Autism Therapy: concentration

It was a rough week at school for Thomas.  Two good days, two “okay” days, and one difficult day.  Overall, that doesn’t sound very bad, but we had gotten so used to him having good days that this past week seems to have been especially hard for him.

            In the notes we received from Thomas’ teacher this week, difficulty with transitions was a main theme.  That’s especially disappointing because we had just been talking last weekend about how much better he seemed to be doing with transitions.  With Thomas, it seems to be one step forward, two steps back a lot of the time.

            Another thing he seemed to be getting better with was his echolalia.  Unfortunately, I’ve noticed a backslide in that area lately too.  But even though the echolalia appears to be more prevalent, his communicative speech is improving.  Tonight, he said, “Hey, could you get me some more goldfish crackers?”  Of course, I don’t much care for being addressed as “hey” but it was such a conversational thing to say – so casual-sounding.  We brought home balloons for the kids from my sister-in-law’s baby shower today and Thomas and Hayley were tangling up the strings and getting tangled up themselves, so Thomas said, “Help!  I’m all tangled-up!”  Again, it seemed so conversational and normal.  So his speech improves little by little, even through the echolalia.

            We got the potty-training supplies today!  I ordered many pairs of absorbent (but not too absorbent) training pants and vinyl pants to go over them.  At the potty-training workshop we attended at Thomas’ school two weeks ago, the speakers at the meeting really believe that making your child feel wet will help them become more aware of their excretory functions, and “pull-up” diapers don’t accomplish that.  (Even the ones that claim to have a “wetness liner” to make your child feel wet…we’ve tried those.)  The training pants and over-pants were pretty expensive, so we’re going to just stop buying diapers and move onto the new system.  The only thing I’m really concerned about is whether or not Thomas will care if he is wet or dry.  Only very rarely has he ever complained about an uncomfortable diaper.  So I’m really hoping that the wet sensation (hopefully heightened by the vinyl pants!) will spur him to use the toilet.  If he doesn’t mind urinating in the training pants, I’m not sure what our next move will be.

            We are pretty lucky in one way with the potty-training:  Thomas will do #2 on the toilet!  For a long time, we thought that he would never have a BM on the toilet.  He was doing a lot of withholding - so much that he would turn purple, shake and cry when he was holding in a bowel movement.  We took him to see a pediatric gastroenterologist who prescribed a stool-softener for him, and we used that for a while.  It definitely got the job done as far as “cleaning him out,” but we were changing so many diapers that we realized that we were not getting anywhere as far as potty-training was concerned.  Little by little, we got him to sit on the toilet and we tried to demonstrate the mechanics of pushing.  It must have looked funny to him; there were his parents, grunting and puffing like they were in labor, trying to get him to tune-in to the pushing urge.  The key was to notice when he was holding it in.  He would sometimes creep off to a quiet corner of the house and stand there with his legs locked, buttocks clenched and a look of concentration on his face.  That was when we needed to carry him to the toilet right away so that the urge would not pass before we got him undressed and on the potty.  Most of the time, it works and he’s able to produce.  Then, he gets a sucker.

            So at this point, our real problem is #1.  I really hope that he doesn’t care for the wet bottom in the training pants.

            So all in all, it was a rough week for Thomas (and his teachers).  We’ve put a lot of demands on him this weekend as far as transitioning goes, and he’s been doing okay, so maybe we can get him back on track.