Back to basics... again

Today was another of 'those days', where Bright Eyes just couldn't cope with anything. He tantrumed to turn off the TV, get in the car, go into the shops. He tantrumed at lunch, dinner and bath, and then again at bed. It was all too much.

So when it came time for RDI lab time, I decided to play it cool and take it very easy. I hardly used any words at all, and concentrated on physical co-regulation. We rocked a lot of the time, him sitting on my lap. We moved front and back, and then side to side, and then when I thought he was calm enough, we circled around together.

I tried to get him to play a finger game with me at one point early on, but he couldn't cope with the interaction so we went to a row-row action which was easier for him.

By the end he was well regulated and was able to cope with a 'falling in the mud and cleaning up' game with me, but in general, everything I did was all very slow, quiet and rhythmic.

Calming down after tantrums
I seem to be getting better at calming him down when he really throws a wobbly. I hold him on my lap (and he's happy to have the cuddles) and just rock back and forward gently. After ten minutes, or when I judge he's peaceful enough, I make a comment on something we can both see, or something about him. Eg. "There's a bird in the garden" or "You've got ten toes on your feet." I don't offer questions or abstract ideas - he seems to calm quicker if he focuses on something concrete.

Looks good, but...

Bright Eyes looks like he is interested in the alphabet, but actually he is scripting.

His script for the letters ABC is long and complicated and is completely taken from an introductory segment at the beginning of every ABC Kids video we own.

It goes like this:

duh duh duh duh duh dee da, A

duh duh deeeeeeeee, de de de, B

duh duh duh, duh duh duh, C

A. B. C.

We are the Hooley Dooleys, so how do you do,

We are the Hooley Dooleys, and who are you?

Trust Us, We're Bananas.

I'm Blinky, Blinky Bill.

A-A-A-R-D-V-A-R-K, A-A-A-R-D-V-A-R-K,

duh duh duh daa, do do duh dah, Wiggle wiggle wiggle wiggle wiggle!

Give yourselves a big clap everybody!

ABC. Bringing you the best in children's video.

(He gets a bit stuck on the Aardvark bit...)

In a related piece of news - he can spell his name, and even type it on the computer. I guess that's good!

Carols chaos

Our town enjoys its annual Carols by the Lake, organised by the Lions Club. The way they attract a crowd is to invite every single group of children in the town that can sing a song or do a dance, and then watch their parents and grandparents roll up.

Bright Eyes' preschool and his sister's school choir were both asked to perform a couple of numbers, so I took all the children along to enjoy the concert.

The preschool was on first, and Bright Eyes was a star... sort of. Their first mistake was to put him near a microphone. He knows what they are, and he knows how to use them, so he spent the entire time making noises and saying 'Ssssh' into it. At one point he spontaneously introduced the next song, and he did all the 'Oys' at the right time, really loudly into the microphone at the end of the song lines.

The crowd thought he was hilarious. His sister thought he was embarrassing. I was torn between the two feelings. He was cute, sure, but I wished he could have even tried to sing along and do what everyone else was doing.

The honest truth? I think he was working the crowd! He knew they were laughing at him, and he liked the response and was angling for more.

(In the end, the excursion was a bit of a disaster. There were way too many flies and they were sticking to all of us, and Bright Eyes and his baby brother were getting more and more upset, so we left as soon as his sister's choir sang. I won't be taking them out alone again on a summer evening again for a while.)

Photographer

The beauty of a relatively cheap digital camera is that the children can use it without us having to worry about them wasting film.


Bright Eyes loves our camera. One of his favourite afternoon activities is to walk around the house taking photos. Some of them are wonderful - a selection follows.

his view of mum in the kitchen

the inside of the washing machine

self-portrait... he held the camera out as far as he could and snapped

Baby brother

I've mentioned Bright Eyes' little brother a few times, but I don't think I've told you that the two of them just don't get on!

It's not the little one's fault. He wants to play. He shows empathy when Bright Eyes is having a tantrum. He looks for him in the morning when he wakes up. He calls him "Ca-ca". It's really cute.

I just wonder how long his enthusiasm will last for, given that Bright Eyes hits, pushes or headbutts him at every single opportunity he can find. If I have the two boys in a room together, I have to be there with them, because it will only take one minute before one of them is yelling, either from frustration or from pain.

This is probably a normal sibling reaction, but I think it may be exacerbated by the fact that the baby represents uncertainty for Bright Eyes and dealing with him requires more flexibility than he is capable of... and that's the autism talking.

S-L-O-W D-O-W-N

Slowing down is such an important part of RDI. Why do I find it so very very difficult?

I'm the sort of person who has always done four things at once, while thinking about the fifth and sixth things to do at the same time. I like achievement. I like efficiency. I like competence. I like not wasting time. I finish people's sentences for them. I get impatient when I have to wait... for anything.

I'm a classic Type A personality. I create stress and panic when I can't. It's not a great way to live.

Our feedback from our consultant today was to give Bright Eyes more space to process and think, and to slow down ourselves as we do this.

I really appreciate feedback like this. It brings me back to the basics. I've been flapping around in my head, panicking madly for a number of weeks now, and feeling dreadful physically as I do it. So today I have been conscious of my breathing and conscious of needing to chill out and just calm down.

I think one reason is that I was busy looking for another 'magic bullet' to fix Bright Eyes. I need to remember that I've found that magic bullet already. It's called RDI. The only trouble is, it's not instant and its' going to take time, and I have to change myself to be able to make its magic work.

Today

Dentist! We went to the dentist to get my tooth fixed. I parked the little boys on chairs with a box of chips each while I got done, and they were beautiful (the boys, not the chips). Bright Eyes has been playing dentists with his sister, so he was interested in the chair and had a ride. He knew to go up and down, lie back, open his mouth and say ah, and then 'rinse and spit'.

I managed to cut his hair! He sat on the bench with a tape playing and was completely still while I trimmed around the ears and back. I didn't make a big fuss of it, just grabbed the scissors and began.

Eggs! He ate three of them for dinner. That makes me feel better about the week's nutrition. Plus I've been getting coconut kefir (a pro-biotic) into him via his juice and water.

Shopping! He was a great helper in the weekly supermarket trek today.

Poo! Not what you want to read about, but he had a normal motion yesterday. Wow. That's about the first one in a year.

Quite a few transition tantrums! I counted six of them all up. I did have a success with getting him out of one of them though. He was screeching "Noooo" at me. He wasn't too upset yet, so I imitated his face and his voice and screeched back at him "Noooooo?" and then gave him a silly look. It was as if he realised how ridiculous his yelling was. He stopped, smiled and then changed his voice and face to ask for what he wanted nicely. My goodness!