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Strengths and Challenges

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Naturally I feel really proud of Justin’s abilities and accomplishments, but occasionally it does intimidate me that my five-year-old is an intellectual powerhouse (albeit with his own set of issues — four toileting accidents this week) and I am not. He had his literacy screening at school yesterday, where the kids all get tested on their pre-reading skills, and obviously he sailed through that. But his teacher clearly hadn’t read the file on him — she said she didn’t get a chance to have him read to her, but she’d like to give him a little booklet that he could take home and read. Then she handed me a booklet full of two-word sentences. When I said that was too easy, she dug out a slightly more difficult one, and when I vetoed that too, and explained that he’s reading at a third grade level right now, she looked stunned. She did say she’d try to come up with something more appropriate for him, which is good, but she should’ve known about this already. What’s the point in sharing reports if no one reads them? Argh.

I mentioned this to his old preschool teacher, who nodded and said she’d never had a kid with this combination of skills before, and it’ll be up to me to keep pushing his teachers to challenge him. (She also said to keep her on his list so that if he invents cold fusion someday, he’ll know who to thank…she’s done wonders for him!)

This is not to say that he doesn’t have things to learn. He can count to infinity but can’t tell me whether 6 is more than 4. He won’t play tag in gym class and always turns away when the class sings songs together. He nearly threw a fit one morning cause I parked in a different spot when I picked him up from school. And of course he has been the world’s toughest kid to toilet train. But when I see him at the computer, typing out (from memory) the names of everyone in his class in alphabetical order, I know this kid is going to do some great things.

Good Tidings

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I’ve been feeling pretty blessed lately because everything seems to be falling into place: Justin is finally toilet trained (nothing like waiting until two weeks before kindergarten…ack!) and has adjusted beautifully to both school and his autism program; we’ve also started giving him an allowance, so it’s neat to see him learning to handle money (so far his wants are pretty cheap: he buys $1 songs from iTunes). Brayden seems to love preschool and is getting very close on the potty thing. I feel like I’ve conquered my demons.

None of this means I’m any less busy, however. The calendar on the fridge seems to be full of doctors’ appointments, play dates and soccer practices, so I’m constantly on the go. But it does feel good to see my boys growing up. I look forward to the day when they have more homework than I do, but that might be a ways off.

Life is good!

A Learning Experience

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The back-to-school season is upon us! Brayden started preschool today and Justin had his first kindergarten session, plus Justin had his autism program (which he loves, and which we’re calling his “play and learn” program), so it was a busy day. I wish I could say it was only busy for THEM. In the brief intervals between chauffeuring them around, I had to read through piles of paperwork from the school, fill out an information form for the speech pathologist and gather supplies for two different art projects. This is of course on top of packing backpacks with snacks, show and tell items and extra clothes, plus the usual tasks involved in keeping everyone’s clothes clean, stomachs full and minds occupied. I know this is only the beginning, and I’m sure it will all become fairly automatic, but for now all I can say is whew.

Farewell Summer

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Two months ago, I remember wondering what I was possibly going to do with myself during the weeks when the boys were in their summer camp. I actually contemplated doing some volunteer work or something to help fill the time. Yet here we are on the last day of August, and I didn’t really have a single day of boredom. I’m starting to understand what my dad meant when he said he’s never been so busy as since he retired. For me, this summer was about home improvements: I did some landscaping in the garden, painted the fence, persuaded Chris to replace the deck steps, reorganized the family room and overhauled the office (new paint, new light fixture, new cork board…nice). I also cleared out a bunch of our junk and am planning to get rid of it via garage sale in a couple weeks. I like being busy.

And busy we certainly will be for the next while. My parents are coming for a visit next week just as Justin starts his three-times-a-week autism program. The week after that, Justin starts kindergarten and Brayden starts preschool. Then our Saturdays start getting busy as Brayden gets into soccer again and Justin starts gymnastics (it’s a program specifically for kids with autism spectrum disorders, so I’m interested to see how that goes). It’s hard to know at this point how crazy this will all feel, but I suspect Sunday will become everyone’s favorite day of the week.

