Posted Thursday, January 3, 2008 - 10:26 by Anonymous
As usual, the holidays are over way too fast! We had another great Christmas, and the kids didn’t get sick until the day after Christmas, which was a bonus.
Christmas was pretty hard on the kids, but my mom tells me that it’s like that for all children. Thomas handled the whole thing very well, getting really jacked-up only at my folk’s house on Christmas Eve. We let the little ones open their presents before dinner to keep them occupied, so Thomas got to play with his new remote control Lightning McQueen car! After a few bumps into the baseboards, he mastered the controls more quickly than I thought he would.
This was the first year that the kids were really excited about Santa Claus. It was so much fun to watch and talk about. They understood that Santa would come down the chimney and leave presents while they were sleeping. And the kids are so good at opening presents now. We forgot to bring my mother-in-law’s present over to her house on Christmas so the kids and I brought it over to her yesterday. Thomas and Hayley had it opened for her before she knew we had brought it.
So after the excitement and exhaustion of the holidays, it seems that Thomas is very ready to be back at school which doesn’t happen until January 7. Every day, he wakes up and asks if he can go to school. He doesn’t get upset when I tell him no, but I think he’s just very eager to see his friends and his teachers again. That is to say, I think he likesschool.
At school this month, they conduct free evaluations for children to see if they would benefit from being in one of the classes offered at Thomas’ school. I’m going to take Hayley to see if she would place in one of them. Thomas’ teacher urged me to do it, and of course, being a worried mother I asked her “why?” She has seen Hayley and let Hayley be a part of the class on occasions when we’ve visited. So she mentioned the testing for Hayley and I was immediately on-guard. She said that she didn’t notice anything wrong with Hayley but that she would be a great “typically developing” student to have in class, to model for the other kids. (Phew!) She may be able to join a class simply because she is “at risk,” having a brother with autism. However, if they really find nothing lacking in her development, we may be able to pay tuition to have her attend school there, depending on how much it is. I’m interested to see what happens.
Thomas had his five year check-up on Monday, and he was so good! Until we had to hold him down for the four shots he had coming to him, that is. Otherwise, he was great. The doctors and nurses there really like my children which is a nice feeling. Thomas’ pediatrician felt that Thomas is doing really well for being autistic and mentioned (as so many people do) that he has seen children much worse than Thomas. Of course, no doctors ever mention that they’ve seen children much better than Thomas, too. Anyway, the doctor said that he wasn’t concerned by the frontal lobe spikes shown in Thomas’ EEGs and that he felt it was fine to not do the sleep study given the circumstances. That makes me feel a little better, going into the doctor’s visit with the neurologist on January 21. I can at least say that Thomas’ pediatrician says it’s okay! Then I can ask her in very firm tones why she won’t give us more than one month of refills at a time on the Clonidine. It’s such a pain to have to make the calls and have the pharmacy call the doctor, etc. Why can’t we have a few months? We’re wasting manpower this way. So I’ll be sure to ask her about that on the 21st.
Thomas has a few new expressions that are so cute! We’re not sure where he picked them up specifically – probably from me, but I can’t remember saying them on a regular basis – but they’re so cute. Thomas is so helpful now! I’ll say, “Thomas? Could you pick up your socks and put them in the wash for me?” And he’ll say, “Well, sure I could!” It’s so adorable. The other thing he’s saying is, “Well, not really.” Example: “Thomas? Will you try some green beans please?”
“Well, not really.”
“Thomas? Do you know where your snow boots are?”
“Well, not really.”
He’s obviously using this phrase instead of “No” or “No, thank you” just to mix things up a bit. He uses it when it’s not entirely appropriate, like in the green beans example above, but we know what he means and it’s really interesting that he’s substituting new phrases for old words that perhaps he’s grown tired of. I wonder what that means in terms of his development.
I know this is silly and that it doesn’t happen this way, but lately I’ve been feeling like Thomas is “recovering” little by little over the months. I know that the vast majority of children don’t “recover” from autism, but he’s been getting better and better and we’re doing nothing but trying to teach him everything we can at home and sending him to school. We don’t have him on a gluten-free diet, he’s getting no private therapies at home and he’s taking no meds except for the Clonidine. Yet he improves noticeably on a monthly basis. When I was at school on the 21st for the Holiday Sing, Thomas’ occupational therapist and I were chatting for a while and she asked if Thomas is still doing a lot of screaming at home. I was confused for a second while she explained, “You know, remember last year when we talked and you said he was screaming a lot?” Finally, I remembered what she was talking about; I did talk to her on the phone and ask about what we could do when he screamed at home. I realized that he doesn’t do that so much anymore. He doesn’t have to swing on the platform swing at school, he doesn’t need the one-to-one attention of the occupational therapist at school anymore and he’s not having any outbursts or having to be removed from class for being disruptive this year. “What did you do with Thomas over the summer?” Everyone asks us that. We didn’t do anything. We went to the zoo a lot and swimming a lot. Thomas learned how to hold his breath and jump in off the side of the pool. That’s all I can remember about last summer.
So we’re looking forward to school starting again. I’m very interested to see how Thomas does after Christmas Break because it was after this vacation that he went downhill at school last year. The outbursts and need for OT increased after the time he was off school so I’m really excited to see how he does, especially since he’s looking forward to going back.
