SOOC

Opinions differ but there is a common misconception that autistic people do not enjoy a sense of humour, or alternatively that their sense of humour is hybrid. Personally, I think it's a little more complicated than that. Slapstick is easy. Words and their nuances can be a little more tricky.

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They might not be the words I would have chosen but I certainly recognize the feeling of debilitating exhaustion, well spent.

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Adultish!

I apologise in advance for this one. There is something about the wiring of a speech delay and they way they think that just cracks me up.

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Cheers dears

Mass exodus

I spend an inordinate amount of time creating bite sized, bone-free fish balls. They contain attractive flecks of delicate chives, a high percentage of caramelized onions and the smoothest consistency that the Magimix could manage. I decide to play fair and tell them that they are indeed made of fish. The victims look at them with an air of despair.

“I think I’m gonna be a vegetarian startin……right now.”
“No….I am bein dah vegetarian in dis family,” he says sputtering cracker crumbs, exempt from this particular experiment.
“But you like fish fingers.”
“Sticks mom, they’re called fish sticks out here.”
“Sticks, fingers, balls, they’re all the same. You like them. These are just round sticks without the crumbs.”
“Dah crumbs I like. Dah fish is……..?”
“Diabolical,” adds his little brother with glee and not a jot of sympathy.
“Just think of it as brain food. I can’t think why you don’t love fish. I love fish. All fish, any fish. I think I’d drop down dead if I couldn’t eat fish.”
They both look at me awaiting my downfall with pleasant anticipation. They wait silently. “Just give them a try. Be brave. It’s good to try new things, new food, you never know you might just like them.” I fizzle out as my script is over-used and tatty at the edges.
“I wan……can I have…….is…..dere any ketchup?”
I stomp off to the fridge in defeat. He empties half a bottle of sauce over one fish ball and sniffs.
“We’re going to have fish once a week, at least, from now on.”
“It is being dah new rule?”
“Er…yes…..good point. The new rule is ‘fish on Friday.’”

I beam, smug. We shall join the ranks of the majority at last, by hook or by crook.

“Dat’s good!” he cooes as he stands, turns on his heel and wanders off with his sister close behind him, “hey, hang on a minute you two. Just where do you think you are going?”
“You said Friday Mom, today’s Thursday,” she mutters over her shoulder. I pout at the one remaining child left behind, still munching his way through several tonnes of Goldfish Crackers, “I am love,” he beams.
“Yes…….I know you love Goldfish dear."
“I am have a huge brain.”
“Indeed.”
“I am have fish on Friday. I am have fish every day. I am love my new food.”

Wordless - Special Exposure Wednesday=Boo!

I never notice what a fine pair of pins he has, apart from the bruises of course.


I do have some words over at my other site, "Alien in a foreign field" called "Fashion fiend."


If you enjoy caption competitions and photographs, you may wish to nip along to"DJ Kirkby" over at "Chez Aspie" and test your brain power.

Tackle it Tuesday - Rewards and awards

You have nothing to lose by going green

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Everyone needs a pat on the back sometimes. As the nights draw in and the schedule comes under pressure, it can be hard for children to stay on track. This is where motivation is key. We all respond well to praise, recognition and rewards and this is a way of helping our children realize that we not only notice their efforts but we appreciate how hard they’re trying.




First it’s important to narrowly taylor your reward to your particular child. For example, many struggle with homework. It may be that you want to award them for completing their homework in a timely manner over a period of time, such as a week or a month. However, that may be setting the bar too high. Maybe an award for their best efforts is more appropriate or perhaps an award for remaining calm and having a better attitude towards homework time.

The awards can be configured to fit your family, different ages abilities and talents. The most important element is that each child should be able to achieve a realistic goal, otherwise the whole exercise will bring further disappointment and discouragement.

Once you have narrowed down who will be rewarded for what, it is then time to make the awards. It may be that you can encourage your children to take part in the creative process so that they are more involved if they participate positively. Hopefully, making the awards will provide a crafty play time for at least one of your children on a rainy afternoon and perhaps a little one on one time.

Currently, everyone is strapped for cash and some of us are trying to ‘go green’ at the same time. Whilst it would be fun to see if we can create our own green backs and get away with it, it is probably safer to stick to materials that we already have in our possession.