It was so stupid hot around here for so long that the sudden drop in temperature over the last few days is actually somewhat welcome (although I could do without the rain today). I guess summer really is coming to a close. I’ve always loved the fall — bring it on!

Drum Roll Please…

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Miracles do happen: somehow Justin went from refusing to enter a bathroom to being apparently completely toilet trained in just two days. His dad and I are still stunned. We have no idea how the light bulb went off, but he’s on a roll, and we’re just treading carefully to make sure we don’t spoil it. Could this really be it? After all this time? And with kindergarten only a month away? Unreal.

In other news…Chris and I celebrated our eighth wedding anniversary a couple weeks ago by going out for bowling and dinner with two other couples. This was actually a big deal — a high percentage of my friends are single moms, so it’s rare that Chris has another male to talk to when we socialize. (It was also a big deal just being out together without the kids: usually Chris stays home while I go out to save my sanity.) The conversation mostly revolved around child-rearing, of course, but it was still a great stress reliever.

It was an even better stress reliever when I played racquetball with Laura later that week. I hadn’t played in almost 10 years, but I’d been feeling the urge to pound on something, so I figured it was better to do that on a court than at home. And boy, did it feel good to smash that little ball around. I’d forgotten how much I like that game. Hopefully we can make it a regular routine.

Road Trip: Our Weekend in Calgary

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We’re not a family that hits the road very often. To date, “family trip” has generally meant flying to Saskatoon to visit relatives, but we’re trying to expand our horizons a bit. In that spirit, I decided to plan a long weekend in Calgary for the boys. Justin, who has always been an enthusiastic traveller, was literally counting the days (in Spanish…sigh) until it was time to go. Brayden was puzzled as to why we weren’t flying (clearly we’ve set the bar too high) but was otherwise looking forward to the trip.

DAY 1: GETTING THERE IS HALF THE FUN

I was fairly confident we could get an early start, and Justin was certainly happy to get up (he greeted me with “Happy Calgary day, Mom!” when I opened his door), but Brayden had to be dragged out of bed and coerced into eating breakfast. Nevertheless, we managed to get underway by 7 a.m. It was a beautiful day for a drive, and we were determined to enjoy the sun while we could, since the forecast called for monsoon-like conditions in Calgary all weekend (more on that in a bit). The kids kept themselves occupied looking around at the scenery (they especially loved driving through the mountain tunnels), listening to the car stereo and coloring in their activity books. We didn’t even have to get out the iPods until after our lunch stop in Golden, four hours into the trip, which has to be some kind of record. For lunch, Chris and I bought subs and had a little picnic with the boys – the kids sitting together on a hill eating from their lunch kits was both very cute and very reminiscent of many family trips I did as a kid. It was slightly surreal to be the adult this time.

We got to Calgary by 4 p.m., and while it WAS cloudy, it wasn’t actually raining, so we figured we might as well do Calaway Park before the crappy weather arrived. After munching on leftover burgers at the hotel (I was wise enough to get a room with a fridge and a microwave), we got to Calaway at 5:30, only to find out the park was closing at 7. Still, we really wanted to try the rides while it wasn’t raining, so we bought tickets and took our chances. That was probably the smartest thing we did all weekend – the day crowds were gone and with a thunderstorm threatening, no one wanted to be at the park, so there were no lines for anything. We didn’t realize it at the time, but we did more in that hour and a half than we could’ve done in a whole day with normal crowds. We fully appreciated that when we went back to Calaway Saturday afternoon (insane!) I wasn’t sure how Brayden in particular would react to the rides, but both boys had a total blast (which got me thinking about a future trip to Disneyland…but I digress.)

The main reason I chose the hotel I did was the fact that our room had two queen beds and a separate sitting room, so we could put the boys to bed and sneak into the other room to eat munchies and watch TV. That was the theory, anyway. That first night, however, things weren’t quite so relaxing. Thanks to the time change and the fact that both boys had napped in the car, neither of them would settle until 9:30, which is when Chris and I went to bed. Then Justin woke up around 1 a.m. and was just wide awake, hyper and talkative for three straight hours. Brayden slept through all that (thank God for small favors) so at least one of us got a full night’s rest.

