We Go With Him

Actually Typing B

A significant change in the barometric pressure made for much more easeful bike riding, walking and generally being on Wednesday.

After a walk (which involved getting sprayed by a sprinkler in the dark -- hey!), Charlie wanted to 'type B ocean' on his iPad. We did a few rounds of Teletubbies + word dictation and then I thought I'd try an actual type B.

'B-a-r-n-e-y o-c-e-a-n' I spelled out. Charlie typed, took a quick glance at the choices and then said 'type B ocean.'

Well, he had never seen a video -- does it exist? -- of 'Barney at the sea' (though there were those songs from the Imagination Isle CD about the sailor going to sea sea sea ). I dictated 'B-a-r-n-e-y r-a-i-n-b-o-w.' Charlie typed and looked at the screen and said 'bye bye mom.'

We could hear the familiar sounds (first heard ca. 1998) of Barney, Baby Bop, Michael, Tasha, Min and Cathy singing about shapes and all the colors of the rainbow.

 

Typing in His Very Charlie Way

Amid bike riding (22 miles on Sunday for a 50 miles weekend), walking, pacing, stomping in certain areas of the house where the floor has lines (hardwood floor or linoleum squares), and of course, eating (including a frozen fry and apple snack at 11pm because a teenage boy's clock is, truly, in his belly), Charlie has been typing on his iPad.

Lest I give you the wrong impression and you think he is typing phrases and sentences to express wants, states of mind and conversation, he is typing two-word phrases beginning with 'teletubbies' and about 25 (give or take) nouns, verbs, adjectives or prepositions (most in English) that I have discovered are good search terms for a good range of Teletubbies videos. He is also only typing into the little search box on the YouTube app.

It's not proto-communication by any means. It's to watch snippets of Teletubbie videos that the three of us have been watching for 13 years, give or take. I know them by heart as I am sure Charlie does and as he scans the rows of videos I think of Iris Murdoch at the end of her life with Alzheimer's watching Teletubbies and The Fire and the Sun.

Is it useful? Better than nothing?

Oughtn't I to be shaping it into something else, trying to have Charlie type on the Notes or Pages app or showing him the words on a piece of paper?

It's a something of a yes answer to all. I've often thought that if we could find some format that provided Charlie with a motivation to write or read, it might be the key. Perhaps we have found it, or something on the way to it; it is not likely that Charlie will encounter the word 'Teletubbies' too much out in the world.

From all the repetition, he can type 'Teletubbies' on his own as well as 'favorite' and 'Kinderreime,' these being words I had found useful for finding videos he liked, when he was typing on a laptop before he had the iPad. 'Kinderreime' is German for 'nursery rhyme': There is a Teletubbies nursery rhymes video that Charlie loved when he was little and, one day, I had thought to search in foreign languages for videos, on the theory that such would be more likely to elude the copyright police. 

He is also close to typing 'tree' on his own. I can see him smiling sometimes when typing in 'favorite' and 'Kinderreime,' pleased that he is typing on his own.

Where will it lead?

I have been refraining from imposing too much didactic mom-order on Charlie's typing. I've done that before with some things and killed them, undoing Charlie's interest and most likely confusing him with my teacherly ways. Last night I had him type Barney with another word but the results were not of purple dinosaurs but someone's dog.

So 'type B ocean' remains for Teletubbie videos. We've been having a few sessions a day of this, often before bed and the trick is that I be willing to sit with Charlie as he types and types and types. It hasn't yet occurred to him, he could just do it on his own and so I feel like Annie Sullivan may have, or an anamensis.

I am enjoying it. Few have been the times that Charlie has ever shown interest in the written, the typed word.

 

Motherhood #fail #maybenot

To the best of our knowledge, Charlie did not sleep at all on Saturday night. He listened to music, paced in his room and the hallway and up and down the stairs and was standing over me asking if he could get his socks when I, after repeated attempts to coax him to lie down and sleep, opened my eyes at 6.30am.

Apparently all that sleep on Saturday was enough for two days for him.

It was as well that we got us off to an early start as rain fell for most of Sunday (a very good thing as it has been weeks since it rained in New Jersey) and pretty much straight through the afternoon and evening.

