A La Aspie

This morning, I woke the boy up and then went back into my room to finish getting ready, just like most mornings. While I’m busy convincing myself that it’s worth it to keep my eyes open, he usually gets up, puts some clothes on, does some sort of magic that makes it look like he’s always been this awake, brushes his teeth, takes his vitamins (mostly) and waits impatiently by the door for me to finish whatever I’ve forgotten at the last minute before he finally grabs my keys and goes to the car to wait.

This morning, however, was different. I rolled my eyes at myself in the mirror, flipped the light off and left my bedroom. I meandered towards the kitchen in that way I have in the morning where any given stimulus between the bedroom and the kitchen could convince me to turn tail and RUN back…

We’ve had some really amazing progress in the last six months. And now, there are new developments again! Ethan has always been a really loving kid. But true to aspie form, aside from following scripts, he’s never been a huge fan of physical affection

He always liked to cuddle… but without hands. So, when he cuddled, he didn’t hug or put his arms around the person and often didn’t like to be actually touched with hands while cuddling (no stroking his arm or anything). You essentially became the human pillow.

Outside of a few select instances - like roughhousing, he never really ENJOYED physical touch though. When we had to hold hands to cross a street, we’d cross the street, and he’d pull away immediately. It was necessity, not desire. He’s never really liked impromptu hugging and kissing. He’d tolerate it (a lot of aspie kids won’t - I hated…

Earlier tonight, Ethan missed his orchestra recital. He was SO excited about this recital. He missed it, in the end, because of the band teacher’s failure to follow his 504 plan. I’ve had this post on tap for a few days but I think watching my Aspie kid cry his eyes out the whole way home and then be ok an hour later drove the point a little deeper.

I posted not too long ago about the great success we’ve had in the past few months. That success has continued unbroken for almost two solid months now. Almost long enough to breathe a sigh of relief… but I’m still flinching. I went for a massage this weekend and after the massage, I was talking to a friend about some of the emotional stuff that surfaced and I said “I’m still on the lookout.. I’m still on alert. It could still happen…

Ethan, while having an AS dx, also exhibits possible, by undx, attention deficit problems. Not undx for lack of looking, mind you (he’s been through two psych evals in his short life), but not the paramount issue. I’ve tried a few things that positively affected the AS symptoms but had very little effect on the attention deficit symptoms.

(And just for the record - I did sit in on his class one day during a ’shadow the student’ day - and OMG, tedious and monotonous. I really don’t fault young kids for not being able to sit still through that. It was HORRIBLE! In fact, I question the sanity of a young child who CAN sit still through that and have a brain left that is anything but numb. Maybe I could start a movement to treat overly attentive children.)

While in a client session one day, the client told me that…

Being face blind means not being able to differentiate between or remember faces. I am not entirely face blind but if I had to guess at a percentage, probably 80-90%. That means that I am able to recognize people sometimes, given certain situations. People who are completely face blind don’t recognize faces at all.

There are lots of great sites about face blindness so I won’t seek to educate you on the actual condition. However, here are some tidbits from my world of face blindness.

It occurred to me, out of the blue, yesterday that if I had to pick my roommate, who I have known for about a month and have lives with for two weeks, out of a line of guys, the only thing I could remember about him was his hair. There is truly no record of what his face looks like and it just caught me off guard to…

Could I just say that I am on the tippy, tippy edge of this thing we call preadolescence and I’m already wishing for a swift blow to the head?

He had sex ed a couple of weeks ago. And apparently the sex ed was very detailed because he got to see a picture of a vagina (insert mysterious oos and ahs here) and he got all of the details about a period and how exactly babies are born. And now? Sex is ALL he thinks about. EVERYTHING now is a sexual innuendo… and I’m his mom. I can’t imagine what it’s like with a bunch of 9 year old boys.

And? The meltdowns are so much worse. He is on the autistic spectrum so we’ve always had meltdowns… but these? These are like nuclear disasters. Re faced screaming and tears over how MEAN mom is and weepy, the sky is falling,…

There are those times when the review goes really, really well. Historically, with this school, it has ONLY gone really, really well. This year was different though.

Usually, the school sets up a 504 plan review meeting at least annually as part of the 504 plan process because it’s their responsibility. I had to request this meeting. Ethan and I went to dinner last night and discussed the items at length and came up with some good action points. I wrote up a structured report and request list.

When everyone showed up, out of 6 people, NO ONE was prepared for a 504 plan review except Ethan and I. There was confusion, no one brought anything, there was no sense of cohesion. Then we start ticking off the items and running down the list. Sitting across from me, Ethan’s teacher says “He’s been completing his classwork just fine.” BUT WE JUST…

Cody has been doing wonderfully as a service dog. I take him with me almost everywhere I go now and it’s absolutely SO MUCH EASIER to go out with him. It makes getting out less of a source of anxiety.

A month ago, I would avoid going to the bank. Today, I’m going with nary a second thought. yesterday, we needed hamburger buns in the middle of the day, a time that I stay clear of stores, and I took Cody and got through it great!

I still can’t take him anywhere with shiny floors because it freaks him out but for short trips to a place with shiny floors, he can sit in the car. I saw a great dog whisperer episode that gave some REALLY great tips and I realize how I reinforced the shiny floor behavior now. I’m going to try to arrange an after hours training session…

Today, I took Cody on our first outing in public. We started with Walmart. I was a little nervous approaching the front door but Walmart staff were very respectful and I wasn’t challenged. Then Tim took off in the other direction, I got nervous and Cody got nervous. We rested for a moment and then plodded onward.

Cody was very well behaved. He focused on navigating around things, he ignored people, for the most part and ignored the stuff on the shelves and wasn’t the least bit frightened of shopping carts. And then the puddle of water happened. I didn’t see it, Cody stepped in it and his feet went out from under him and he panicked. He laid there for a long while, me comforting him before he braved it again and then he tried to do it on his toes. Have you ever seen a dog walk on it’s…

I have Asperger’s Syndrome, which makes really simple stuff not quite so simple. When I was in my last relationship, we naturally ebbed and flowed so well together that my weaknesses were his strengths and although there were things that were annoyances to him, he always did like a girl who he could fancy weaker than himself. And so it worked.

In September, I went through a traumatic event that while did injure me physically, did more injury to me emotionally and mentally than anything else and compounded any difficulties I might have been having before that time. I was, at that point, dealing with severe depression and anxiety ALONG with Asperger’s Syndrome ALONG with PTSD. AND my main practical day to day support for the last six years, my husband, was gone.

I’ve done a lot of things to help myself recover as quickly as possible from the trauma of…