DAY 2: A TALE OF TWO ZOOS

The forecast had warned of a possible 35 mm of rain on Saturday, but we woke up to cloudless skies and a temperature that was warm enough for shorts, much to our delight. We decided to celebrate the sunny skies by going to the zoo. We usually go to the Saskatoon zoo once a year, but the place is pretty tiny and really only has the same animals you’d be likely to run into on the prairie anyway. The Calgary Zoo is in a whole different class. For one thing, they have a whole section called Prehistoric Park that’s filled with dozens of life-size animatronic dinosaurs (way cool). It seemed like exactly the kind of thing that would trigger Justin’s anxiety, and there were a few spots where he was too scared to move and Chris had to carry him along the path, but overall he seemed to enjoy it (when we were ready to head back to the car, he started demanding to see the dinosaurs again, but we managed to dissuade him). The part both boys liked best was the children’s play area with its animal-themed playground and even a little zoo train that they could ride all by themselves. Good stuff.

After three hours at the zoo, we took a break at the hotel and pondered our next move. The kids had really enjoyed Calaway the night before, and I noticed the park has cheaper rates if you go in the afternoon, so I suggested we go back there around 2:30 p.m. Everyone was excited about this plan, until we got to the parking lot. When we saw the sea of cars, it finally occurred to me that Saturday afternoon of a long weekend might not have been the wisest time to visit an amusement park. We lucked out in that the guy ahead of us in the ticket line had some discount tickets he couldn’t use, so at least we got in for cheap, which was good, cause we were in the park for a full 40 minutes before we finally got on our first ride. Hence the second “zoo” of the day. The kids did awfully well with the heat and the crowds and all the stimulation, but after a couple hours they were just DONE.

You’d think that would mean they’d crash hard. They did go to sleep at their normal time, and Chris and I got to enjoy an hour or so of kid-free time in the sitting room, but Justin pulled his nocturnal act again and stayed awake talking between about 1 and 5 a.m. Brayden joined in the fun for about an hour this time. Neither kid was unhappy or fussy – just AWAKE. Sigh.

DAY 3: ODDS AND ENDS

The long-predicted rain arrived Sunday morning, so we figured it was a good time to check out the children’s museum at the science centre. It was smaller than we were expecting, but the kids seemed to have fun running around trying the different interactive exhibits. They had a special Lego theme that really seemed to impress Brayden, although more than once I caught him crawling under the barricades to try to get closer to the displays. Justin was fascinated with the “jam room”, which was filled with all kinds of metal and plastic objects that the kids could bang to create different sounds. The whole place would have bored me even as a kid, but the boys had fun.

The rest of the day was a mish-mash of stuff to fill the time. We checked out the hotel pool, which had a two-storey waterslide that Justin was initially afraid of but eventually fell in love with. Then we went to a nearby school to let the boys run and climb on the playground, but the mosquitoes were pretty fierce, so that didn’t last as long as I’d hoped. We finally went out for dinner for the only time the whole trip, and that worked out really, really well.

So the day ended on a positive note. The boys finally did crash hard, and slept all night, and even though Brayden woke up at 5 a.m. I wasn’t too concerned.

DAY 4: HOMEWARD BOUND

And today we drove home. We were on the road by 7 a.m., but we needn’t have worried about traffic – it all seemed to be going the opposite direction. There were the usual construction areas but nothing really slowed us down too much, and we made it home by 2 p.m. Then of course I had to unpack, clean the car (ewww!), clean the house, do the laundry…but the work is done, the kids are in their own beds, and I think we all agree it was a highly successful trip.

A New Paradigm

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Someone once compared parenting to walking a tight rope blindfolded — one misstep can mean disaster, but you just have to trust your instincts and hope things turn out okay. It’s always somewhat easier when you can just do what your own parents did, or what your best friends are doing. But with Justin’s diagnosis, we’re in a whole new world. The more I read about Asperger’s, the more I discover that many of the standard parenting techniques we’ve been using for years are just flat out wrong for kids with this disorder. In particular, these kids don’t learn from consequences, so giving timeouts, taking away favorite toys, promising them rewards for good behavior…none of that works. Even standard assumptions about human behavior don’t apply to them, since they see, feel, understand and act unlike the rest of the world.