Under no circumstances should you go out and buy anything new, instead troll through the piles of broken toys and tat that you already have piled up in every corner of your home, or maybe that’s just us? You may, however, buy additional supplies of glue.



Assemble your creations and add a blob of Velcro to the back. Aim for lightness so that they will be able to remain in place in a vertical position. Attatch the opposite Velcro blob to a sheet of poster board and arrange your awards. Fix the awards board to a wall in a prominent position at a child’s eye level.






The beauty of this project is that you can include private family jokes that mean nothing to the population in general but will tap into your own child’s perspective adding an extra layer of insight. For instance one of my sons is very keen on drawing Y-fronts on his figures. No matter what he draws there is always someone lurking in the picture sporting a pair of Y fronts.

Hence:-





I do hope you get the chance to try this one out and reap the rewards yourself!

Cheers dears



Backstory

It is difficult for a parent to actively treat children differently in some situations. For example, when a child has achieved a new goal it is natural to praise them, you can’t help yourself. However, some children react negatively to praise. Some children are so enraged when they receive praise that they destroy the object that they created.





The reasons for such a reaction are complex. Some people, myself included, find it very difficult to button a lip and not praise the achievement, especially when the praise flows to the other children. Such differential treatment seems absurd. I would note that this is not the sometimes fatuous praise, a general touchy feely, no content kind of praise, but a specific identifiable praise in the nature of ‘you did a great job with that straight line,’ ‘I really like the colours you chose,’ ‘his expression is really funny.’ Since positive words provoke a meltdown, I’ve learned to curb my words, remain silent and bite my lip. I could expound at length but I have yet to find someone with similar experiences.





Your award ceremony can be as elaborate or as simple as you choose. For us, the weekend is the best because I am better able to pick a time when they are more receptive.







Involvement and active participation is key but also difficult to engineer. We need a time where there is nothing else more interesting competing for their attention so that they are better able to engage in the here and now. Joint attention to one communal activity is more likely to be successful when other needs are met, other distractions have been eliminated and there are no other impending interruptions waiting in the wings to derail their attention span.






As with all things around here, this project has been brewing for a long time and was broken into small steps. Preparation in advance was primarily concentrated on ‘this is what will be happening in the future / this will be fun.’ Some children take longer to adjust to new concepts, they cannot be hurried or harried, they need time to adjust. The ‘gallery’ transition was in the summer. The awards appeared over two months ago. The ‘ceremony’ was a last week.

Scatological jokes are always appreciated.

Once the awards were made, we placed them in a prominent position for a couple of weeks, discussed, examined and handled them until they became more familiar. We would admire their gallery of pictures and debate which award seemed most appropriate to which drawing. This was in part to gauge their own expectations to see if they had already decided which picture matched which award. By being better able to match their expectations it became more likely that we would able to pick the correct award for the right picture during the ‘ceremony.’





This helps address another on going hurdle, the issue of choice. Without getting buried in the details, every positive choice necessarily means a lost opportunity, if you choose one, you lose the other[s]. Choice therefore induces stress and anxiety. It is one manifestation of OCD and perseverance over missed opportunities. Or, to put it another way, the pleasure of one positive choice is wiped out by the stress induced by all the ones that you have not chosen which might be better. Hence an extended exposure to the new thing, makes it less new, less valued and therefore sometimes easier to choose as the ‘cost’ of making a mistake is lessened. The trick it to time the exposure so that the new thing does not become so familiar that it merely blends in with the wallpaper and has no value at all.






Of course some other children would experience a long period of exposure as more anxiety inducing, longer to agonize over, longer to perseverate upon, as there is usually an equal or opposite effect with any one issue.

Since words can still be a little hit or miss, physical involvement, eye tracking and the kinesthetic connection helped reduce stress, increase their personal investment and advance them to a point where it was possible to try out the ceremony. For our children, we kept this as low key as possible because around here, quite often, actions speak louder than words.




What, if anything, might this mean? For me, this gives me some perspective.

When my children were first diagnosed, the kindly experts told me that they were unable to give me an accurate prognosis for the boys’ future. Being of a fundamentally pessimistic nature, I took this to mean that the future was dire. Being of a fundamentally contrary nature, I also set out to prove them wrong. As a direct result, I have actually inadvertently proved that they were right.



I should have listened to my pal, "It's all Okay," not "look through a glass darkly." Suffice to say that this is a tremendous leap forward.

