Tristan loves Dad

I apparently posted this on Twitter, but not here.

Anyway, a few days ago, as I was getting Tristan ready for school, he
must have heard his dad talking, and realized he was up.

Because he entered our bedroom, and upon seeing his father in bed,
instead of turning around, knowing not to wake him up, as he usually
does, he looked right at him and said "Dad."

I alerted Neal to this (it was so quick, that if you weren't paying
attention, you might not have realized what he said).

Neal opened his eyes and talked to him a bit, and told him he loved
him. Tristan made direct eye contact with him (to note Tristan will
seek out eye contact on his own terms - so this isn't as major as for
a child who doesn't make eye contact) while Neal spoke with him, and
when Neal was done, He jumped up and down, smiling.

This was something that made Tristan very happy, but also made Neal
very happy as our kids are very much Momma's kids, and if I'm home
will usually seek out affection from me, rather than Dad.

Tristan is not soulless, either

http://leftbrainrightbrain.co.uk/?p=682

ga ga ga ga

Lily and I were dancing in the garage last night to music. Tristan
would sometimes come closer to us and dance around us or watch us. (I
observed him doing the same recently when I picked him up from school
- not sure if I blogged it at all, it was encouraging to see him
interacting w/ his peers a little...)

At one point, I started hopping in circles with my arms out and said
ga ga ga ga (a sound he frequently makes when happy - he also
sometimes says "goodagoodagooda")

He grinned and came up to me and danced around me and reached his hand
out to try and touch my hands. then he took my hand and danced with me
a bit. It was a very happy moment.

I Just Love This and recent Trister happenings

I just love this:
"sazriel posted a reply:

in response to soulstealer, but not necesarily the topic:
beaver leader is a fun phrase. try it aloud.
i'd never want to be not autistic, 'cause then i wouldn't have things
like beaver leader, even though i might have friends instead."

This is something someone on one of my Flickr Autism groups posted, in
response to a parent who had commented that she is a Beaver Leader in
her son's Beaver Scouts group, so he can have freedom while she can
still keep an eye on him. I just love it. I feel it really has an
interesting perspective to it.

---------------------------------------------

I woke up this morning to find Tristan curled up in bed next to his
sister, Lola. Yesterday, he'd been on the very edge of my bed when I
woke up and when I got out of bed he slowly moved to be curled up next
to Lily (we're staying in the basement of my inlaws' right now, so
we're all in one really big room pretty much - we'll be moving soon,
to our very own house)

Tristan also had his eyes pretty much glued shut with goop this
morning. Initially thought the discharge was allergies or sinus
infection, but that's primarily because he doesn't open his eyes very
wide. nope. he has pink eye. :( and I'm probably gonna get it cause I
was wiping him off without washing my hands immediately yesterday
evening...

The other day, after a night of not sleeping and repeatedly smacking
or kicking us in our sleep, I brought him into the family room, so dad
and sister could sleep, and I could take a shower and get ready.... I
put him on the couch; he pointed at the TV and said TV (well the v
wasn't clearly pronounced, but it was obviously TV) so I turned on
some cartoons for him. He was asleep by a few minutes of me getting
out of the shower - he continued his crazy running around and hitting
at school, apparently. They'd never seen this behavior. I'm pretty
sure it's a behavior that is exhibited when he is really really really
really tired. normally he's just grumpy and uncooperative when tired,
and rocks on his belly on the floor a lot.

No and Sharing

I got a video of this. when I have the patience for it I'll upload it
somewhere...

anyway, I had Lily sitting on the counter and Tristan sitting at the
counter and I was giving them strawberries, one at a time.

Well, every time I gave Tristan one, Lily would yell "no!" at him, so
I decided to try and get a video of it.

Well, she says no, then she grins because she knows why I'm
videotaping (yes, I know, I shouldn't encourage her) and squeals at
him again. He then, without a second thought, hands the strawberry to
her.

I was floored

and of course got him another one (the last one) since he was such a
good sharing brother.

He definitely gets it

Tristan was playing with a spatula that was used to make french toast
this morning (made by his wonderful Nanna).

She tried to take it away, because it was messy, and he got mad, so
she gave it back.

I said, "Tristan, let me clean that and he gave it right to me." :) I
cleaned it and gave it back.

