Amazing site on creativity…
Great brainstorming, creativity, thinking, teamwork tools….
I think this will help not only me, but also help teach kid some new problem solving skills….
Posts Tagged ‘add’
Labels.
December 13, 2008
Originally uploaded by CleverGirlBek
Here is Alex…It was raining hard when he came home from school. He wanted to play out on our lanai. I talked him through finding a towel and how he would use it to dry his feet when they got wet on the lanai.
So he put the towel down on the wet lanai and shuffled around outside with his feet tucked into it. He got soaked. The towel? Soaked.
I realize now that I didn’t walk him through and show him: where to put the towel, the precise sequence of events from putting the towel down as a mat, through every detailed movement of his spontaneous play outside, and eventually over to the mat, nice and warm inside the house, to dry his feet.
Because that’s what he needs. Precision. He is intensely rule based and fairly non-flexible.
But he’s wonderful.
But I’m exhausted.
Anyway.
What I want to talk about today is labels.
Alex has a label now. It’s not a precise label, it’s very broad for now, but we now have a label. For us a label is a tool, it is for communication and for research to find the help we need to help him have a happy and healthy life.
So here is my assignment for you. Close your eyes and think what either of the following word means to you. Embrace your interpretation. Then scroll down. (If you would like to, you may anonymously share your initial thoughts in the comments area….don’t worry you will not be judged…I went through this…I’m still going through this….)
Autism.
Ok. Here is the DSM IV (from NIH)/Diagnostic Criteria for Autism and Asperger’s…. Please read them carefully…
Diagnostic Criteria for 299.00 Autistic Disorder
1. A total of six (or more) items from (1), (2), and (3), with at least two from (1), and one each from (2) and (3):
1. qualitative impairment in social interaction, as manifested by at least two of the following:
1. marked impairment in the use of multiple nonverbal behaviors such as eye-to-eye gaze, facial expression, body postures, and gestures to regulate social interaction
2. failure to develop peer relationships appropriate to developmental level
3. a lack of spontaneous seeking to share enjoyment, interests, or achievements with other people (e.g., by a lack of showing, bringing, or pointing out objects of interest)
4. lack of social or emotional reciprocity
2. qualitative impairments in communication as manifested by at least one of the following:
1. delay in, or total lack of, the development of spoken language (not accompanied by an attempt to compensate through alternative modes of communication such as gesture or mime)
2. in individuals with adequate speech, marked impairment in the ability to initiate or sustain a conversation with others
3. stereotyped and repetitive use of language or idiosyncratic language
4. lack of varied, spontaneous make-believe play or social imitative play appropriate to developmental level
3. restricted repetitive and stereotyped patterns of behavior, interests, and activities, as manifested by at least one of the following:
1. encompassing preoccupation with one or more stereotyped and restricted patterns of interest that is abnormal either in intensity or focus
2. apparently inflexible adherence to specific, nonfunctional routines or rituals
3. stereotyped and repetitive motor manners (e.g., hand or finger flapping or twisting, or complex whole-body movements)
4. persistent preoccupation with parts of objects
2. Delays or abnormal functioning in at least one of the following areas, with onset prior to age 3 years: (1) social interaction, (2) language as used in social communication, or (3) symbolic or imaginative play.
3. The disturbance is not better accounted for by Rett’s Disorder or Childhood Disintegrative Disorder.
Return to Previous Page
Diagnostic Criteria for 299.80 Asperger’s Disorder
1. Qualitative impairment in social interaction, as manifested by at least two of the following:
1. marked impairment in the use of multiple nonverbal behaviors such as eye-to eye gaze, facial expression, body postures, and gestures to regulate social interaction
2. failure to develop peer relationships appropriate to developmental level
3. a lack of spontaneous seeking to share enjoyment, interests, or achievements with other people (e.g., by a lack of showing, bringing, or pointing out objects of interest to other people)
4. lack of social or emotional reciprocity
2. Restricted repetitive and stereotyped patterns of behavior, interests and activities, as manifested by at least one of the following:
1. encompassing preoccupation with one or more stereotyped and restricted patterns of interest that is abnormal either in intensity of focus
2. apparently inflexible adherence to specific, nonfunctional routines or rituals
3. stereotyped and repetitive motor mannerisms (e.g., hand or finger flapping or twisting, or complex whole-body movements)
4. persistent preoccupation with parts of objects
3. The disturbance causes clinically significant impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning.
4. There is no clinically significant general delay in language (e.g., single words used by age 2 years, communicative phrases used by age 3 years).
