Autism Therapy: Lifeskills and Education for Students with Autism and other Pervasive Behavioral Challenges (LEAP)

So much has been happening lately that it’s been hard to find time to write.  The GFCF diet will have to be put on hold for now, at least.  The good news – an improvement that could help us avoid that kind of major dietary inconvenience indefinitely – is that the Strattera seems to be working really well for Thomas.  He’s been more attentive, making more eye-contact and telling me loads about things that have happened at school.  Last Thursday, Thomas told me that there were three “stations” in gym class:  a running station, a hopping station and a beach ball station.  I asked him which one was his favorite and he said that he like the beach balls the best.  I said, “Beach balls?  That must have been a little crazy, with beach balls flying all over they gym.”  Thomas said, “No.  Mr. M. put up a little blue fence around the beach ball station.”  All I could say was “Wow!”  He’s never given me so much information about school before.  Granted, gym does seem to be his favorite subject. 

            One unfortunate side effect of Strattera is having difficulty sleeping and Thomas seemed to not sleep at all for three nights running last week.  I made an alternately frantic and comatose call to the neurologist who decided to add another half Clonidine around 3 or 4 p.m. to help ease Thomas into the evening.  Jonathan and I were really skeptical about that.  I kept wondering how much Clonidine his little body could take, for one thing.  For another thing, I wondered if the Clonidine patch would be a better solution.  The neuro still wants to use the pills and surprisingly, it did seem to help.  The problem was that Thomas would get up around 1 or 2 a.m. and get into our bed which is his usual routine.  The bad thing was that he’d get into bed with us and not go to sleep.  He’d flop around like a suffocating fish, kicking us and waking us up.  We’d send him back to his bed and hear his TV click on.  Then Hayley would get up and come into our room.  She said that Thomas came into her room and woke her up - I guess to play with him.  So there was that one awful Sunday night where nobody got any sleep and it affected everyone negatively.  Thomas didn’t think anything of it, but the rest of us were dead on our feet all day.  With the extra half-pill in the afternoon now, he still comes into our room at some point but he sleeps peacefully at least.  Hayley has been sleeping very well, in her bed all night until she sees Jonathan get up for work and then she comes in for a snuggle.  Since the Strattera dose seems to be working well for now, we’re not going to increase it.  Thomas hasn’t had any tics, so that’s great.  It’s what we were afraid of.  Luckily, the one that he developed while on Focalin went away as soon as we stopped the medication.  I’ve heard that they can develop tics that never go away, even if the medicine is discontinued.

            Thomas’ IEP meeting was on lucky Friday, February 13.  It was a great meeting; very positive and everyone, as per usual, just LOVES my boy.  Thomas has so far this year met or very nearly met all of the goals his service team set for him last May.  His meeting last year was at the end of the school year, so he still has a couple of months to meet his goals and there’s no reason to suppose that he won’t.  Thomas’ teacher, whom shall now be called “Mrs. H.” because I’m getting tired of calling her “The Teacher,” actually cried twice during the meeting, thus making me cry.  The last time I cried at an IEP for Thomas was what I like to call “The Worst Day of My Life,” the meeting when autism was brought up.  Thomas has come such a long way since then that now I can look forward to crying tears of joy.  And watching his teachers do the same, I guess.  Mrs. H. has become very fond of and attached to Thomas.  He manages to endear himself so to all of his therapists and teachers.  I understand why Mrs. H. was so emotionally moved; she is educated in early childhood development and therefore recognizes immediately when Thomas makes a breakthrough or reaches an educational milestone.  She sees it for the huge leap that it is.  At the beginning of most days, Mrs. H. has the kids draw a picture and then encourages them to write a few words about it.  Most of the time, Thomas scribbles and makes up some story about it but won’t write.  The Monday before his IEP, he drew a picture of an orange “race car,” colored it in and started writing that it was “An orange race car, going very fast.”  I mean, this thing really looked like a car!  It had wheels and everything!  Mrs. H. told me that when I saw it, I would cry, but I didn’t.  (That is, until she did in the meeting.)  I was excited; I said, “Wow, that’s cool!”  I think I just don’t understand the gravity of such things the way that Mrs. H. and the OT understand them.  Either way, Jonathan and I are very touched by the tender and loving way teachers speak about Thomas.  I found myself having to reassure Mrs. H. that she would see us plenty next year, because she’ll have Hayley and Thomas will be in first grade and I see no reason why I can’t volunteer in Hayley’s kindergarten classes too.  She felt better after that.  But Thomas is showing pre-reading skills; better than many of his classmates in some cases, continues to improve his writing and recognizing letter sounds and shocks us all from time to time with his amazing memory.