Charlie asked to go out to Jersey horse country. To no one's surprised, Charlie dozed off in the car but he was ready to get on his bike after Jim had unloaded them. It was misty but not (really) raining and Jim suggested he and Charlie wear their lycra skullcaps, which they had stopped wearing as of last Monday (when it was 90 degrees). Charlie was wary of the change from the change and then Jim realized that his helmet must be too tight with the cap on and a readjustment was in order.

 

They rode off and the rain came down, let up, came down harder.

Amid all this, and keeping an eye on my phone in case Jim wanted me to pick them up at an earlier point in the trail than the very end, I neglected to move Charlie's iPad. He likes to align it just so in the left-side back seat which is all very well except when it rains, as the window on that side is slightly out of line with the door frame. After we bought the car in October of 2009, Charlie had one ferocious behavior storm after another (it was a tougher than usual time of his life with lots of school strife) and struck his head repeatedly on the window. One very bad night, he broke the window.

He survived that (we survived it though I think of it every time we are in the car which is to say, every single day).

The car door was fixed but the window has ever since leaked and so it was, on Sunday afternoon, that I saw a pool of water on Charlie's iPad. I hastily wiped it up and hoped for the best and then Charlie and Jim, both quite soaked, appeared after a triumphant 16 miles, beaming and glad to get into the car as the temperature was in the 40s.

Charlie handed me his iPad, saying 'turn on.' I saw that the SIM car was missing which I knew it wasn't. The internet had worked the night before but the rain water soaking, and possibly some of the whacking Charlie had subjected the iPad to on his bedroom wall, had taken their toll.

He did not object to hearing that he'd have to wait till he was home for me to 'fix it.' He stood expectantly and patiently beside me at home as I tried to get the iPad to work. A slight smack on the iPad's side briefly restored the SIM card to its place but then the extent of the water damage was apparent as apps turned on and off with abandon.

We are lucky to have another iPad and I set to work turning it into the replica of Charlie's now waterlogged on. This took quite a while and he waited, looking at me intently and reaching for his iPad. 'Give,' he said when I tried to get his iPad to work.

At last, the other iPad was loaded with his music and photos. I offered it to him and was told 'give' as Charlie reached for his old one, which he looked at with eyes widening in distress while I said to myself, motherhood failure day. Charlie took his old iPad up to his room and plugged it in. I put the new one on the floor and left Charlie staring at his iPad, which was rapidly flashing through various apps.

After fifteen minutes, he was asleep. The apps on the old iPad are arranged in a certain way and I took both iPads downstairs. I plugged the old one into my computer and its data showed up, unaffected. I took screenshots of each screen of apps and then set about making each app screen on the second iPad look just like that on the older one. I put the refurbished iPad on Charlie's bed and plugged it in, and the still screen-flickering-through-app-on-app older one beside it.

Thumps on the ceiling meant Charlie had awoken. After a few minutes, I heard him say, 'tickle Mom.' As I entered his room, he said 'give' and held out what turned out to be his old iPad to me.

After a special treat of Vietnamese spring and summer rolls and noodles, Charlie was glad to be home all evening (we were too, as the rain kept pouring down). He fell asleep listening to K.D. Lang's Ingénue, a recent addition to the music on his iPad.

Always good to be exonerated from a little mother guilt. And yes, I have a Genius Bar appointment on Monday early afternoon.

 

'Type B Ocean'

For the past week, Charlie has been asking me to 'type B ocean.' It's one of those vestigial phrases -- like his 'tickle' -- that once actually meant what it sounds like and has evolved into meaning 'spell out Teletubbies and some other noun so I can type them into the iPad's YouTube search box.'

Sometimes I throw in a combination of words like 'ocean Hawaii' for variety, instead of 'Teletubbies cloud' or 'Teletubbies Kinderreime' (as in 'nursery rhymes' -- Teletubbies are readily understandable in many languages). I can tell by the insistent tone in Charlie's request to 'type B ocean' if he is up to a little variety or needs the comfort of the images he's seen for so long.