I was so surprised by the response, especially since it was immediate.
I was expecting to have to take it away have him complain and give it
back after I cleaned it. but nope he gave it right to me. :) :)

Hungry

Tristan slept from picking the drive home all the way till bedtime. He
woke up about bedtime, held his hands together and said "hungr" (two
syllables). We were like wow. He said he was hungry!

:)

Cooperation

He had a cup of juice w/ dinner

Lily wanted it. made complaining baby sounds.

When he'd just about finished it, he walked up to her highchair and
gave her the last little bit.

More on the schools front

to paraphrase

any district can use the program he's in

but they've got to do an iep to decide if they want to

and if they want the money for his head (headcounts = money) and think
they can handle him, they won't. (my words here not theirs)

yay.

and can't rule out schools of choice but don't believe any district
would be willing to give up a space in the program to an out of
district student.

I'm sorry, I realize you want the best for your kid, but it's really
all about money (my words again, not theirs, though they did genuinely
offer their sympathies, this here is sarcasm). You just don't realize
that unless your kid isn't typical or somewhat typical. We expect that
you just don't care and blindly send him where ever the school
district chooses (which, admittedly, is what I did to start but I'm
just damn lucky the school district he's in chose what's best for him,
and didn't give me any reason to question it).

*beats head against the wall*

Of course, if my mother didn't decide to move to EL to be close to my
sister when we'd move up here I'd be blissfully unaware that there
were better school districts in the area, and maybe it wouldn't have
occurred to me to look around for the best damn thing for my kids...

Google Talk Conversation

Navi: wow.
tristan will raid it later [referring to pizza and children's lack of eating it]
unless he's asleep on our bed [he was on our bed when I left for work]
neal: actually hes asleep on top of the table i'm moving him to bed

Their own level of communication

Look in my room - Tristan's climbing the dresser, Lily's watching
Lily comes out of the bedroom. with her sippy cup (which had water)
stacked on a cup that was on the dresser
- She wants me to get milk for both of them.

Tristan's eating spaghetti in his high chair. Lily approaches him. and
he drops some right in her hand.

Tristan removes his diaper because he wants it changed. Lily comes out
holding the diaper and bringing it to me while shouting mamaa!

Just Like Lola

made the mistake of leaving candy out where he could see it.

Tristan decided he wanted it, and cried when he could have it. cried
so hard he was coughing. wouldn't eat anything else.

Calmed down in the car, but still didn't eat the cheerios I'd packed for him.

got to school he was still calm but still grumpy. dropped him off, let
the teachers know he was grumpy and hadn't eaten anything. closed the
door and looked at him as they were getting his coat off through the
little window.

His face was set just like Lola's when she's not happy about
something. All serious and straight and looking like humph.

Autism Conversation

coworker sent me this from metafind:
http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/58058

some very interesting conversation in there. I haven't yet checked out the info.

on communication/language - quite frequently, in Tristan's utterances,
there are parts of words in there. I'm sure he says a lot more that is
English than I realize, I just can't understand it. The idea of the
utterances being a form of communication is interesting.

on facilitated communication and it's debunking. I'm quite a skeptic.
but some of the holding tristan's hand in a pointing position, and
letting him point, well I've tried it, and when he cooperates, it's
him pointing. more often he just takes my hand and puts in on there.
His old language therapist, who was also a skeptic on faciliitated
communication was doing that with him when she realized it was
facilitated communication. I'm pretty sure that in some cases it works
but in other cases you are getting more speech from the facilitator
than the individual.

on what little I've read of autistics and their perspectives. For some
of the lower functioning autistics that have achieved speech - it does
seem there experiences very heavily weigh in on their speech. I've
heard the opinions that it's a different way of doing things, and
should be respected. and then there's the girl in CNN's Autism is a
World that refers to her behaviors as "killer autism behaviors." I'll
have to admit I found the phrase somewhat offensive. I'm sure there's
also those that were heavily affected and rebelled against the
opinions of those in our lives. We neurotypicals are the same, in that
respect. Our environment can have a heavy effect on our opinions,
though it doesn't always. I will have to admit that it seems far
easier for a high functioning person to say "accept us as we are" than
to say that in reference to someone who is very low functioning.

