Be A Good Dad

Teasing Games

beagooddad — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 19:29:20 +0000

Geetle – Giggles is teasing me.

BAGM – Kind of like you were teasing Pookie this morning.

Geetle – But she thinks she’s in charge of me.

BAGM – Hmm. It sounds like teasing is only fun for one of the people involved.

Giggles – Me.

Geetle – Mom!

Talking to people with verbal disabilities

beagooddad — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 18:49:41 +0000

People frequently have trouble talking to kids with special needs. It can make people feel self-conscious to talk with people who may not be able to communicate back normally. Over the years, I’ve watched a lot of people try to talk to Pookie and give up after getting what seem like strange responses back.

Here is a video about how to do it the right way. This is Ricky Stanzi. He happens to be the quarterback at the University of Iowa which happens to be my favorite team. The team is doing some volunteer/outreach work with Camp Courageous which is an organization that works with people with disabilities.

So Ricky is being interviewed and in the gets approached by one of the people from the camp. Watch how Ricky doesn’t miss a beat as he switches to talking to a guy that a lot of people would have trouble holding a conversation with. The way he pays attention to the body language and listens and talks is textbook on how you should talk to people that have verbal disabilities. Ricky doesn’t give one indication that he is feeling awkward or embarrassed and that’s while a news crew video camera is filming him about other stuff. He doesn’t even acknowledge that the cameras are around. He just talks to the guy about what the guy wants to talk about. He just talks to him like he’s a friend and they are just hanging out.

That’s how it’s done.

My favorite part of Father’s Day this year

beagooddad — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 17:46:00 +0000

BAGM wrote up a post with the details and some pictures of what we did on Father’s Day weekend.

My favorite parts of the day, though, were playing catch with a football with Geetle for about a half hour, having Giggles sit on my lap and knock my hat off over and over, and watching Pookie dribbling a basketball and shooting some hoops.

I’m a big fan of big events and all that but there is something so nice about just being able to relax in the front yard with the kids.

Librarian for a day

beagooddad — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 15:03:16 +0000

For one of my summer classes (that I’m about to drop because it will be too much of a time commitment over summer), I’m supposed to do 60 hours of community service. I volunteered at the library and had my first night on the job last night.

They put me to work right away shelving books and after a brief training period of how alphabetizing works, and a few practices, I was off and running for about 2 1/2 hours of work.

A few years back, my dad and I did these really awesome built in bookcases all over the front room of our house that is now our library. They are stocked with books as well as the short bookcase near my bed and under Pookie’s bed and the big bookcase in the girls’ room and the bookcase in the basement and a few baskets where unfiled books end up.

BeAGoodMom organizes by look. She gets these neat piles of books that are sideways next to another stack of books that is up and down. It looks very pretty and probably allows us to get more books on the shelves. Hardcovers end up next to each other buy height and paperbacks sometimes get stacked two deep.

I, however, like to organize by author and then title. Sometimes I’ll mix it up and do author and then original published date which makes it easier to find the next book in a series.

I’ve lost the battle in our house.

But I lived to fight another day…at the library. It was awesome. In addition to just putting the books where they belong, we also have to fix the books around it that are out of order. Some people do yoga, some people do shopping, some prefer chocolate. I think I might have found my stress release shelving books.

The person training me (she remembers the Great Depression) commented on how nice it was to have someone that actually new the alphabet and told me what a great job I was doing. I can’t remember the last time that happened at my real job and I do things way harder than alphabetizing on most days.

Unfortunately, I realized that I’m just not going to have time for 60 hours over the summer. That works out to just over 8 hours a week and I just can’t commit to that. But maybe I can find a way to get in a 3 hour shift every week or two.

A note to myself

beagooddad — Sat, 05 Jun 2010 19:13:38 +0000

Every now and then Pookie is going to go through a rough spell for a few days or even a couple weeks.

When it feels a overwhelming remember:

I am not trying to find a cure
I am not trying to support a cause
I am not even trying to find the missing puzzle piece
I don’t even need to have everything working perfectly by the end of the day
I am just trying to raise my son

and that’s all that autism needs to mean to me.

Note: This does not mean that I don’t appreciate all the people doing the other things.

Soccer Camp

beagooddad — Fri, 28 May 2010 17:48:06 +0000

Late last night, I signed Geetle up for soccer camp. It will be for one week in July and last from 9am until 3pm. That’s some hardcore futbol.

She is very excited for reasons that I do not understand. I know she is excited because she randomly gave me a hug this morning about 30 minutes after telling her about it.

I don’t really peg her as someone interested in sports. Playing sports games in the yard, yes. But actually practicing and participating on a team and all that I just don’t see. She hates not being the best at something and she hates practicing because that just reminds her that she doesn’t know how to do it. When she is around most other kids her age (besides a couple of close friends) she can barely grunt a hello before finding a butterfly to chase somewhere else.