5. There is no clinically significant delay in cognitive development or in the development of age-appropriate self-help skills, adaptive behavior (other than in social interaction), and curiosity about the environment in childhood.
6. Criteria are not met for another specific Pervasive Developmental Disorder or Schizophrenia.
Looking at the criteria, has your view on what Autism means changed?
I know mine did.
If you are a parent with a kid with PDD of any type- what was your crash course like? What has your experience been with other people understanding even the basics of autism and what it means?
With the amount of Autism news everywhere, I’m amazed that the news outlets virtually never cover the criteria. I get that the human interest story is the child who has the most symptoms and the most impairment, or the greatest non-autism hardship that affects their autism, or their family’s ability to provide for them and their special needs. i really do understand that… But the focus completely on the human interest side, and the lack of an explanation of what autism is, without delving into severity, is doing a great disservice to many children. My dad insists that nobody thinks that autism is really bad parenting and lack of discipline. Then again, he doesn’t read the comments after articles online and he has never been to Target and experienced the full-on Alex fallout because the kid can’t handle the lights and sounds. He has never been there when an old man informs me that “a good beating” would fix Alex because that’s what worked on his kids… And this isn’t just one experience. It is many. Those people are out there. I am grateful that I can express the why to the judgmental butt-inski’s of the world with one word.
And I am reminded (and I have to find the source of the quote) of the mom on a message board that said, to the “well meaning” stranger, “If a kid had cancer would you try to spank it out of him?”
Many people see autism in two ways, there’s the “all autism looks like Rainman. If the kid isn’t acting like Rainman, it’s clearly a discipline problem.” (by the way, you can read about Kim Peek, who was the inspiration for Rainman, on Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Peek)…
And there are the people who see it as purely a discipline problem. (and people like Dennis Leary. I will not get into that at this time.)
And then there are the people who live with it every single second of every single day, be it their own or their child’s or their patients (does not apply to all doctors…we have found that out…We are just learning, yet by reading the basics we seem to know more than some of the physicians)…
So when I use a label to explain something my kid does, please don’t assume or treat us like we are:
1. Trying to restrict our child’s success in life.
Pretending this doesn’t exist is cruel and more restrictive than a true label.
2. Looking for a problem.
We are not looking for a problem. It is there. This didn’t happen overnight. We have known our child for almost 5.5 years. Frankly, we are greater experts in Alex than anyone reading this. We, with the help of family, friends, and a few undereducated professionals, gave the benefit of the doubt too many times. That has delayed helping him in such a dramatic way that has made his treatment more complicated, exhausted all of us, and worse, it has damaged his self-esteem.
3. Restricting him from enjoying life.
We are working hard with Alex so that he may enjoy life, understand it, and not be so scared of things like moderate to loud sounds and the lights at the grocery store. We do not restrict him from anything. Alex requires extra effort from us to keep him safe, due to various issues. This is not us being paranoid. It is us being responsible and keeping our child alive. When he was a preemie, someone with a cold could have infected him and killed him. Now that he is 5, the safety issues are different, but he requires the same vigilance. He falls down and gets hurt (frequently. the child is blessed with my physical grace.), he gets sick from playing with the kid with the snotty river drying on his face at school. We want Alex to have the ability to make good choices for himself in life, so he can experience more and give more to the world. Keeping him alive and giving him the tools he needs to even just have a back and forth conversation are important parts of this. We are not restricting him, we are helping him explore his world. If you need further description, what may appear as restriction to an outsider (anyone who doesn’t live with this every day) is actually comparable to providing a wheelchair bound person with a ramp. We are giving Alex his ramp.