Their meltdowns are not attempts at defiance or cries for attention. Justin is a child who doesn’t understand the world around him. He doesn’t learn from observation or social osmosis. If it’s not explicitly explained, he just doesn’t get it. Not knowing the unspoken rules of different situations causes anxiety, so he creates his own set of rules to keep things more predictable and understandable. For him, every day is an attempt to find order in chaos — and when that chaos gets too overwhelming, he loses control.

All Asperger kids need structure and routine, and all of them rely on rules, but Justin is part of a subset that needs to know the reasons behind the rules before he’ll be okay (hence the 600 questions he asks every day). He wants to know why something is done a certain way, and the explanation has to make sense to him. If it’s too arbitrary (”Because I said so!”), or if your logic doesn’t make sense to him, he won’t listen, because he has his own reasons and explanations for things, and he figures his opinion is at least as good as yours. I foresee lots of fun in the teenage years.

The point of all this is that it’s a very big task to come up with a brand new set of parenting techniques. It’s scary to think that we’re venturing out as pioneers. We don’t really know what we’re doing, but we’re doing it because we love him, and that has to count for something.

Eternal Frustration

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Recently I experienced two epiphanies, one that left me feeling relieved and the other that gave me a huge sense of dread. The relief came from my discovery that there is actually a strong link between autism and potty training problems (so it’s not just my child! so it’s not my incompetent parenting! so there might be an explanation for this mess!) That was followed closely by a sense of dread as I realized there’s no way to predict when he will ever get this under control. I’m reading stories of autistic kids who are seven, eight, even 10 years old and still untrained. Please please please don’t let that be my child.

It’s so very frustrating because all the gains we made last month seem to have evaporated, and we’re nearly back to square one. I read somewhere that autistic kids are the most difficult ones to train, and knowing that does make it a bit easier. But no one wants to do diaper duty forever. I get an ulcer just thinking about kindergarten starting in September.

I need a drink…

It’s Official

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The verdict is in, and it’s not a surprise: Justin has Asperger’s. It’s a neurological disorder that will never go away (his brain is just wired differently) but it can be managed, especially if we start young. I didn’t expect to get the diagnosis as quickly as we did, and in fact the psychologist said they don’t usually diagnose Asperger’s until kids are a bit older, but in Justin’s case it was just manifestly obvious. That’s actually a good thing — it’s nice to have a label for it aside from “autism” (even though it is on the autism spectrum), cause people have preconceptions of what autism is, and Justin doesn’t really fit that mold.

Some of the good points that came out of the assessment process: his reading, spelling and number skills scored at a third grade level, he doesn’t have any motor skill or sensory challenges like some Asperger’s kids do, and his overall language skills are pretty close to normal for his age. He still has social language issues (he needs to learn how to start, maintain and end a conversation, and not interrupt people) as well as social interaction challenges, but he’s bright and keen to learn, so the outlook is good. One book I read says these kids tend to do phenomenally well once they get to university, since universities foster creative thinkers, but the journey through the mainstream school system can be tough. He’s entitled to a support aide in the classroom and there’s funding available for therapy, so at least there are resources out there. And hey: Einstein had Asperger’s, and he certainly left his mark on the world.

Fun in the Sun

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I could get used to this summer camp routine. I drop the boys off at 9 a.m. and then have four straight hours all to myself. Up to this point I’ve been using the time to run errands/clean the house/cut the grass/do the laundry, so I’m not any less tired at the end of the day, but a least I’m getting some stuff done. Things should slow down a bit this week, though, so maybe I’ll get a chance to relax. It looks like I’ll get to golf at least once this week, so that’s a big plus. I didn’t sign them up for camp next week, so I’m trying to enjoy the free time while I can.

The weekend was pretty busy too, but in a good way. We took the boys out to a waterslide park near Vernon yesterday (Dave met us there, which was cool) and everyone had a blast. I didn’t think there’d be much for Brayden to do besides the kiddie pool, but it turned out he could go on any of the slides so long as a parent went with him, so we all had a ton of fun. It was a good day to go, too — it was something like 35 degrees and sunny, so it was great to splash around. It was also great that both kids slept on the drive home. Ah, summer.