Yes, he still watches Teletubbies and other kiddie stuff -- all the videos he first saw when he was a toddler. We've made so many efforts to 'move him on' but, around when Charlie was 11, we eased off of being so insistent about him seeing 'age-appropriate' things. I think we started to feel Charlie sometimes just needs to see the things that comfort him and that every moment didn't have to be about learning and being 'appropriate'. And some things that are 'age-appropriate' for teenage boys might not be the best thing for him, or, for that appeal to him at all.

Last week, Charlie wanted me to sit by him for almost an hour a copy of times each day and type as many different combinations of words as I could think of. He'd scan the videos and then want to type again.

Saturday, after a rainy, cold (back to 40-something degrees Fahrenheit), gray 14-miler with Jim and lunch, Charlie turned on a certain video about a little girl, her dad and a sailboat on wheels that goes 'sailing' all over a sandy beach. Charlie was transfixed with it a few months ago and watched it over and over (we had never seen it on any of the Teletubby shows). I suspected that he was asking for this video (which I had saved to his Favorites on YouTube) in saying 'type B ocean,' but whenever I suggested he watch it last week, he said a flat-out 'no.'

After he watched it today with the iPad on the floor, he started crying. Then he grabbed the device and ran up the stairs. We each went up to check on Charlie and he was smiling after a few minutes.

For the rest of Saturday, we could hear him turning on various Barney videos and a variety of music including Desmond Dekker and REM's 'Everybody Hurts.' Only once did he call me to 'type B ocean'; I dictated 'Teletubbies pool' which comes up with a very favorite video of triplets in a paddling pool. Charlie saw it and immediately said 'Mom stairs' (meaning I'm to go downstairs).

He stayed up past midnight, watching things on his own and draining the battery so it only had 17% left when I went upstairs to turn off Charlie's light.

I plugged in the iPad, too.

 

Simplex Elegans: Visual Food Schedule on the iPad

 

I made this picture schedule (using Pages and the Storyboard template) to help Chalrie only eat some things on some days. I saved the schedule as a photo (jpeg file), emailed it, then saved it on his iPad. He can X out days using the Doodle Buddy app.

Charlie wasn't quite sure what to make of the schedule earlier this week. I kept showing it to him and modeling X'ing out each day. On Friday, following a decent day at school (though he petered out by the end), he went on his usual bike ride with Jim but didn't (as Charlie has been doing a lot of late) spend much of the bike ride asking for a burrito or other food item. Charlie just rode his bike.

Friday was a night I had put down for him having a burrito so (after looking at the schedule together), we went out for one. Charlie enjoyed it (and kept it down). 

I'm planning on making a new 'food schedule' for Charlie every week and slipping in different foods in what is something of a simplex elegans -- 'elegant in its simplicity' -- solution (which indeed describes some of the best 'innovations' for Charlie).

 

Charlie Challenges Consumer Culture

 

Software upgrades make things better, or so it's thought, and I hadn't done so for Charlie's iPad, knowing that the changes in the format would bother him. After he pounded his iPad on the wall on Monday night, it was time for a change to his familiarity and he definitely wasn't pleased to see everything, including the icon for his music, changed.

I said words to the effect of 'it's a software upgrade and we'll have to get used to it, but take your time.'

'Take your time,' said Charlie.

He hadn't had the best of days at school but, after a family walk (it was a bike ride-less day), he went to bed smiling and with the changed-up iPad beside him.

Charlie is no slave to consumer culture: if he had his way, he'd always just have the same old same old. Why try to improve on what's already so good -- why always have to get the newer, latest, upgraded model?

 

Not Sleeping is a Sign Too

 

4.15am was when Charlie woke on Monday. He was good about going back upstairs and to sleep and then getting up for the bus but that early wake-up was, as it can be, a sign, and his morning had two behavior moments, though both relatively short and contained.

He and Jim went riding in and it was yellow jacket weather, and green jacket weather on two walks he and I did in the pleasant still of the cold night, with Christmas lights sparkling around us.

Then, in a bit of a coda to the morning, Charlie could not sleep, though he tried. We could hear him skipping among songs on his iPad, as he likes to do.