4. Bad parents.
We take this parenting thing very seriously and because of Alex’s needs, we also do work harder at parenting and learning to be better parents, than many folks (not all by any means, and everyone has their *thing*) who have an average or neurotypical kid who just needs the basics (love, food, basic health care, clothing, and a roof over their head). We also have to be teachers, occupational therapists, physical therapists, speech therapists, detectives, physicians, psychologists, behavioral specialists, nutritionists, project managers, and schedule everything with the precision of a railway scheduler/conductor.
So before you judge us to be bad parents, or suggest we “just love him”, know what you are judging and in most cases, know that you have only read the brochure about this land we inhabit, you have never been there or even seen the extensive slide show or even checked Amazon to see if there is a Fodor’s or Lonely Planet guide for our world.
Anyway, enough of my babble. I guess I just want everyone to listen before they judge. (and yes, I have both complete strangers and someone close to me in mind when writing this)…. Learn before you preach.
I also find that the people who lecture on labels and applying them to anyone, are people who have never had anything in their lives that are worthy of a label. Most people who have a label (and to clarify I’m not talking about labels thrown around in name calling and derogatory fashion…I’m talking about labels to describe a fact.) understand how necessary and helpful they are….
Hugs all around…
B
(by the way, in case I didn’t mention it in my lengthy entry, Alex has PDD-an extremely broad label that contains Autism and other disorders….We are 99.9% sure he has Asperger’s… You can check out WrongPlanet.org for more info on Asperger’s…)
ADDitudes…
September 14, 2008It’s ADHD awareness week… (ADD is grouped in with ADD…Even for those of you that definitely lack the “H”)..
There are many, many fabulous resources in cyberspace covering many different aspects of ADHD…From many different angles…
One of the best jumping off points for info on living (as a person with it, or a person with ADHD kids, or spouse, etc) with it can be found at ADDitude
Another great resource is CHADD but for me ADDitude is much more anecdotal, accessible, and informative for my learning style and our family issues (all three of us have ADHD/ADD…You probably knew that about me just by reading my blog- even the non-ADD specific entries!)… I do use any and all resources I can get my hot little hands on though…
Oh and ADDitude has some wonderful printables to help with organization/scheduling/practical stuff as well as fact/suggestion sheets on many topics within the scope of ADHD/ADD…
Has anyone seen…..?
July 20, 2008
Originally uploaded by CleverGirlBek
my glasses? or my little hairclips?
(I was tired and realized that the missing glasses were on my head when I found a 3rd pair and tried to stick them on top….)
Best invention ever…
July 3, 2008
Originally uploaded by CleverGirlBek
I never thought of myself as the sort to wear earplugs. I am the sentry of our home… I am the one who is always on alert, ears cocked for the slightest sound because the boys are pretty oblivious for the most part…
A couple of months ago we started using a dawning alarm clock (a BioBrite one) and the seller sent me a pack of ear plugs with the clock.
Because we have frequent and sudden foul weather here (and multiple tornadoes in the past couple of weeks) I would only wear one ear plug- in the ear facing “up” (I am a side sleeper) so I could drown out hubby’s snoring and obnoxiously loud breathing and maybe grab some zzzzz’s without being woken up by his nightly cocophany. That worked well as I could still hear enough with the unplugged, yet dampened by my pillow, ear so I could hear boyo through the baby monitor. But then I’d flip over and the breathing/snoring/senile moaning would have me wide awake again…
So I did some research and found The Earplug Superstore. Oh yes. Thank you oh wonderous world wide web!
While they do have excellent descriptions of all of their plugs I figured I’d try a sampling of foam plugs, like the freebies I got with that clock… So I ordered their “softest and smallest” sampler… A huge selection of fascinating colors and earplug marketing strategies… I’m not kidding. I have a pair of NASCAR “sparkplug” earplugs and another pair of Camo Plugs! Craziness!
