We Go With Him

A Historic Occurrence

 

I guess a talky Hollywood historical drama might not be the obvious choice for a boy whose school curriculum does not include social studies and who has not yet ever read a history book and who needs lots of time to process words but, based on the four flashy, loud, explosion and glitz-filed trailers he saw before seeing a whole 20 minutes of Lincoln, it was not a bad choice on a slushy, snowy cold evening after Christmas Day.

It was the first time Charlie has been to the movies in about three years. A showing of Kung Fu Panda made him very queasy. The lights, smells, sounds of the cinema were just no longer right and certainly not entertaining, nor fun.

It was the first time Jim has been to the movies with Charlie and the first for all three of us.

 

Statement on Sensory Stuff

"Getting sensible about sensory dysfunction" means looking beyond the weighted vests.

'Stuff' is generally not the solution.

Swings and Carnivals and Summer Things

 

Charlie just polished off a rather large post-midnight snack about an hour and a half ago. He napped earlier in the day after a walk -- first since Tuesday I think -- and a big lunch. He had eaten nothing but apples, watermelon and crackers for about three days so I'd say the return of his appetite is a sign that he is on the mend.

He still spent a fair amount of time after waking up and before going to bed doing the Extreme Stimming, though it seemed a shade less extreme. Our new theory -- Jim and I are ever on the detective trail -- is that it may have something to with his ears being clogged (wax... I'm not inclined to poke too much in his ears lest Charlie start to do so too much himself), plus we had to wonder if seven days of swimming at camp had taken their toll. I managed to get a few ear drops into Charlie's ears; perhaps his head and neck twists and breathy sounds are an attempt to deal with odd, ringing, or some such sensations in his ears?

Daily mysteries, these are.

The wind was picking up here (a little taste of the hurricane that's brewing far to our south?) but Charlie and Jim got in one last turn on the ferris wheel, after which Charlie zoomed through the air on his beloved swing ride. The carnival closes Saturday night and Sunday night Jim has to go into NYC for a departmental function so it was our last night, regardless.

It was good together fun. Charlie smiled throughout the entire ferris wheel ride and waved every time he and Jim caught sight of me -- am a chicken about rides; even a merry-go-round makes me panic. Charlie's love of motion haileth not from his mother.

 

The Smell of the Shaving Cream

After we saw Charlie, who lay down on his bed at 4am and may or may not have slept, on the bus -- the long night caught up with him and he was agitated on getting to school and extra noise didn't help -- Jim discovered that a can of shaving cream had exploded (the heat!) under the bathroom sink.

He was very contrite (he is a super good guy; I am admittedly biase) and handed me the above-photographed Tupperware. I took out the other plastic bottles that had been in it and started rinsing and wiping off shaving cream and marveled at the fact that it had all stayed in the one space and then, between that smell and having gone to sleep at 4am, all I kept thinking was, portable OT session, remembering when therapists sprayed the whole can on the little blue Little Tykes table Charlie did his home ABA sessions on.

'This is why it's better to get the small cans,' said Jim, who was rushing around to make the 8.41am train.

'It stayed contained,' I said and rinsed it all out and dropped Jim off at the train.

Charlie was fine the rest of the day at school and the incident occasioned a nice call from his teacher who also noted that he is in a brand-new classroom (new construction, actually, as the school has added on some space). She noted that it is a great space, bigger than where Charlie was last year (technically a conference room) but of course it is new.

Jim uses an electric shaver for Charlie and (not ready yet to try a blade on Charlie for fear of giving him a very unintended cut) as it does not do the closest job, an occasional trip to the barber is a good idea and we three indeed made such after a steady-paced bike ride and before dinner, two walks in the dusk and a good night's sleep for our boy.

Auismland, where the old, smaller room is preferred (at least for awhile) and where you use cans of shaving cream with 4-year-olds but not teenagers.

Another Reason I Am Not Happy About Global Warming

It was over 90 degrees Fahrenheit here today and Jim and I were determined to get Charlie not to wear his sweatshirt for the sake of, well, not over-heating.