But because of all of that, this camp should be great for her. The afternoon session will be spent playing team games and the mornings will be spent practicing skills. And then there will be pizza for lunch.

Who knows. Maybe she is an star just waiting for an opportunity. I have noticed that she seems to be playing basketball on the playground at school more often. Based on her current height, I figure that if she does get into organized sports that basketball and/or volleyball will be her strong points. I’m rooting for volleyball because I know nothing about that sport and would have no trouble not pressuring her too much.

Quieting Echolalia

beagooddad — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 18:47:14 +0000

We’ve been saying for a couple years that one of the most noticeable “autism” things is his echolalia. It gets in the way of normal conversation, socializing and education. It is so much harder to do those things when you just have to sing Arthur songs (his most recent phase) or repeat favorite books all day.

All day.

I can understand a lot of things about the differences from Pookie and other kids but the echolalia is one that I just can’t get inside his head enough to understand. We try to work with it as much as possible and play with it when appropriate and we try to ignore it when it really seems necessary but I don’t think we will ever understand it.

In IEP meetings, the biggest factor keeping him out of normal classrooms is the echolalia. He cannot keep quiet for long enough to not disrupt a classroom constantly. I would even go as far as to say that without the echolalia he would probably do fairly well in a normal classroom. He would have trouble answering questions when called on, but he would have very little trouble filling out the worksheets, writing on the board, reading the stories, doing the art projects, etc.

I have done some reading about echolalia (mostly things written by adults with echolalia) and the general thinking seems to be that it is there and it will be there until he is ready to start leaving it behind. And when he starts to leave it behind, it will still be there but he’ll just have better control over the appropriate times to use it.

We’ve decided to start working on teaching him that there are times when it is not appropriate.

Here are a few examples:

Pookie has a clock that lights up when it is late enough for him to get out of bed. It is set for 6am. He wakes up between 5:30 and 5:45 on most days and starts singing/story telling in a fairly loud voice until the clock tells him to get out of bed.
The rest of the family gets up at about 6:30am. Between 6am and 6:30am, Pookie sings/talks loudly on the main floor.
While getting dressed for school, he sings/talks so much that he’ll stop dressing in the middle of putting on an item of clothing.
During dinner, Pookie has frequently starts talking/singing enough that he stops eating until we remind him to start eating again.
While watching TV, Pookie frequently talks/sings about things unrelated to the show he is watching.

I am working on making him realize that those are not good echolalia times of the day. He normally does a decent job of quieting down for a couple minutes when prompted. I’m hoping that he’ll start to understand that there are some times that are more appropriate for echolalia than others. If he can make that connection at home, it should be pretty easy to transition it to school and other away from home locations.

While typing this, I realized that what I need to do is make some kind of a sign or card that we can use when we do not want to hear the echolalia. That would make it much easier to convert to something that works for school and would make it a non-verbal prompt. Non-verbal prompts are better for several reasons with one of them being that it makes it easier for me to stay non-yelling when he gets mad about it.

Mew

beagooddad — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 01:42:45 +0000

I read a story with Pookie at bedtime tonight. Then I went to help the girls get ready for bed. It’s our normal routine. When they are i bed, we finish by putting the cats in bed with the big kids.

I normally poke into Pookie’s room while wrestling the girls into bed to remind him that we’ll be right back with Nixie. Tonight, Pookie started crying when I looked into the room. Complete real cry with tears and not able to talk. Serious stuff.

But during the part that should have been “Boo hoo” or whatever sobbing noise you like, he was saying, “Mew. Mew. Mew.” It went on for several minutes before he calmed down.

BAGM and I were trying not to cry and failing to not laugh.

The only thing we can think of is that he might have had a delayed sadness reaction from watching Marley & Me early today. And when the cats mew, he says that “Nixie cried” or “Teddy cried.”

So apparently he is learning Catonese and crying like they do.

First Grade Writing Homework – Geetle Style

beagooddad — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 01:54:05 +0000

Part of Geetle’s homework tonight was to find a word on the special April word list. They get a special list each month that has about 30-50 words that kind of focus on things that happen in that month.

Here is Geetle’s paragraph:

I like April Fool’s day. April Fool’s Day is fun! I like April Fool’s Day! I like jokes. April Fool Day is cool!

Geetle

I like it. Four different spellings of April Fools’ Day with none of them being correct which is even more amazing because that must have been the phrase from the word wall. Three exclamations marks! Awesome!

Giggles will never be a trophy wife

beagooddad — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 17:31:40 +0000

Giggles will not be a simple object.

This morning she said, “I don’t want to be a she. I want to be a her.”

So, she might have a boy toy someday but she will not be a trophy wife.