Then there's Ian
Ian, as best we could tell, was conceived within days of Traci losing her youngest brother Timmy in a motor vehicle accident. He was welcomed despite the surprise, and hasn't stopped surprising us. No such thing as going quietly in the night for this one. Ian has a personality I am constantly describing as tenacious. Ian is like whitewall tires as described by Luigi in the animated movie "Cars"- HERE I AM! LOOK AT ME! LOOOOOVE ME!
He has always tried to be like his older brother too, He was trying to walk before he could crawl, following his big brother around. When Ian started crawling it lasted about a week and a half; he was in such a hurry to catch up to Thomas. I couldn't figure out what the rush was until one day I caught Ian running past me to Thomas, pull Thomas' pacifier out of his mouth and try to run off with it. I had yet,to that day, to see a 1 year old outrun a 3 yr old and it didn't happen that day either. Thus the brotherly competition began.  Despite being two years junior to Thomas', Ian outweighs him by nearly 5 lbs. They play and wrestle and fight, which was of concern initially since it got rough-kicking, scratching punching and hair pulling. The more I talked around and others saw them together, I was reassured this is typical brother fighting behavior. Ian usually instigates, Thomas' is the "finisher", he doesn't play around, he ends it! Unfortunately his tendency to persevere means "not letting go" once Ian has submitted or effected a retreat, so we still have to keep a watchful eye when they have a disagreement. On the bright side Ian's tenacious personality does involve Thomas in conversations and activities he might otherwise avoid and helps him learn interaction with peers. Thomas can spend hours alone with legos or watching a show, (if we were to let him have the TV for that long,that is). However Ian will engage him regularly and endeavors to include Thomas in a lot of his toy adventures. Saturday, February 7, 2015Thomas regressess
This post will detail Thomas' journey through school only--Later posts will address our reactions/feelings as well as brother's
Thomas was diagnosed with Autism at three years of age, something we had suspected for almost a year as his development had regressed, delayed, or disappeared altogether. His once articulate speech was reduced to screams, screeches or brief loud shouting demands. His potty training, almost complete, now regressed back to diapering; the alternative being soiled underwear as he no longer saw fit to use the commode. It was disheartening and frustrating as Thomas was so bright and talkative. To further complicate things, we were also raising a younger brother who was already mirroring Thomas' behavior. Thank fully the school district has an early intervention program(ECI) and we were able to get him into a class called PPCD-preschool program for children with disabilities. PPCD was a mixed blessing as it was all new-bus ride to a new but foreign environment-a school classroom with rigid rules in accord with Applied Behavioral Analysis guidelines. Bless those first year teacher and aides for Thomas is a stubborn as they come and in those early months they had their hands full.  The thing about autistic children is they thrive on structure, a regularity throughout the day rivalling any neurotypical human who claims to have OCD. Thomas thrived knowing the rules of the room and how his day would go. That was all he knew though, there was no flexibility to changes. How he learned something or saw something, that was how it had to be every subsequent time. So anytime the teacher wanted to make an adjustment to schedules or how they did an activity, it could result in a meltdown as Thomas' couldn't cope with adjusting to the change. A great example was at Thanksgiving celebration in the classroom-parents were present, the schedule was different, and a special meal was to be had in the room with family members. That's a lot of new stuff for him to accommodate. Up to now Thomas had been learning how to transition to activities via a timer; when the timer went, it was time for the next activity no matter what. If Thomas finished 5 minutes early, he would wait for the timer to go off 5 minutes later before starting the next one. So this day the teacher set the timer for how long everyone had to enjoy their meal before we had to clean up and prepare for the bus. Thomas interpreted the timer as the amount of time before he was allowed to eat and there was no convincing him otherwise, even though the rest of the people in the room were eating. So he waited and waited for the timer to go off and of course had very little time to eat as everyone else was packing up. There are reasons for this I won't go into depth here, however I will say we later learned from the Son Rise Program that these behaviors were a protective measure, a defense mode for Thomas as he didn't know how to effectively communicate frustration or appropriately adjust to changes. In other words his stagnation was protecting himself from being overwhelmed, rather than allow himself to be overwhelmed by something foreign/new, he would be stuck and oppositional to change. It is this we will address in depth throughout our program. Tuesday, January 27, 2015David has posted a new update (1 New Photo)...
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A Dad shares the journey of his own creations-that of his son's; one Autistic and one neurotypical.