After several no's, forlorn looks at the sweatshirt in a heap on the floor, and general distress, we suggested foregoing the nylon skullcaps that he and Jim wear under their helmets.

Still tears and a look of 'this doesn't feel right!' after Charlie donned his helmet. We shook ourselves: How hard change is for Charlie, a boy of penchant tendencies. We praised him for 'just wearing your helmet!'

The teariness subsided once they started biking, a bit of a breeze blowing on them.

(Getting Charlie not to wear his sweatshirt has become a seasonal undertaking. I would prefer that global warming subside -- April is still sweatshirt armor time, in his book and therefore in ours.)

Goodnight, Irene, What Hath You Wrought?

 

It was almost 80 degrees on Monday -- and not yet spring.

As Charlie and I stood in the front yard awaiting Jim, I chatted with our next door neighbor. She declared that the weather has been strange since Hurricane Irene and I think she's onto something.

Charlie is still wearing his long pants and sweatshirts, not yet ready to shed those winters. Perhaps that was why he was so unsettled -- frowning, making sounds of distress and worry -- as the evening wore on and after a walk and his habitual bike ride. I could put out shorts for him but it is only mid-March, just past those fateful Ides.

 

Coughcah

 

(The title is a random-ish reference to a writer I'm very fond of.)

As we have the Cold That Won't Go Away, we have all been coughing. Usually this is a problem as the sound of coughing is irksome to Charlie's sensitive hearing and, in the past, many I time I have run to the basement, or even the backyard, rather than have a very distressed Charlie.

This round of illness, he has been putting his hands to his hears and wincing a bit, but that is it.

Because he's simply handling loud noises that grate on his nerves and nervous system better? Maybe because he has been coughing plenty himself? ('You're coughy!' I said to him the other day. 'Cough-y' said Charlie).

Sometimes when he sees that I'm about to cough, he has been putting his hands over his ears in anticipation. And when I was driving Charlie around on Wednesday afternoon and felt a coughing fit coming on, I was relieved that I had stowed a water bottle in the passenger door pocket. 

 

Fable of the Staples

 

So we whisked Charlie into the white car soon as he got off the bus and went, in the pouring rain, to the pediatricia, to have the staples removed. The nurse practitioner had her head lamp ready and the staple remover the hospital had given us. She felt the back of Charlie's head over and over and said, puzzled, 'I can't find any staples.'

Whereupon, Charlie found himself sitting in a chair with three adults inspecting the back of his head and giving him an extensive cranial massage. The nurse found the cut and noted it was healing very nicely. But no staples.

'That's the first time I've ever had this happen,' she said to me after Charlie (who had said a fast good-bye) and Jim had departed. I said I'd do a careful inspection of Charlie's room in case he had somehow gotten them out himself.

We went to get some groceries and Charlie helped to bag some things and carried them out, with a smile. But he was stricken at home when we looked at his food schedule and saw that Monday was a groceries day, not a burrito one.

He moped and I went into the kitchen and heated up some fish sticks (which Charlie has refused for years) and some French fries. Charlie came in and munched on apples while everything was in the oven. Without any ado, he ate small bites of fish sticks, potatoes, more fruit, got himself something to drink.

Then we went on a walk in a misty rain and across our field which resembled more a mottled, semi-frozen pond of snow, slush and dead grass amid which, Charlie found the one plastic bottle to step on (it made an extremely loud crunch). Once home, he went eagerly up to his room and settled down, cozy and content, with his iPad and blue blanket, and grinned me good night.

I'll let you know if I find the staples.

 

Lag Is Us

 

For better or for worse, this post is again about lag. (Right, maybe I should rename this blog "Autism Lag" temporarily.) Charlie had incident #3 of the week (so he's now had incidents three straight days in a row). This one happened at 11am and he was back to being calm in just around a half-hour, as his teacher relayed to me over the phone.

Charlie's teacher highlighted one thing in particular: The room had been very noisy and one of the other students does some screaming. I noted to Charlie's teacher that, in a previous class, another student had done a lot of (really high-pitched) screaming, and how Charlie (who of course does plenty of his own things) had endured it for the most part, and had some trouble too. It occurred to me to ask if Charlie is the youngest in his current class and, sure enough he is -- plus he is the only new student in the classroom this year.

