. Well, last night. Really like it, btw. But that’s not why I’m posting.

First of all, we only have it because my mother bought it for the kids for a Christmas present. Then she said “It’s silly to make them wait for CHristmas, especially the younger three. Here!” My mom is so great.

Second of all we actually got to watch it! Now, that calls for some explanation. Usually when we get a new movie we don’t get to watch it for weeks, or even months. Bede refuses to let it play downstairs, so it doesn’t get played. The big girls and Gil watch movies upstairs in the girls’ room on the tiny TV, so nobody gets deprived, but we’d all rather watch on the nice TV downstairs. When we tried to watch Chicken Little, Bede screamed through the first 15 minutes and fought whoever was holding him so he could go eject the disc. Same with Brother Bear. So, I’d given up, really… but! I thought, hey, try again. He’s changed a lot recently, maybe he can handle this.

HE DID!

I gave him the box to look at while he ate lunch, so he’d know we had it. Then, I started it. He was very upset at first, but responded to “Bede, stop!” when he ran for the player. He also tried to offer other solutions, to watch other movies instead (Toy Story 2, Mickey’s Twice Upon A Christmas, Cars) which let me know he was in touch with his language. At that point I took him upstairs and let him play in the shower for a few minutes. WHen he came back down, he made one lunge for the DVD player and then just lay down on the sofa and watched (and enjoyed) the movie. When it was over he played it again.

I know if you don’t have an autistic child you might think this is no big deal, but really, it is.

Anyway, cute movie!

Tonight Bede followed the directions in a kids’ activity book! My mom called me a few minutes ago to tell me about it. We ate dinner at my folks’ house as we usually do on Sundays and Bede was writing one of those books for quite a while. She was flipping through it and looking at what he’d written, and came to a page that said “Draw two wheels on each car. How many wheels are there?”

Bede had drawn two wheels on the five cars on the page (which is new, he doesn’t draw as much as he writes) and then wrote “TEN” next to them.

!!!

While he’s had those cognitive skills for some time (Bede has no noticeable cognitive delay) he has never followed directions like that before, ever. Maybe all this poop sensory seeking stuff is due to some new neural pathways a-forming.

I think it’s time for some fun social stories.

Well, again it’s very late and I don’t have much time to blog.

Today was a good day. Still with the poop problems in the Bede division, but we’re slowly twirling, twirling towards freedom. I think.

In other kid news, Faith is managing to be very helpful and grown-up one minute and thoughtless  and scatterbrained the next. Reckon that’s normal. Poor kid gets to be my learning curve. Abby is still just truckin along. She’s been on a very even keel lately, which is nice. Gilbert is a man of drama! and Trixie is, well, actually she’s in my lap now so I can’t type. But good. And the new person is presumably happy and well in utero.

My left arm is fatigued from one-handed typing. That’s all for tonite.