            My job search continues, and I feel I’m very close to landing that perfect foodservice job I’ve been wanting.  I have a second interview at a restaurant tomorrow and I papered all eateries within a five mile radius yesterday afternoon with applications and a winning smile.  I’m hoping to be able to wait tables two or three nights during the work week and two shifts of various hours on the weekends.  There are so many good reasons for me to find a part-time evening and weekend out-of-the-house job, the more I ponder it.  One big reason (cash is numero uno, of course, but…) is that the kids will begin to see their father as more of a caregiver.  One thing that happens frequently and always fries my cookies is that I’ll be deeply engrossed in some chore or activity like running on the treadmill, folding laundry or even taking a shower.  Jonathan will be sitting on the couch in the living room, watching TV.  Hayley will come in and ask for a snack.  My immediate question is, “What’s Daddy doing?”  She tells me so I send her to ask Daddy to get her the snack.  Fifteen seconds later, she’s back and she says, “Daddy wants to know if it’s okay if I have a snack.”  See, Hayley went and asked Jonathan if she could HAVE a snack, she didn’t tell him that I asked HIM to get HER the snack.  “Yes!  For the love of God, child, you may have a snack!”  Now I’m getting irritated.  Fifteen seconds later, Jonathan comes into the room.  “Did you say it was okay for Hayley to have a snack?”  He thinks she’s trying to pull a fast one.  By then, I’m so frustrated that I start raving like a madwoman and nobody understands why.  So maybe – maybe – if I’m completely out of the house, Jonathan can decide for himself if the children are worthy of our pantry full of snack foods.  And the kids won’t even be able to consider asking me in the first place.

            As I said, the money will be great.  If I can make a couple hundred a week, we’re going to go ahead a book a trip to Disney World in August, I think.  We have some money coming to us that we didn’t even know we were supposed to get (it was really our money anyway; the county assessor was just “borrowing” it from us until we noticed, it seems) and that coupled with the extra income I hope to earn will make it possible for us to finally take our children to see The Mouse.  We’ve been dreaming of it ever since we went to Disney World for our honeymoon and saw happy families riding the teacups and Flying Dumbos.  “Wow, won’t it be great to take our hypothetical children here some day,” we’d say to each other.  Actually, I can remember several times while we were there that I thought it would be nice if we had a kid or two with us for this show or that ride.  It appears to be within reach.  I know, it’ll be hotter than hell in Florida in August (ninety-two degrees is the average daily high), but we don’t want to take the kids out of school to go.  We have two immediate family weddings in November, one of them over Thanksgiving weekend, we don’t want to go over Christmas and miss that with our families and I wouldn’t touch Spring Break with a ten-foot pole.  So that leaves summer vacation, and we’ll need more time to save dough than a vacation in June would give us.  That’s our decision.  Now I just need to get hired and make a dazzling impression.  Shouldn’t be too hard.

            Jonathan took the kids to the Monster Truck Jam last weekend on Valentine’s Day, also our eleventh wedding anniversary.  Hayley pretty much hated it; it was way too loud for her (Jonathan remembered to bring earplugs, but even so, it was too loud) but Thomas loved it.  His favorite part was the motorcycle tricks.  So Thomas would go again, but we’ll have to find some Mommy-and-Hayley activity the next time the Monster Trucks are in town. 

            The last bit of drama I’m going to share this evening is that Thomas has reached a physiological milestone:  he has two loose teeth.  The bottom two in the middle, the two that popped through right on schedule on his six-month birthday, are preparing to leave on a high-note.  Thomas wants nothing to do with this whole process.  We’ve mentioned it to him before, always with negative results so we’ve been kind of hoping that we had a little more time.  Nothing doing, says Mother Nature.  He spent most of today whining and complaining and actually crying at times.  At one point, he asked me for some tape so that he could “fix” the ones that were loose.  We tried everything we could think of to put him at ease.  I drew him pictures like I used to in the old days.  It only upset him more because I drew smiley faces on the kids who had lost teeth and he said that they should have had sad faces.  I tried showing him Sophie the Dog’s puppy teeth which I saved (no idea, don’t ask), but he wanted to put them back in her mouth.  At dance class, one of Hayley’s friends was missing both of her bottom middle teeth and she gleefully obliged when we asked to have a look, but Thomas didn’t really care.  He is threatening that when one finally falls out, he’s going to “cram it back in.”  Those are his words, not mine.  He actually said “cram.”  Losing teeth is fine for everyone else, but Thomas is completely against it.  For one thing, he knows that the new teeth are called “adult teeth” and he wants to never be grown-up.  We’ve started calling them “big-boy teeth,” but he doesn’t really want to be a big boy, either.  Of course, all of this represents change, which Thomas is firmly dead-set against in all forms.  Unfortunately, nothing can be done to stop baby teeth falling out, so we’re going to have to weather the storm.

            Although very resistant to change, Thomas did show a great deal of enthusiasm for flying in an airplane to go to Walt Disney World.  Go figure.