Storytime

Here's a conversation we had today. It's a first to have him tell a story.

Bright Eyes: "Salty likes to tell stories. [That bit is a script.] Bright Eyes is a boy likes to tell stories too. I like to tell stories."

Me: "Really? Can you tell me a story?"

Bright Eyes: "This is a story about Mum. Mum likes go for a walk. One day she walked Bright Eyes. [mumble mumble, his brow furrowed as if concentrating.] Mouses. Then walked on the path. That's the end of the story."

And yes, he told a true story. It was the story of our walk to school in the morning. We had gone for a walk, and pretended to be mice to ease the tension he was feeling about not going in the car. First we walked on the grass, then on the path.

Aquarium

It was the last day of the school holidays today, so we took all the children to Sydney Aquarium for a special treat.

I was a bit concerned that Bright Eyes might not want to go, and certainly he seemed very negative about it if we mentioned it before we got there.

However, he LOVED it! He showed me fish and sharks, he looked at everything with delight and enjoyment. He went with his older sister and found great things to see. I was just delighted to see his face light up with every new display.

Helping out

I took the three children away to the beach by myself this week while my husband was at a youth camp. (Clearly, I was feeling brave!)

I noticed that Bright Eyes is really starting to help me more and do more things with me. Over the three days he did little things like:
- took a bag in from the car when we arrived
- helped unpack the food box and put some in the fridge
- assisted in making the beds and then pulling the sheets off once we were leaving
- thought of and initiated a clean-up of his trains so that he could go to sleep on his bed.

This is all 'guide-apprentice' stuff in RDI language.

For anyone who thinks it sounds normal, the fact is that Bright Eyes has adamantly and loudly refused to do anything that even remotely resembles assisting or helping or doing something with someone else for most of his life. It has taken off for the better in the last few months.

I did also notice that he needs more time to himself than I thought. An outing in the morning and afternoon was too much. He can really only cope with one thing a day without getting into an anxious state.

Rainbows

It's been raining here, but it stopped this evening, and from the bedroom Bright Eyes called me, "Mum. Look at the rainbow."

I went in to see him standing at the window looking at the biggest, most beautiful rainbow stretched right across the sky.

He said, "Look at the rainbow - it's really big," and looked up at me to share the moment. He was so happy about seeing it, and happy about sharing it with me.

I think it was the most beautiful moment I've ever had with him.

Untherapy

We watched another RDI presentation from the RDIOS site last night. It was great - again. I'm pleased that there are eight of them, plus ongoing access to 'webinars' which are like seminars over the web.

I've always struggled with how to explain RDI to the people who ask about it. I um and ah and feel like I'm losing myself in technical words about guides and apprentices. So it was great to hear Dr Gutstein describe RDI simply as 'un-therapy'.

It's not 'therapy' if we understand therapy to be something extra or special or unusual. It's just helping the child learn normal child development. The difference is that we have to slow it down, break it down and do it in a quieter, more deliberate way. It's a second chance to do what everyone else does - grow and develop those relationship connections in the brain.

I love the term untherapy. It sits nicely with 'unschooling' which is my other latest interest.

Drawing

Here’s a picture we drew together in lab time this week.

Up until now Bright Eyes has refused point blank to even hold crayons or pens. I think he finds fine motor hand work so difficult that he gets overwhelmed.

Over the last couple of weeks I’ve been ‘scaffolding*’ this kind of work by saying “Let’s do it together”, moving him on to my lap, holding the crayon with him and drawing. I’ve gradually lessened my control of the crayon so that he’s making most of the effort.

I was pretty pleased that when we decided to draw fire, he grabbed the yellow crayon and scribbled really hard. I coloured red on top, and then he added orange. Then I invited him to draw himself in the picture. He hardly hesitated! I was delighted.

“Sad face. Bright Eyes is getting in the fire!” he said. I added the fire engine, and we both drew water going all over the fire. Then he asked me to change the sad face to a happy face because the fire was out! What a great story!

*scaffolding is an RDI term which means giving enough help in the task so that it is achievable, yet still just challenging enough. So it might be getting a T-shirt turned the right way around before a child puts their arms into it, or helping someone work a puzzle out by doing all the edge pieces first... there are many examples...

Making connections

The new RDI computer database has some great features, one of which is a series of ‘e-learning’ lectures. We watched one the other night (part of our homework assigned by our consultant) and were impressed.

Dr Gutstein was talking about autism being a chronic bio-psycho-social condition, where for whatever reason (and there are many possible reasons, but nothing conclusive yet) the brain doesn’t make the normal multiple connections between its different parts.

He showed a great example of an autistic savant, Stephen, whose amazing gift is memory and reproduction of maps. He was taken for a helicopter flight over Rome for a few hours and then spent three days drawing everything he saw – tiny winding streets, rivers, highways, landmark buildings and apartment blocks in meticulous detail, even down to the number of windows in the Colliseum.

He made the point that wherever Stephen goes, all his focus is on buildings, architecture and street layouts. His brain can really only make one major connection. But neuro-typical people make lots of different connections.

Putting myself in the same helicopter, I might think about the fact that this is my first time in a helicopter and I’m nervous, and I wonder how long the flight will last, and Rome is a lot bigger and busier than the city I live in, and I remember once going to Paris, and Rome is quite different from Paris, and I never learned enough ancient history because I hated the teacher, and even now I can hear him giving out detentions left right and centre....

What RDI is trying to do is to help autistic people make that variety of connections.