Anyway, I also decided to try a higher end pair of earplugs…. I ordered the “SleepSoft” plugs made by Alpine. They promise a dampening of ambient noise but still allow one to hear the doorbell and children calling… They have open “ducts” to prevent “pressure” differences and they keep one from feeling cutoff.
Well, they arrived and are a miracle. It was mid afternoon when the package arrived and the grass was being chopped outside…. I went into boy’s room where he was playing music and I put in the plugs and had him speak to me… I could hear him clearly (but slightly dampened/quieter) but I could no longer hear the lawnmower or clothes dryer.
If these weren’t so durable I would have ordered the 6 pack! They are very comfortable and come with a little stick/applicator thingy as they are so flexible that you won’t get a great fit just using your fingers. They do come in a handy slider pack/container for safe and clean storage…
As far as using earplugs for ADD/ADHD, I am planning on using my giant sampler pack on the weekends when hubby is typically in charge of boy while I rush to get everything done and in some sort of order. I am so easily distractible by the slightest sound. One of my ADHD/ADD books recommended using noise cancelling ear phones but ear phones are out in our home as boyo would obsess and freak out if he didn’t get to use them and there goes any peace and quiet… So for now, for a couple of hours on Saturday morning, I will be escaping to my quiet little place to focus and maybe finish something for a change. Obviously, I would not wear earplugs while home alone with the kiddo…No way. Too risky, even if I can still hear him a little bit…Also that would be insanely rude and I try not to roll that way…
Anyway, I’m testing my “portable isolation booth” (ha ha) tomorrow morning…. Hopefully, this will increase my productivity and focus in general, so that I can finish the things that require intense focus, and have more time to spend with the boys…
I’ll update soon…
Ch-ch-ch-changes…
June 26, 2008Lots of changes happening in our little world right now…
thankfully baldguy has been asked to stay at his job for a couple more weeks to help transition one of the clients so that worry can get pushed away for more immediate concerns and changes…
Boy just does not transition well…The kid needs consistency…Yesterday I found out his teacher had been let go. The two aides/teachers who work in his classroom are wonderful, but they are very different. Over the past year I have been able to tell when his head teacher was out for the day by his behavior and attitude at home afterwards. Transitions like this set him back so far. We try to prepare and help him, but in this case he was told his beloved teacher was out on vacation last week… and Boy is home sick so far this week so I don’t even know if they have left a note in our box. So there was no warning…No ability to help him transition by saying “see you later”… This could set him back months. Gahhhhhhhh!
and he’s sick. Kid on cough syrup (and they did not have any dye free cough syrup at walgreens yesterday) with a hefty dose of red dye #40. No wonder my hair is falling out in handfulls this week. He is crazed. He is the kind of crazed that you see on Cops and zombie movies- hyper and lashing out, mumbling incoherently, shouting nonsense, utterly pantsless. We see his ADHD most of the time and we have adjusted and it is only some of the time that he doesn’t self-sooth these days, but this week has been like living with an angry, illogical, drug addled strung out little man. He is usually our family safety officer. He will often request backup if I am plugging something in (because you always need to have a grown up buddy when doing things like that) and has frequently declared that plugging anything in must wait until daddy gets home… Yesterday, in his whirlwind he plugged the radio in by himself (during a huge thunderstorm)…This morning he found the one roll of film in our home and unwound it completely…I may completely lose my last marble in the coming weeks…
Anyway. Just home with boy trying to keep him out of trouble. His ADHD in this sick and cough syrup addled state and my ADD (completely and utterly without the H) are extremely incompatible and frustration runs deep in both of us.
Ok. Enough of my babble. He is “watching” a CD on my TV. He likes to watch the numbers count down.
I need to check my to do list and make sure I’m knocking things out….
In the next week or so I will be blogging about some new tools we are and will be implementing into our home to help with our rampant attention deficit issue (all three of us have it…) …
Speaking of which…Boy just hollered at me that we need to dance.
Ok. I’ll be back.
Hugs.
b
No mess and low stress….Kid-made card idea…
June 6, 2008
Originally uploaded by CleverGirlBek
Here’s a recipe for frustration:
ADD/ADHD kid + ADD/ADHD mama + craft supplies + desperate need for child-made greeting card
Ok, so he drew a perfect tulip at age 16 months. Before he could walk.