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As usual, the holidays are over way too fast! We had another great Christmas, and the kids didn’t get sick until the day after Christmas, which was a bonus.
Christmas was pretty hard on the kids, but my mom tells me that it’s like that for all children. Thomas handled the whole thing very well, getting really jacked-up only at my folk’s house on Christmas Eve. We let the little ones open their presents before dinner to keep them occupied, so Thomas got to play with his new remote control Lightning McQueen car! After a few bumps into the baseboards, he mastered the controls more quickly than I thought he would.
This was the first year that the kids were really excited about Santa Claus. It was so much fun to watch and talk about. They understood that Santa would come down the chimney and leave presents while they were sleeping. And the kids are so good at opening presents now. We forgot to bring my mother-in-law’s present over to her house on Christmas so the kids and I brought it over to her yesterday. Thomas and Hayley had it opened for her before she knew we had brought it.
So after the excitement and exhaustion of the holidays, it seems that Thomas is very ready to be back at school which doesn’t happen until January 7. Every day, he wakes up and asks if he can go to school. He doesn’t get upset when I tell him no, but I think he’s just very eager to see his friends and his teachers again. That is to say, I think he likes school.
At school this month, they conduct free evaluations for children to see if they would benefit from being in one of the classes offered at Thomas’ school. I’m going to take Hayley to see if she would place in one of them. Thomas’ teacher urged me to do it, and of course, being a worried mother I asked her “why?” She has seen Hayley and let Hayley be a part of the class on occasions when we’ve visited. So she mentioned the testing for Hayley and I was immediately on-guard. She said that she didn’t notice anything wrong with Hayley but that she would be a great “typically developing” student to have in class, to model for the other kids. (Phew!) She may be able to join a class simply because she is “at risk,” having a brother with autism. However, if they really find nothing lacking in her development, we may be able to pay tuition to have her attend school there, depending on how much it is. I’m interested to see what happens.
Thomas had his five year check-up on Monday, and he was so good! Until we had to hold him down for the four shots he had coming to him, that is. Otherwise, he was great. The doctors and nurses there really like my children which is a nice feeling. Thomas’ pediatrician felt that Thomas is doing really well for being autistic and mentioned (as so many people do) that he has seen children much worse than Thomas. Of course, no doctors ever mention that they’ve seen children much better than Thomas, too. Anyway, the doctor said that he wasn’t concerned by the frontal lobe spikes shown in Thomas’ EEGs and that he felt it was fine to not do the sleep study given the circumstances. That makes me feel a little better, going into the doctor’s visit with the neurologist on January 21. I can at least say that Thomas’ pediatrician says it’s okay! Then I can ask her in very firm tones why she won’t give us more than one month of refills at a time on the Clonidine. It’s such a pain to have to make the calls and have the pharmacy call the doctor, etc. Why can’t we have a few months? We’re wasting manpower this way. So I’ll be sure to ask her about that on the 21st.
Thomas has a few new expressions that are so cute! We’re not sure where he picked them up specifically – probably from me, but I can’t remember saying them on a regular basis – but they’re so cute. Thomas is so helpful now! I’ll say, “Thomas? Could you pick up your socks and put them in the wash for me?” And he’ll say, “Well, sure I could!” It’s so adorable. The other thing he’s saying is, “Well, not really.” Example: “Thomas? Will you try some green beans please?”
“Well, not really.”
“Thomas? Do you know where your snow boots are?”
“Well, not really.”
He’s obviously using this phrase instead of “No” or “No, thank you” just to mix things up a bit. He uses it when it’s not entirely appropriate, like in the green beans example above, but we know what he means and it’s really interesting that he’s substituting new phrases for old words that perhaps he’s grown tired of. I wonder what that means in terms of his development.
I know this is silly and that it doesn’t happen this way, but lately I’ve been feeling like Thomas is “recovering” little by little over the months. I know that the vast majority of children don’t “recover” from autism, but he’s been getting better and better and we’re doing nothing but trying to teach him everything we can at home and sending him to school. We don’t have him on a gluten-free diet, he’s getting no private therapies at home and he’s taking no meds except for the Clonidine. Yet he improves noticeably on a monthly basis. When I was at school on the 21st for the Holiday Sing, Thomas’ occupational therapist and I were chatting for a while and she asked if Thomas is still doing a lot of screaming at home. I was confused for a second while she explained, “You know, remember last year when we talked and you said he was screaming a lot?” Finally, I remembered what she was talking about; I did talk to her on the phone and ask about what we could do when he screamed at home. I realized that he doesn’t do that so much anymore. He doesn’t have to swing on the platform swing at school, he doesn’t need the one-to-one attention of the occupational therapist at school anymore and he’s not having any outbursts or having to be removed from class for being disruptive this year. “What did you do with Thomas over the summer?” Everyone asks us that. We didn’t do anything. We went to the zoo a lot and swimming a lot. Thomas learned how to hold his breath and jump in off the side of the pool. That’s all I can remember about last summer.
So we’re looking forward to school starting again. I’m very interested to see how Thomas does after Christmas Break because it was after this vacation that he went downhill at school last year. The outbursts and need for OT increased after the time he was off school so I’m really excited to see how he does, especially since he’s looking forward to going back.