Bingo.

Charlie had been with his old teacher and aides and behaviorist and some students for about two years prior to transitioning to his current, secondary level classroom. He was one of the older kids in that class. Now he's the youngest and the newest, plus there are 3 more students in the class (for a total of 9), and sometimes they combine with another class for activities. While I think it's good for Charlie to handle being in larger numbers, I can see how it must be a new challenge. Charlie's teacher said they're working on having him ask for a walk to get out of the room when it gets too noisy, the very strategy teachers have taught him in the past -- but those were other teachers, in other classrooms, when Charlie was himself at a different stage of his development and he needs to learn that same old skill again, it seems.

We tend to be pro-active about and things we know will set off behavior storms. I'm going at least to ask his teacher if there might be some way to remove Charlie from a noisy room and gradually build up to him asking.

But the bigger issue may simply be that, having been in his new classroom for almost two months, Charlie is starting to miss his old one, his old teacher and the aides and the kids. It's not unusual for it to take quite a while (over a month) for him to have a reaction to a new setting -- yes, lag again.

Our own house is quite quiet. Charlie enjoyed a bike ride after a hiatus of all of one day. Then Jim went to Jersey City to speak at an event at an Italian restaurant and Charlie knelt on the big black couch, looking out the front window for Jim to return in the black car -- that is, Charlie waited inside, sitting (kneeling) down, instead of standing for hours on the sidewalk. Certainly this had to be at least a little more comfortable (for his mom, at least, glad to sit at her desk rather than on the concrete porch steps, anticipating the next mosquito bite).

A Good Shave

 

Saturday morning, Jim took Charlie to the barbershop (it's 5 minutes from our house) not for a haircut but a shave. At an (actual) haircut a few months back, Jim had had the barber give Charlie little 'cleaning-up' in the mustache/beard area; he had afterwards concluded, the best way to get Charlie a close shave is regular visits in the barber chair.

Shaving is one of those topics I have never wanted to confront. Aside from having no idea how to go about it, the thought of having to put any sort of blade near Charlie's face was simply terrifying. Your son having to shave is a sort of parents' Rubicon, a sign that the little boy is no more.

The physical changes of adolescence have plagued Charlie since he was about 11: Growing, body and facial hair, hormone, acne, and all that. He does not receive any sex education in the sense of learning about the male and female anatomy; it's up in the air what he would absorb from such a presentation. He is learning about safety, security, strangers. We've talked about him 'growing up' and there being lots of 'changes' and tried to be beyond sympathetic, Jim and I having both found adolescence a particularly unpleasant and unhappy time. [16:00, 18 Sept 11: I edited this paragraph a bit to clarify things upon reading the comments below.]

Jim has regularly been using an electric shaver on Charlie's face. Using a real razor and shaving cream is down the line but no one is looking forward to Charlie getting a cut. The electric shaver only gets so close and the barber option seems viable (and it has an added bonus: the more times Charlie does something, the more used to it he is). The barbershop has been very welcoming of Charlie since the youngest, newest barber, Mike, starting cutting Charlie's hair when he was 8 years old. Usually Charlie gets his hair cut by Antonio, a retired school custodian, but he wasn't in the shop yesterday morning and Charlie accommodated readily to someone else shaving him.

Certainly he must feel more comfortable, in a sensory way, with a nice shave. Looks aren't everything, of course, but what can I say -- minus the shadowy mustache and beard, Charlie looks not only less, ah, scruffy, but his actual age (instead of 17 or older, as he's often mistaken for).

After the shave, Charlie had a smiley Saturday. There was a massive tag sale going on in the NJ horse country town near where he and Jim ride on the trail and Charlie wanted only to do five miles. He got in his ride miles at home and was mostly in an easy-going mood all day (minus a few minutes of intense rocking in the car.)

Yes, Charlie and Jim are poised to become quite the regulars at the barbershop.