He couldn’t walk until 22 months so most of the really shockingly advanced stuff happened before that momentous occasion.
Still, I like to give the various grandparent’s handmade cards….
But my kiddo who has some language, neuro, and sensory stuff going on along with ADHD has a hard time sitting still and following even very general (or specific, trust me, I have tried everything) directions usually will just wind up with a giant table full of glue (see glue tip below!) and no cards will be made… I found that the easiest way to make anything with him is to do it in 5-10 minute increments… I do realize this is not teaching him to sit still and focus for very long, but at this stage of the game we are working with smaller goals (and we don’t always reach those smaller goals, so they aren’t “too small” ….they are just right…). He also tends to only see everything as a finite whole. So this is teaching him steps and details…
Anyway, I sat him down with a marker and a stack of blank cards (by the way, if you think you are going to make a slew of kid cards, why not buy a giant box from http://www.doubleupaper.com ? They are fast and the prices are great…For the price of 6 envelope and card packs from a chain craft supply you can have over 200 sets…I keep a case in my famed plastic containers- so they stay fresh and don’t absorb any smells (my husband makes tacos once a week. I love tacos but I still want to hermetically seal everything in our home first.))
See what I mean about ADD? I need mapquest for all of my tangents…Not that it would be *that* much help… :-)
Anyway, I sat him down and had him make smiles or a “c” or “u” on each card.
He did about 10 of these before he went to town making dots and destroying the magic marker tip….
He got up and ran around for a bit and then was willing to sit down for a few to do some more… I busted out the self-adhesive googly eyes and had him put eyes on the “faces”…. He did 15 of those (good for fine motor skills and dexterity, I believe)…
The next time he sat down he drew the mouths/smiles on the extra 5….
15 cards in no time flat (if you tally all of the time together and subtract the breaks)…
and nobody became frustrated, and both of us has a huge sense of accomplishment at the end of the project…
(and the grownups loved the cards… it must have been a nice change of pace for them to be able to say “wow a smiley face” rather than wracking their brains having to figure out what kiddo had drawn as he is king of the abstract these days…)
Not really type-A at all….But I have to be… For the boy….
May 2, 2008
Originally uploaded by CleverGirlBek
This is our magnet board. I am not a neat freak. I’m nowhere near organized. I am struggling with this, but it is helping…. *phew*
The magnets were made by me using the Make-a-Schedule software from Do2Learn.com ….
We use the magnet board to lay out boyo’s every task for the day… As he does the various things he gets to put the magnet in a little container (like a piggy bank)… At the end of the day we count them up and they count as points to be used for things on the “menu” of treats…
Right now it is broken down in a fairly detailed fashion but as he masters certain tasks that contain multiple steps they will be truncated to focus on other areas…
The Prize Menu comes from conversations with kiddo, so they really mean something to him…
He loves going to the big car wash (actually, it’s the same size as the other car washes, but that’s what he calls it…) so for 200 points he gets to go to the carwash with us… Or for 200 points we can go out for ice cream on the weekend… 200 points can also be watching a DVD movie with baldguy and me…
The magnet board/scheduling like this is not easy. Right now it and helping boy with the tasks on it are all consuming. I’m exhausted and burnt out but boyo is doing great. This is helping in a huge way with transitions- it’s like he can fight with us and totally lose his marbles, but the pictograms are irrefutable….
We are still working out the kinks… And eventually will have a more variable point system, but starting with the basics works best for us… So here we are…
Oh and the do2learn.com software is wonderful- the desktop version requires a bunch of downloads to get all of the images onto your computer (so you can use the software without a live internet connection- I do most scheduling during boyo’s therapy and they do not have wifi in that building so using it off-line is important to me… If you do order the desktop version make sure you scroll down on the get images menu- there is a “get all” option at the end- you don’t have to be a dolt like me and click them all and wait one by one… Ugh. need more sleep…)
Maybe I should put my sleep on the schedule…. :-)
Argh.
