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.

 

End of Semester Issues

It being the end of the semester for Jim and me at our respective institutions of higher learning, we seem to have come down with the usual/inevitable 'end of the semester' cold-thing, with scratchy throats, a few bodily aches and pains here and there (well, those could be from other sources such as the daily regimented exercise a-bike and a-foot), rather woozy heads. Charlie has gotten a whiff of the same: The tight team that sticks together, gets sick together.

That said, this is not one of those lie-on-the-couch-moaning-from-sheer-fatigue kind of ailments. If I had to teach a couple of classes in a row tomorrow, I'd be packing some extra fluids (besides my ever-essential 20+ ounce stainless steel commuter coffee tankard) but could certainly teach, having done so with near-laryngitis, raging headaches and other discomforts, not to mention two or fewr hours of sleep after a long Charlie insomnia night (or just a night of deep unhappiness, so to speak). Tomorrow at work is all sitting at my desk while a dozen students appear for make-up quizzes, two students translate a last round of Cicero for a tutorial and one student stops in to review her research (after which, I hie myself to the white car as quickly as possible, to stop at the store prior to getting home to meet the schoolbus).

However Charlie felt on Sunday, he insisted on the usual two bike rides that are his and Jim's weekend standard, 16 miles on the bike path in Jersey horse country and 12 at home, for a grand total of 100 miles for the past week.

He was more somber, and quiet, than usual. The latter I especially noted, but with a pang to think of how far Charlie has come. While his 'length of utterance' is 1 to 5 words, tops, he talks lots, frequently and quite clearly now, in sharp contrast to his earlier years of silence or verbalizations that were not words or, that is, were not distinguishable words. Now it is notable that he doesn't talk because he does so much.

In the evening, Charlie was hungry for a big dinner. Then we three enjoyed a walk in the pleasant evening air. After two requests for me to change the music on his iPad (no more K.D. Lang; I admit she's not a typical teenage boy choice), Charlie said good night. Jim went up to give him a little bedtime shave and a big good night and Charlie was asleep well before 10pm.

Maybe, too, he's finally catching up after so many 3 -5 hour nights of sleep throughout last week.

We don't travel far and rarely out of New Jersey these days, but we do seem to do enough to fill the time and get the 'end of semester' fatigue (Charlie too, though of course he doesn't have semesters).

The next morning, 7.43 am EST. Our serious schoolboy did make it onto the bus after a solid night of sleep. As one of his former teachers did say, he's a lovely boy.

 

Gut Speaking?

Charlie once again did not go to sleep until after 2.30 am. These wakeful nights take a definite pattern: A walk around 8 or 8.30pm; up to bed by 10pm and clearly yawning; quiet in Charlie's room around 11pm so I feel sure he will sleep; footsteps in the hall just after midnight that turn into many, fast footsteps and then, after carefully concise gentle coaxing and one reminder that he has to rise early to get the school bus, back into bed at maybe 2am and (in the case of last night) sleep past 2.30am.

There was also a run into the kitchen at about 1.30am after sitting on the brown chair and blue couch (our furniture is not color-coordinated but color-identifiable). Charlie didn't budge for a bit and just stood by the refrigerator and the thought passed my mind, maybe his stomach hurts?

Keeping him up potentially and the only thing he can think to do is to go into the kitchen as that's all about food and eating and of course those are 'stomach things'?

Ever heroically, Charlie got out of bed at 7.31 am and stood waiting on the porch with Jim till the bus pulled up.

Talk Around Here Is Never Cheap

 

If Charlie really was awake since around 2.30 am on Saturday morning, small wonder that he was tired by 8pm. He and I had walked at 5.30 am and he and Jim had done 24 miles in gorgeous spring weather.

Charlie hung around by my desk kind of looking like he wanted to say something (asking for a walk?) but didn't. His face suggested he was thinking about it, maybe searching for a word or enough words to express that (my supposing) he was thinking of asking for a wa lk and felt compelled too but boy was he tired. Jim suggested he sit in his brown chair and Charlie did for ten minutes, head slumped. Then he slowly got up.

'Bedtime?' said Jim.

'Bedtime,' was the response and Charlie was up the stairs and slumbering away by 9pm.

