Autism Therapy: restrain

            Guess what?  This is my 100th blog on Healing Thresholds!  If this were a sitcom, I would be compelled to do a clip-show. 

            My birthday was yesterday and fun-filled, or at least peaceful, until the oven broke just as I was heading out to the PTA meeting.  My sister called from California and I was on the phone with her, watching Jonathan lay on the floor in front of the oven’s open broiler-drawer with a lit napkin in his hand.  I had no idea what he was doing and it didn’t occur to me, even after I was off the phone, that there might have been a problem.  He had to cook Thomas’ fish and Hayley’s chicken nuggets in the microwave, but overall, an oven is something you can get along without for a couple of days unless you’re a caterer.  We’re not caterers, so it was no big deal and a guy came out today and fixed it.  So we’ll be able to bring the green bean casserole to Jonathan’s mom’s house on Thanksgiving after all.

            Thomas actually had a pretty difficult time at school yesterday.  Since it was Tuesday, I went in to help the teacher in the classroom as usual, but Thomas was very sad at first!  The aide came in to help as she usually does when I’m there, but we couldn’t figure out what his trouble was.  I assumed it was the medicine he takes in the morning and I said something like, “I’m going to call his doctor and see if we can take him off the Clonidine in the morning,” but both the teacher and the aide said that he’s not like that every day.  It might have been because we drove to school yesterday instead of walked and it was my birthday so I brought in cookies for the kids and got to wear the birthday crown.  All of this might have thrown Thomas off a little bit.  He did recover after playing in centers and going to the library, though.  I also had a good talk with him today on our way to get Hayley from preschool.  I’m trying to make him understand that when I’m in the classroom, it’s to help his teacher and his teacher is there to help him.  He seemed receptive to what I was saying and he said that he definitely wants me to continue coming to school on Tuesdays, so I will for now.  If he has trouble again like he had yesterday, I may have to try to help out in some other way.

            Thomas’ conference is tomorrow night at 7:15.  We’re invited to bring Thomas (and Hayley) with us so that he can show us his portfolio and the work that he’s done, but I’m not sure it will work out like that.  Probably, Hayley will settle herself in the dress-up area and Thomas will play on the science table while we talk to his teacher.  I’m really interested in hearing what she has to say about his progress and his report card.  I get to see him in action at school every Tuesday and I’m kind of thinking of talking to her about whether or not she thinks I should continue coming in to help out.

            The kids have no school next week except for Hayley who has preschool on Monday.  Usually the preschool follows the district’s schedule, but Thomas’ school has what’s called a School Improvement Day on Monday.  Thomas and I will get some quality time then while Hayley’s at school.  I wonder what I’m going to do with them next week!  I still have to conduct my annual toy purge before the big Christmas influx.  It’s usually easier to do that when the kids aren’t home, but I might try to involve them in it this year.  Thomas has so many old broken cars that he doesn’t play with anymore and I’m hoping he’ll see the sense in throwing them out or giving them away.  I’ll try to introduce the idea of charitable giving – giving away toys that we don’t play with anymore to kids who don’t have as much.  I wonder if they’re still too young for this concept.  If so, I’ll have to be sneaky.

            This holiday season is shaping up to be the best and most exciting for the kids.  They’re really getting into the Santa Claus thing and are excited for Christmas to come.  In our house, we usually measure the days until a big event by telling the kids that there are “five sleeps until we go to the vacation house,” or whatever it is.  That means that they have to go to bed for the night five times – a kid-friendly way of saying five more days.  They keep asking, “Is it going to be Christmas tomorrow?” or “How many days until Christmas?”  They’re already getting in the spirit, probably because I took advantage of a warm day last week to put up the outdoor lights and put the big wreath on the front of the house.  I wonder how many more years we have of the kids being excited to see Santa and believing in the magic of it.

            I’ve been looking at the calendar and have realized that unless we want to do our Christmas shopping Thanksgiving weekend (ugh!), we’ll have to do it December 6.  That will probably mean an overnight trip to Grandma’s for the kids and that we have that one precious day to start and finish shopping.  I can’t believe it’s that time of year again.  Around now, I have to restrain myself from decking our halls and stringing lights all over every available square inch of wall space.  Thomas has been asking about the Christmas tree and when I’m going to put it up, and also if he can bring his pedal car back in the house since it’s cold outside now.  Over the summer, he took it outside to ride it and I said that it’s really an outside toy so we’d leave it in the garage until it was too cold to ride it outside.  The problem is that we spend all winter tripping over it, moving it around the living room and out of our way.  I’m hoping that he’ll forget about it when he sees the bicycle that Santa’s going to bring him.  Of course, then we’ll have that in the house.  The trade-off would be that I might finally get a chance to play with the Nintendo Wii.