on autistics communicating with eachother - I believe it. There's this
little girl - that does have speech in Tristan's class. When I've
brought him to school late, she's run to him and hugged him, and let
him go when he wanted to be let go (I can tell he wanted to be let go
because of how he was trying to move out of her arms - she instantly
released him, most children, I think there would have been a delay).
Most recently she pointed at him and said There's Tristan! and ran to
him and hugged him. When he got on the bus today (well yesterday now,
I'm finishing up this post), instead of going on his usual route to
his seat, he walked straight over to her and hugged her. I was
floored. As far as I could tell, he does not acknowledge other
children. Sometimes he acknowledges his older sister but then she
likes playing mommy and it's probably because he views her as a sort
of pseudo parent - she helps us with him by getting him things and
she'll put up with him climing over her or curling up next to her. The
only child I've seen him interact with without an initial interaction
is his baby sister, but then they are in many ways on the same level
developmentally. makes me wonder about all the comments relating
behaviors to those of pre-language children. maybe there is some level
of communication going on btw him and his sister that I don't
understand.

I also agree that more often the problem is we don't understand them
than that they don't understand us. I'm pretty sure Tristan
understands when he's paying attention. Yesterday (now two days ago)
when I picked him up from daycare, he laid on the floor after I got
his coat on, looking back and forth between me and the girl that takes
care of him at daycare. I bent down and held out my hand, and he
continued to look at me. While making eye contact, I said, I'll pick
you up if you stand up, but I'm not picking you up from a laying down
position. As soon as I said that he got right up and held his arms up
to be picked up. Now that could have been a delayed response to me
holding my hand out (he doesn't always take my hand when I do that
sometimes he just gets up) but I'm pretty sure it was in response to
my words. Of course, maybe he just picked out the term "pick you up"
and figured it out.

Autism Epidemic

>From Slate:
http://www.slate.com/id/2157496/

the article discusses (and dismisses) the idea of an Autism Epidemic
and discusses the book, Unstrange Minds.

A quote from the article:
"I am incredibly disciplined in the diagnostic classifications in my
research," Judy Rapoport, a senior child psychiatrist at the National
Institutes of Health, tells Grinker, "but in my private practice, I'll
call a kid a zebra if it will get him the educational services I think
he needs."

The article basically points out that chances are, the rates of Autism
aren't really growing as much as they seem to be. Autism wasn't even a
term until the 40s. According to the the article, "Psychiatrists made
no real effort to systematically diagnose childhood mental illness,
Grinker writes, until 1980, when the American Psychiatric Association
published the third edition of its diagnostic manual."

Autism isn't like a newly discovered disease that is caused by a virus
that wasn't in our country before it was diagnosed, but the media sure
treats it like it is.

And I'm not a parent of a high functioning child, I'm the parent of a
low functioning child. It would be nice to think that there could be a
cause that can be reversed and prevented but I just don't swallow it.
It's not realistic. I could agree that environmental causes could be
factors that may increase the likelyhood of occurrence when there is
already a genetic predisposition. I also agree that environmental
factors could make symptoms worse. While I don't prescribe to some of
the diet solutions, and I don't really feel they would help my son (we
significantly reduced dairy intake, for example, with no noticeable
improvement, though schooling has left a noticeable improvement,
though since he doesn't need 6 cups of milk a day, we haven't
increased the dairy, since he's just as happy with water, most of the
time), I can see where they'd be helpful to someone that's sensitive.
I've also noticed Tristan seems better with whole wheat products. They
still have gluten in them, but they're healthier, and therefore he
feels better.

Now that I've gone off on a tangent, back to the article. It closes
with the following:
There's one more thing to be said for the cries of "epidemic"—they get
the research money flowing.

I have to agree with that notion. I'm just concerned that the cries of
epidemic are steering research money in the wrong direction.

getting hugs

dropped tristan off at school late on Friday - this is his new school,
where all of the kids are autistic.

As soon as he entered the classroom a girl, who was taller (and
probably a bit older - it's a prek-2nd grade classroom) immediately
hugged him (or maybe she was trying to keep him coralled) as soon as
he indicated he wanted out of the hug, she let go.

I found this interesting, as generally I don't see this sort of direct
interaction in him, except w/ adults.

It's encouraging.

cake

Yesterday or the day before. I'm in bed w/ the baby, we're both sick.

Tristan comes in the room.

I shout to my husband, "Tristan wants some chocolate cake!"

He replies, "How do you know?"

"Because he's giving it to me!"

(cake's in a container so it wasn't messy until after his dad fed it to him)