Washing

So in the last post, I showed you Purple Boy.  He was so purple he turned the bath water a lovely shade of lavender. 

The next morning, my dreams were permeated by the sound of water running in the bath tub.  Instantaneously awake, I leapt out of bed and flew down the hallway.  Mowgli was standing over the tub giggling maniacally.  In the tub were about 8 stuffed animals, including his favorites Mickey Mouse & Simba.  All of them had been colored with purple markers and were now taking their bath. 

We rescued the animals from the bathtub, and I made Mowgli cart them downstairs to the laundry room for a proper 'bath'.  I made him empty the dryer, and put the clothes in the washer into the dryer.  I measured out the soap for him to put in the washer and had him load it up with the animals.  And in an amazing feat of mommyhood, I still got him dressed and ready so that he didn't miss the school bus.
When he got home from school all the animals were clean and dry, sitting on the couch, as good as new.  All was well in his world.  

Today I took some towels down to the laundry room to be washed.  I opened up the washer to find mound and mounds of soap all over the clean wet clothes.  There was another pile of soap on the floor in front of the dryer.  Opened it up, and sure enough there were more mounds of soap inside the dryer. 

Like a great big glowing sign saying 'I tried to give Mickey another bath.'

This is what I get for teaching him how to use the washing machine. 

Tofu

A few days ago, I made some miso soup.  This was the first time that I have served tofu on the dinner table and Mowgli didn't gag when he tried it.  I keep serving tofu, because it's one of the few things I can be absolutely certain that Mowgli doesn't like.  Or at least that was my plan.

See, Mowgli's a smart kid.  He knows the 'right' answer.  He knows what adults want to hear.  So when we ask him if he liked X.  The reply he always gives is "I like X."  always with the same sing-song intonation. 

Was that a good apple?
It's a good apple.
Was that a good brownie?
It's a good brownie.
Was that a good mushroom?
It's a good mushroom.
Did you like those noodles?
I like noodles.
Did you like the tofu?
I like tofu.

Many parents would give anything to quit hearing but I don't like it.  Sometimes my brother is one of them.   But this is a real problem for us!  Mowgli's not answering the question, he's just giving us the response that he thinks will satisfy us.  And really, he's at an age where it's developmentally appropriate to think about favorites.  Favorite colors, favorite movies, favorite stories, favorite shirts...  We've got to get past just replying it's good to everything. 

But tofu made him gag.  Mowgli would tell me it's good around choking on it.  It was a golden opportunity.  So my glorious plan was to periodically serve tofu until he would tell me It's yucky! I don't like it!

Well, that was my plan until tonight.  Tonight I used the tofu leftover from the miso soup to make mabo dafu, a lovely combination of tofu & ground beef with a thick sauce.  Tonight he ate the rice and the tofu.  He picked the ground beef off of the tofu.  Ate the tofu.  Then asked for seconds of tofu.  He did not want seconds of rice.  He wanted tofu.  And he ate the seconds too. 

I can't tell if I'm winning or losing this battle. 

Being angry

I just saw an article in the NY Times about how this generation of American parents almost universally yells at their kids.   And of course, like spanking, we shouldn't do it because it might harm the little tykes psychologically.

I think that's ridiculous even with neurotypical kids, but with autistic kids it's just downright wrong.

See a lot of the early research showed that autistic individuals don't recognize emotions, but that's not exactly true.  It's relatively easy to learn the 'big' emotions:  happy, mad, sad.  This person is very happy, and they can see that.

But almost universally, they never learn to recognize more subtle emotions, like say this

 So what does this have to do with yelling?  Well, if your child can't tell you're upset if you're only a little bit upset, then you have to act upset enough so that they recognize it.  They have to understand that what they just did was bad, or dangerous, or mean, and that their actions have an impact on the people around them.

Two more play-script books

Ok the first two books I made were for playing Pirates & Dragons.  Nice thing about those, I didn't have to draw any people.  People are harder than just about anything else to draw.  This time I manned up and drew some people, in two very different styles.

Let's Play Doctor:

Let's Play Fireman:

The way we use these for therapy is to have Mowgli play with the toy for a little while.  Then he reads the book with his therapist, then they act out the play-script with the toys again. 

Again, anyone who wants to use these images for their own therapeutic purposes, is welcome to do so. 

Teaching Play

One of the things we've been working really hard on around here is pretend play.  This is a really hard thing to teach because most children don't have to be taught, they just do it naturally.  One way to try to teach it is to give the child some templates of play, or play scripts.  Since Mowgli can already read, I decided to use books to provide the templates.

I went to the bookstore to try and find a few appropriate books, but the selection, um.... left something to be desired.  All of the books at his reading level had plots that were way way way to complicated.  All of the books for younger kids had no plot at all.  So I decided to make my own.

They were really fun to make.  They've both got a total of 4 pages including the cover.  They're bound with embroidery thread.  The illustrations were done with india ink & watercolor.  I constructed 2 more books that I haven't written anything in yet.  I'll post them as soon as I've finished the illustrations. 

Let's Play Dragon

 

Let's Play Pirates. 

Mowgli loved them & they've been great so far.

Images are free to copy for use in therapy. 

An altered state of normal

I thought about just jumping in.  Maybe showing off my latest creation.  Writing a post like what I hope will become average fare around here.  But then I figured an introduction is more in order.

See I don't really know what normal looks like any more.  Every family has stories about the time cousin dave jumped into the swimming pool when he was 2 and Aunt Sarah had to go in after him.  My family has stories about the time Mowgli almost walked off the bow of the USS Stewart at Sea Wolf Park.  

Notice the destroyer is parked on concrete, not docked in water.

But see those events don't really sum up the true distance from normal.  For most people, those are outlier events.  Things that happen once or twice in a childhood, they're not things that you have to plan against constantly.  We have alarms on all of our windows because more than once, Mowgli has gone out of a 3rd story window.  And I don't mean he's leaned out.  I mean all the way out, standing on a ledge about 5 inches wide.  Why not lock them?  Well the boy's just too smart, he's figured out every lock we've put on every door or window.  So we settle for alarms.

So what does normal look like around this house?  Normal is asking, "What do you want for dinner?" and getting "coming soon to DVD" in reply.  Normal is driving Mowgli to some sort of therapy 3 days a week, and having a therapist visit our house on 3 of the remaining 4 days.  Normal was crossing the street to avoid someone walking their dog so that Mowgli didn't become terrified of the pup and go into fight-or-flight mode.  Normal is trying to teach a little boy who just started first grade and is reading at a second grade level how to play with a toy pirate ship.

Think about that.  You don't have to teach kids how to play with toys.  You put the toy in front of the kid and imagination takes over.  But that's life in our house.  We have to teach Mowgli how to play.  We have to teach him how to say 'catch' before he throws a ball and pegs another kid.  We've worked very hard to teach him to say "I don't like that."  The boy will eat tofu, and while shuddering from how badly it tastes, say, "I like tofu." 

This dragon is called autism.  We just do our best to keep dancing. 

 

Mowgli