12 hours later, he still is.

 

'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.

 

Orality and Literacy and the Homeric Question

This is really more of a note to myself. In the midst of routine posting about disablity rights, IDEA, the aftermath of the Arab Spring protests, Charlie's and Jim's bike-capades and running reasonably fast for a 43-year-old mother down the street after our boy (not because, as some people think, he is running away, but because he has a beautiful bow-legged stride and Jim and are sending repeated requests to Special Olympics and Charlie is learning the joy of running as I did at his age) -- I think, after many years and abstracts for panel presentations that never became papers and lesson-planning about Latin declensions and Greek participles and grading papers and quizzes, that I have found a research focus. 

The Homeric Question and orality and literacy, informed by research about the communication and language of individuals with speech disabilities -- who are non- are minimally verbal -- who do not read (in our text-based society) -- and how music and metaphorical language and memory play a part.

I'm refining this focus and also starting to read the mountain of scholarship -- Milman Parry, Albert Lord, Greg Nagy, Adam Parry, Nietsche -- on this huge topic. 

More in the Milestone Category

Fingernail-cutting was something I dreaded for years to do with Charlie. After attempting such while he was sleeping (bad idea but, when awake, he fidgeted mightily and pulled his fingers back and issued many other signs of resistance, plus I feared nipping him), I was gradually able to clip one finger at a time.

Thursday night, I suggested to a consternated Charlie -- clearly irked, perhaps by thymic distress; he'd eaten no dinner after repeatedly asking for it and cried at the end of a walk -- that I do 'fingernails.'

'Fingernails!' Charlie said, grinned, and held out his left hand, and his right hand, and each foot too.

Afterwards he was visibly happy and, after a few rounds of YouTube video searching, fell asleep around 10pm.

 

Exploits, Small in Scale

 

It only occurred to me after he had gone to sleep, but Charlie did not say 'burrito' once on Friday, after perseverating hard about that food item all week.

It has been a good week for him, with good, great and even 'awesome' days at school, fast-paced bike rides and, except on Thursday, evening walks with Jim and me trailing behind (for some reason, Charlie did not ask for any walk on Thursday) and especially Friday night as Charlie, quite recovered from the February cough cold, ran for about 70% of the time.

Friday we made another grocery store excursion. Charlie got some sushi and said 'crackers' and, after I had said, 'sure,' went to get the red box. (Hmm, does he like them so much in part because of the red box?) This store has for some reason decided to set the crackers above the ice cream case meaning that I usually have to stand on said case or go find some clerk to help me nab a box. Charlie, of course, does not have that problem: He just stretches out an arm.

Jim spent this last weekday of our spring breaks sticking branches that had fallen off the trees in our yard into the back of the black car and driving them to the town recycling center, and grading some of the 100+ essays his students submitted as the break started. I made a first inroad on a project due in June (no time like the present, carpe diem and all that), gloried in the fact that I had finally completed all the forms for Charlie's summer camp application (which Jim duly went to mail), and read a book. And decided it was high time to start memorizing some of the Iliad too,

... Διὸς δ᾽ ἐτελείετο βουλή,

'and the will of Zeus was fulfilled,'

so to speak a bit loftily about our small adventures.

 

This Is The Way

 

On the way home from Jersey City, Charlie pointed to the right and said, with conviction, 'This way!'

'Which way?" asked Jim.

'This way!' said Charlie.

'Got to---'

'Go to.'

'Go to. to--'

'Go to.'

'Go to--'

'Go to. Go to. Go. To. Airport.'

Jim explained that my parents will be back in May for Charlie's birthday. Charlie sat quietly and, as we neared home, played The Kinks's 'Shangri-La.'

Charlie asked for a walk at 9pm and walked, uncharacteristically, on the right side of the street and looked as if he wanted to keep going right. We told him, it being late, we'd still close to home (and not attempt to walk to grocery stores or airports.)

At home, Charlie came and sat by me on the old blue couch, uncharacteristically. There was a silly round of joking about getting burritos and white car rides. Then he asked for his blue blanket and was soon stretched out to sleep with it, on the couch, with Jim and me nearby.