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Daily Daub - possibly weekly

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Magic Marker Best shot Monday

Hosted by "Tracy" at "Mother May I," but the photo-picture below will whizz you right there with one click.

Just call me snap happy.

The artist at work! [Elder daughter]

Whilst she worked late into the night on her latest project, I was inspired to scribble a quick cartoon to my son. I left one at the foot of the stairs where I knew he would see it.




I left the other seleotaped over the computer screen, just to make sure that he received my message.




By the time I staggered down the stairs at 5:25 a.m. I was greeted with his own rendition.

This from my neophobic.

Oh the irony!

p.s. it may be that you are also interested in entering the "What are you Like?" competition endorsed by Roald Dahl, where you enter pictures that represent significant elements of your life. My "elder daughter" has her entry. I have "mine." We're hoping to persuade my younger daughter to participate too. Now what do you suppose we need to do to persuade "Nonna" to join in? Three generations of women seems like a good idea.

Horrid Henry Annual Review by Francesca Simon

Annual "Review" - Horrid Henry by Francesca Simon, illustrated by Tony Ross

The great thing about a blog isn’t the "memories" but accurate "20-20" recall. Not so long back the primary swear words around here were 'Barnacles' and 'Fishpaste,' from Spongebob Squarepant.

I listen to my American children and their strong accents as they abuse each other.
“Don do dat Poopy head!”
“Leave it out Nappy face!”
“Worm!”
“Pongo pants.”
“Yur mean.”
“Yur a Walkie-Talkie-Burpy-Slurpy-Teasy-Weasy Doll!”
“That’s it you two ! Stop being horrid!”

Thanks for the accompanying CD mum. It really helps with their aural processing. You'll be delighted to know that they now swear with perfect English accents.

The Ghost of Garfield?

I stand in the middle of the kitchen listening to NPR tell me that my brain, just like everyone else’s brain is incapable of multi-tasking. I happen to agree with them even though my behaviour betrays me. The implication, is that people positively choose to multi-task, rather than having multi-tasking thrust upon them. Personally, I can think of few things finer than having the luxury to devote all my attention to just one thing.


Maybe I should pass the message on to the next generation.

I know he likes to read these........

I know he likes to ride this.........

But rarely have I seen the two combined so determinedly.

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Opposites attract - a snippet

My ‘silent’ son has a sudden burst of chat. I beam as he chats, as it’s one of those monologues that I don’t want to staunch. Interruption generally equates to stall. I know more facts about Pokemons that I could ever once imagined. I am so impressed with his ability to sit stationary on a chair whilst his legs pump beneath him, a performance worthy of any cyclist on the Tour de France. As he chats his fingers shred the paper on the wax crayons and snap their little necks into fragments as the words flow in an endless stream. My facility of speech seems positively feeble by comparison. If any parts of my anatomy were as busily frenetic as his, I should have no choice but to remain silent.

Thursday 13 - 165 Spotting the evidence




Thirteen Things about spotting incriminating evidence 1. I know who stole the Sharpie pen, the evidence is written permanently on his face. 2. I know who unraveled the toilet rolls from the partial square stuck on his foot. 3. I know who hid the toothbrush, next time hide your sister’s. 4. I know you can use scissors now because of the evidence in the trash. 5. I know who was on U-tube as you have a history. 6. I know who has a secret wound and who was brave, from the Band aid wrapper, the scissors and the blood. 7. I know who can use their brakes from the squashed tomatoes in your bike tyres. 8. I know who read after lights out, from the Garfield quotes this morning. 9. I know where you got that phrase from, because I checked your U-tube history. 10. I know who cut off the shoe laces and why. Full marks for using the trash. 11. I know who stole the chocolate, a pity it was the baking variety. 12. I know who failed to flush the toilet from the footprints on the seat, one size does not fit all. 13. I know who have a "sweetheart" and I even know her "name." Next time use a pencil, as love can often fade, Tattoos do not. I'd add a photo, but the evidence on the culprit has been scrubbed with soap and water! I need a CSI to check the red patch for trace.




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Wordless - Special Exposure Wednesday

Do the math! Who needs words?


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I do have some words over at my other site, "Alien in a foreign field" called "GMT"

If you enjoy caption competitions and photographs, you may wish to nip along to"DJ Kirkby" over at "Chez Aspie" and test your brain power.