Spring is here and everything is growing!

It is Spring here at the Mothership and the flowers are blooming, the bees are buzzing and Eli is growing.

He had a homework assignment last week that was interesting. Along with the usual math worksheets and reading, the teacher had asked the children to choose one spot of their home to organize. Really. They've been taking care to keep their desks and area tidy at school and this was supposed to help them carry that skill home.

We chose his dresser to organize. It's tiny, the one he's had since infancy, and doesn't hold much in the first place. The bottom drawer has always held shirts and it has consistently fallen apart, so we asked Jim to help with that repair. Socks, underwear and swimming trunks are in the top drawer, with pants and shorts in the middle. Yep, a tiny little three drawer dresser.

Eli was acting silly through most of the organizing, but he did help. He told me which shirts he doesn't wear anymore, which are too small, and which ones he just plain does not like. The adorable orange striped polo shirt was tossed in the giveaway pile just because of the buttons at the top. Shoot. He looked cute in it, but wouldn't wear it, so we got rid of it. The shorts and pants were pretty quick to go through, and we found a number of Legos and toys in the underwear drawer that needed put away, but it went fast! I was amazed at how much he has grown physically in the past year, some of those pants were so short.

This is pretty mundane, and it seems kind of goofy to share it, but the point is that he is really becoming more responsible and independent all the time. His aide at school has noticed it, too. She writes notes each day, sometimes short and sometimes pretty extensive. Yesterday she wrote a LOT about how independent he has become just in the past few months. As I picked him up after school, she joked that "He doesn't need me at all anymore! He checks himself out, checks himself in, does his work--I'm going to be out of a job soon!"

What she was referring to--the check-in and check-out procedures, this is how we track his daily progress with mundane things. Things that we just expect a typical child to do on its own, but which an autistic kid needs help with dozens, even hundreds of times, before they finally get it. Each morning he checks in, puts his stuff away, and gets scored on how well he does transitioning from home to school. The staff may note that he was pokey or grumpy at the time. He has needed assistance with the procedure until now, but now he does it all on his own. Same deal with the check-out at the end of the day. He gets scored throughout the day and then at the end takes the score sheet to the school social worker so that she can total his points to see if he made his goal. His goal each day is a score of 80, which he easily makes most every day.

The first time his aide tried to allow Eli to check out on his own, it did not go well. A few weeks ago, she was visibly upset as she walked him out. He was fine, but here's what happened. He was supposed to take his goals sheet to the social worker's office for the tally, but somehow got on autopilot and took his backpack out to the playground. Soon as he got outside he realized his mistake and tried to get back into the school, but the doors lock automatically. He was stuck.

He panicked. He started pounding on the playground door, trying to get in. He started screaming. About that time, the social worker buzzed the intercom for the classroom, letting the aide know that Eli had not made it to her office yet. They found him quickly, hysterically crying and completely freaked out. He was afraid he was going to be in trouble.

He was not in trouble, obviously. They were scared as was he, but this is not a big deal, to me. To be honest, I think the aide was scared that I was going to go all batshit crazy on her for allowing him outside alone. I did not. Why would I? He was fine, had realized his mistake and tried to get back in. That was the right thing to do! I assured her it was no big deal, said to try again until he got it right, maybe shadowing him a couple of times until he got the hang of it.

He got it. He goes by himself now. He is independent. It took dozens of times of repeating the same procedure, but he really did get it.

I remember years ago reading something about Lovaas and although I really disagree with a lot of what he had to say regarding autistic people, I agreed with one portion of his interview. The interview can be found here, and if you read it, you'll see why I don't like a lot of what he had to say. But here is the part that stuck with me, and I live by these words at times.

Normal kids give you too much for free. They really do. What you can do with a normal child is no test of psychology or of parents. It is only when you run into an autistic child where things don't happen that you really find out what you know about human behavior. When language doesn't develop, it forces you to identify just what goes into the development of language. When kids don't develop warmth for other human beings, it forces you to find out just how emotions are acquired.

Pretty much on target, really. I prefer the term "typical" to "normal" but you get the idea. I've said before that Eli showed up and changed all the rules on me, just when I had gotten that parenting thing all figured out. He didn't talk on time, walk on time, or potty-train according to the usual time tables for milestones. It took a lot of extra time and repetitions before he got it. But he did get it. It just took longer. I can wait. I have oodles of time.