At 11pm, we heard a thump.

We exchanged glances and went quietly up the stairs and found Charlie banging the corner of his iPad on the wall.

He handed us the iPad as requested and then, as we stood -- quietly -- by, sat, frowning and tense, on his bed. He asked repeatedly for the iPad, which, wordlessly, we placed on the floor. After ten minutes, his tenseness easing, he lay down and was asleep in a fe minutes.

There was one (really annoying) song -- a bluegrass version of 'When I See an Elephant Fly' -- that I removed from his iPad. Sometimes he had seemed to like it but Charlie's repeated, obsessive, listening to it over and over was -- along with his troubled sleep -- a sign that he was not feeling so good. I'm not sure whether or not he disliked, had come to dislike, the song as much as Jim and me, but -- like a certain Beach Boys song and some of the Byrds-- repeated listenings, with a certain fixed and not happy expression, are a sign that something is up. Music labeled 'easy listening' music isn't all it's cracked up to be.

Packing Up My Library

 

I spent the latter part of Saturday afternoon finally, finally, finally, packing up all my books that have been in stacks on the living room floor for months, after some spring break behavior storms when Charlie was taken by some urge and pulled every single one down. For the most part, the books have just sat on the floor and gotten very dusty.

Saturday, we had gone to Liberty State Park and Jim had taken Charlie around the park and the Statue of Liberty and onto some Jersey city streets (i.e., the ride was a bit urban at some points, in total contrast to riding in Jersey horse country). They had a second ride at home, too, and then Charlie went around the house lining up everyone's shoes and my parents' suitcases and seemed gleefully happy. He ran into the basement and we heard something that was not exactly a crash.

Jim went downstairs and returned with a quite old computer that Charlie had once used to look at photos on. He was never able to operate the mouse so sometimes things got very frustrating and the computer is in a battered state. Just the sight of it can bother Charlie. My dad pointed out that we could send it back to the manufacturer to recycle and we placed the computer temporarily in the old black car, just to get it out of the house.

Charlie was standing awkwardly in the living room, his shoulders and back full of pent-up energy. I saw him looking at the books, thought of how he has thrown the books during previous fits of agitation, and announced that I was going to pack them up.

I sorted through the books, setting aside certain ones into certain boxes. My dad got Charlie to help him push them across the floor to a corner and Charlie went from troubled to smiling, having to exert himself physically and knowing he was helping. After an hour, all the books were put away and Jim took some boxes down to the basement, and Charlie was at ease. He ate dinner and went up to his room, calling me to help him find some things on his iPad.

It was a few hours before he went to sleep but when he did, he had the iPad tucked close beside him on his bed.

 

Home Boy

 

The other side of 'power sleeping' is that Charlie has been again up late (past midnight) on Thursday, as he was on Tuesday. Unlike in the past when he couldn't sleep, he has been generally content to stay in his room and use his iPad. I'll admit that he spends more than his fair share of time with it, mostly for the music and videos; photos he seems to prefer to look at sparingly, and mostly to use as a way to explain what he's got on his mind. Perhaps it's a lame way of thinking but, Charlie having had little and very limited access to computers and videos and CDs in earlier years due to some trials and tribulations with just using the equipment, it seems all right to let him, as it were, catch up on all that he had missed.

Plus, Charlie of course got in a bike ride with Jim (with bike lights and his bright neon yellow reflector vest) and a run-walk with me (lots of running, so we both got warmed up fast). And, he has continued to just seem to enjoy being in our house, now pacing, now scampering, from the end of the kitchen to the far living room wall (that takes him a matter of seconds) and up and down the stairs.

When we first looked at this house, some nine years ago, Jim immediately noticed that the house, while compact, did offer a fairly wide open running space in the shape of an L. He figured that Charlie could use that.

He sure was right.

Ave atque Vale, Steve Jobs

 

A big thank you to Steve Jobs for making something that has not only changed, but improved Charlie's, and our, lives. (Including making five hours of waiting in the front yard for Jim to come home a lot more fun.)

Ave atque vale.

(Hail and farewell -- from one of my favorite Latin poets, Catullus.)