May 2, 2008
Originally uploaded by CleverGirlBek
In a recent raffle, baldguy won tickets to Pieces of Eight- a fun Pirate ship excursion into the Gulf of Mexico… They are currently repositioning to service the keys…I do recommend it- it’s a freaking awesome pirate ship with modern amenities and a rockin’ band of pirates. Fun was had by all!
It was so nice to be disconnected from the world for a bit, out on the boat… Here’s a picture of boy on the boat. He doesn’t understand that a costume or a painted on mustache are just pretend- he thinks they actually transform him into another person.
I was amazed that he let them draw a mustache on him.
After around 5 minutes he furiously tried to wipe it off and had a running in place moment of freaking out when he declared
“Just me. I want to be just me. No pirate me. Just ME.”
It was huge though- he went on a boat, he tried something new at lunch, he had his face painted, he took pictures, he wore a hat and a pirate hat, and there was a brief moment where he donned an eyepatch.
Awesome.
Labelmaker
March 12, 2008
Originally uploaded by CleverGirlBek
Ok. So I was talking to someone yesterday and I was explaining the steps I have been taking, or attempting to take, in reorganizing the household so there are less distractions to send boy and me into our personal ADD spirals…. So my side of the conversation went something like this:
“I bought small plastic containers”
“They stack”
“I bought a bunch of them. Everytime I go to the store they have more in the same color. I’m not even a big green person- more into blue, which they had…Anyway. I bought a bunch”
“And I bought a label maker”
“This project has been going on for a month. I have a tower of plastic containers with green latches in my living room. I’m going to put everything in plastic containers and label it so it’s out of sight but I can still find stuff” (note: true to a life of ADD and being the creative sort I tend to leave things out because for me, out of sight=out of mind and leaving things out typically means I do eventually finish them but it also means that we have tons of visual clutter which would be distracting for a person without ADD/ADHD….Hence the reorganization)
At this point I confess the following.
“The label maker is put away. I made a label for it that says ‘LABEL MAKER’.”
And it is at that point that we both start laughing, hard.
The truth is that I have been having a hard time with my ADD and fatigue and a whole host of health issues…
And of course, boyo comes first- always. So now I’m staring at a pile of information about how to help him, how to help me help him, how to help the teacher help him, how to explain all of this stuff to his grandparents, and a sizable pile of how to help me. Because if I can’t focus at all, I can’t very well help him.
So today I went in and dug around and found some more suggestions on being a productive adult with ADD.
Those of you that know me, know that I work my arse off and I always have and I always will, it’s my nature. I do, in fact, get things done.
But what I cannot do is focus. Have a conversation with me in person and you will find that my brain likes to take detours. Trying to complete a task as simple as getting a cup of coffee in the morning can often turn into a 2 hour event, if it happens at all. Most folks have blinders that they don’t even think about- that ability to get out of bed and get the cup of coffee. They can tune out the things that derail me in my attempt at having just a regular morning. Everything has a million steps and points at which I can be pulled off of my track. I do many things exactly when they occur to me and it takes every bit of strength not to be derailed from one tiny task, and then I’m wiped out if it gets done at all…I’ve had other artists ask to come hang out- to have fun and to learn from each other, I’d love that, but I can’t function with more distraction, and I’m a little shy about my visual clutter and my mad scientist work style… I did function, for years, in office situations. Surprisingly, many of my jobs in the past have involved organizing other folks. But that was before the many things that make my ADD more symptomatic… I do manage to get my orders out on time, but instead of completing them in one simple swoop I have been finding that having more of a schedule/to do list of every part is necessary and while it only takes me a few minutes to get an order out (ready to wear pieces) those few minutes are quite broken and scattered across the day…
But as long as the label maker box has a label that says label maker on it and the label maker is in the box, then everything will be A-O.K., don’t you think….
(hubby just came back in the room and said “what’s up kid?” and that’s all it takes for me to be knocked off the track….eeeeek. I’ll post this anyway, even though I’m pretty sure it didn’t go where I intended it to….)
*hugs*
b