So when Bright Eyes and I see a bird in the sky, I might say aloud, “Where’s that bird going?” or “Wow! He’s flying high” or “Hey – its’ white, just like a cockatoo” or “I wonder if he can touch the clouds”. I wouldn’t say, “Look at that. What is it?” because that only reinforces the one connection he has already made.

I found it really useful concept to broaden my daily interactions with Bright Eyes. We’re watching another one tonight. Looking forward to it!

Age matters

Bright Eyes' quote of the day.

"I'm not four any more. I'm ten."

count to 20

We've discovered a wonderful new way to get Bright Eyes transitioning more happily.

It came about when he wouldn't get out of the shower. Remembering that my current RDI objective is to s-l-o-w d-o-w-n, I said, "I'll count to 20 and then we'll turn off the taps."

I counted slowly and calmly all the way to 20, then reached in, turned the water off and took him out of the shower. He protested the first night. The second night he turned off the taps himself when I reached 20. The third night he happily turned off the water before I even got to 6.

I can now use the trick for anything I want him to do. "I'll count to 20 and then we're going to clean our teeth/ pack up the toys/ go inside/ get dressed..."

It also works for both boys when they are trying to share. Each is happy to have a turn with something, wait until I count and then hand it over to the other one for their turn.

It has backfired on me though. I was in the shower myself yesterday, hoping for a nice long hot soak, when Bright Eyes came in and counted slowly and deliberately up to 20. Once he got there, I had to turn off the water and hop out!

He was very proud of himself. "I counted for Mummy!" he said to his father.

I love my children

What a great day. I really enjoyed the children today. They were a pleasure and a joy to be with.

Some of the highlights:

Problem solving. The picture shows Bright Eyes getting a solution to his problem of being thirsty next to a bubbler that was just too tall for him. I thought that was pretty good. That's his sister walking up by the way. She likes to get into photos...

Bright Eyes and his sister in the pool. It was too cold for me so I sat and watched as they jumped in together and had a ball. Bright Eyes referenced her, waited for her to jump and sought out her face for the emotional response after the jump. He invited her (not bossed her) to join him, and copied what she did as well.

A complicated game of cubby-houses. I rearranged the lounge room so there is a great space behind the sofa - perfect for a cubby house. It's out of view too, so I don't worry too much about the mess. The three of them set up beds, problem solved when the baby wanted all the beds to himself, and played happily in the morning, not even missing their normal TV time.

Bed time. Bright Eyes and his sister go to bed together in our room. They read and play for a while until it gets dark. Tonight when I went to calm them down and say goodnight, the two of them were tucked up together pretending to be twins, looking as cozy as could be.

Original speech. I can tell when Bright Eyes is using his own words compared to a script (even when I am unaware of the script) because he gets his parts of speech slightly wrong. I find it cute, and I'm encouraged by it because it shows he's processing and trying things out. Today, I put a hot pancake pan under the tap and it did that big sizzle steam thing. He was standing nearby and reeled back, saying "I'm afraiding of the hot!"

RDI therapy time. We played a game today which worked really successfully. We had a bounce on the mattress on the floor, then fell over together and looked at a card from a simple 'charades' game. It gave an object or a simple action so we talked about it, and then acted it out for a minute or so. A couple of times he didn't want to do the action (skipping and fishing) so we chose another card which he preferred.

Then we did an up in the air game, landing wildly on the mattress. "I'm a boy, and I'm broken" he said. He would crash, and then say "I'm broken" so I would be a doctor and fix up legs and arms, ears and nose. He took a turn to fix me up when I got broken.

Finally, I let him use the Thomas trains he brought in with him and we played an interactive pretend game, chuffing around together and talking to the Fat Controller here and there. It wasn't a script he was following, although there were elements of the stories he knew in the play, but a genuine shared experience.

Apprenticeship

I was going to write today about how hard I was finding the whole guide/apprentice relationship thing. It has seemed that Bright Eyes fights everything I want to do with him, so I have not been doing a lot of it.

However, today I decided that we would do more together, so I made sure I held him close, gave him time to process everything and left opportunities for him to be competent in his task.

We did...

...laundry. I took his hand and led him in. "We need to get the things out," I said, looking at the door of our frontloader. He opened the door, and I took his hand to help me pull the wet clothes out. We also loaded some things in, I got him to put the soap poweder in, and then he closed the door and did the setting.

... and sorting. I asked his big sister to supervise this as he has not ever been interested when I've done it. However, she didn't have much success either. So I put him on my lap and handed him to clothes to throw onto the piles. He participated and almost had fun despite his reluctance!

Therapy time was very successful. I decided to do painting because I'm concerned that he shows no interest in fine motor drawing or writing skills. I had bought some new paints and no-spill paint pots, so we organised them together, unscrewing the lids and pouring the paints in together.

We ran into a little hiccup when there was a pot for green, but no green paint, so we had to figure it out together and mix up some green.

After that we got to the painting. We had a number of opportunities for making various shapes into different things. At the end we made 'butterfly' pictures, where you paint and then fold the paper over and get the same print on both sides.

I was delighted when he came out with two different labels for our last paintings. One was 'a waterfall' and the other was 'a forest'.

Swimming

nice neighbours

Our neighbours are away for three weeks and have given us carte blanche to use their inground swimming pool while they are gone.

Bright Eyes is in heaven in the water. He jumps and splashes and swims confidently with his floaties (water wings?). He is interested in what others are doing, and he invites us to jump with him or go underwater with him.

It's a joy to see him so alive and invigorated.

We can even get him out of the pool quite happily as long as we take enough time and give him enough notice.