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A bit of a harsh mother?
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I understand what you say about the cash incentive of getting a child 'statemented' but know all about the parent hiding behind such a condition instead of proper discipline and corrective behaviour.
A friends child was behaving perfectly well and when asked to tidy up their room threw a paddy. I asked why they couldn't, took them to one side of the room for a chat and eventually found out the reason thety could behave like that was, in the childs words 'becuase I've got autism I don't have to'. The child was 7. How on earth they could have come to that conclusion on their own is beyond me and when the same child uses that excuse for bullying is totally beyond me.
The point I make is that looking after a child with difficulties is hard enough without a) giving them extra ammunition to behave how they like or an excuse to use and b) giving up altogether and allowing them to do as they like in a life with no boundaries/consequences.
GMI
However.
Autism is a very contary condition when it comes to order and chaos. If I walk into Mrs FR's study it, frankly, looks like its been hit by a bomb. Bits of paper everywhere. Now to me thats untidy, but woe betide me if I touch or move a thing. In Mrs FR's mind everything is in place - she knows exactly where each piece of paper is, and which bit follows on and where that is, etc,.
In other ways, for example, in the kitchen she's completely anal about tidiness. All the worksurfaces have to be scrupulously clean, all the knives in the block, all the cutlery in the tray THE RIGHT WAY ROUND. In the veg garden you could measure the distance between the sprout plants and find they were the same to within a couple of millimetres.
The sensory breakdown in the store that I described in an earlier post is usually caused by the shelves being rearranged, so that the soup or pasta or whatever isn't where it usually is anymore. You know how that irritates? well multiply that up by a factor of 10 and add in an inability to articulate the problem, plus the fact that you can't filter out the "white noise" (chatter, music,etc,.) and you're looking at what, in a child, you would call a tantrum.
However, as we discussed before, there have to be rules. Mrs FR knows that her study is sacrosacnt, but if it spreads outside I will tidy it up, and she can throw the biggest fit she likes (and she can throw them). I won't have her being rude or unkind to people (unless they deserve it) and I've been known to speak quite sharpley to her in fairly polite. company.
Sometimes I think folk believe I've let her get away with stuff. Well if she doesn't undersatnd the rules, or has literally interprated something wrongly then its not really her fault is it? When I first knew her she was on the verge of being disciplined by her college for writing on the walls of her room. When I made some enquiries I found that She'd run out of paper and when she'd gone to buy some more the assistant at the student shop had made a joke and said something like "You've used up your quota now - don't come back till next term" Now She'd interpreted that literally and when she ran out again - well you can see what happened. It wasn't anyones fault, its just that no one had found out what the problem really was. Once I'd found out it was easy to put right, and she never did it again.
As someone with no first-hand experience of such conditions I find this discussion extremely enlightening.
fell Running should write a guide
lurks - delighted to hear little one is enjoying running, i started out doing 2 miles a few times a week with mum & her friend, then i started running round them instead of tagging behaind :¬) keep it up - still might not be in the prizes at sports day, but i bet there aren't many 11-yr-olds who run that much & he'll soon be fitter than his friends :¬)
I agree there are people who do misuse a diagnosis, and this is very very very annoying. ASD & the like don't have a clear cut-off though, and in practice are not as well-defined as in textbooks - it's not always that clear (primary school thought i was probably classically autistic & mostly non-verbal, then they worked out that i just couldn't hear properly 'cos i had permanent glue-ear at the time but I could read fine).
benefits? i don't get any money (in theory at uni i might be able to apply for Disabled Students Allowance which usually get a computer, but i haven't 'cos I don't need it - little brother does have a computer with dictation software 'cos he can't type much which makes a lot of difference). Mum never got anything above the usual child benefit either. I do get extra time for handwriting in exams 'cos my handwriting is well into the bottom 1% compared to fellow-students, but that's it. (except getting experimented on lots 'cos my uni has a Dyslexia Research Unit right next door to my department - I can usually get a few book tokens a term by clicking on things on a computer while my eye movements are being tracked, or pointing at things in an MRI scanner - which is fun but hardly going to make my fortune).
But I would not be at all surprised if in the next 20 years it becomes possible to scan for differences in brain structure & function & link these into behavioural constellations like Autism & ADHD.
one day I will be the first dyspraxic brain surgeon, even if i do have to have L & R written on my hands before ops :¬)
one used to live at the bottom of my stairwell, & spent most of its time attacking the glass door, to fight with the nasty swan on the other side which wouldn't leave him alone. You had to throw bread at it as a distraction to get out the door. they might look pretty, but they are dim. Geese, on the other hand, are actually the malevolent rulers of the campus, and delight in coming up with inventive ways to torment & persecute students.
i use it to pay for:
fencing lessons and kit - it is a VERY expensive hobby, but really good for co-ordination, and learning right from left. also, being a "lefty" is an advantage
karate lessons, and kit (A/A)
and we are keeping enough in the bank to pay for a lap top if school do not provide one
this hides all the work that he has done over the years
the social skills groups
the exercises
the occupational therapy groups
the handwriting exercises etc
the hours spent learning to get dressed and operate cutlery and wash himself
he will be getting an electric razor when the time comes!!
:-)
Mrs has some bespoke software that was especially written for her . Its much more intuitive than the off the shelf stuff.
am hoping we won't need it
he is managing ok at the moment
but he will need to speed up for exams and stuff so
we will see
:-)
Though that doesn't always work!
'Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing' worked well for me - can almost touchtype now thanks to it & a few yrs of practice, so I don't need talking computers.
When picking laptops remember to look for ones with good cases which can take a bit of bashing, and get them insured - forgetfulness & clumsiness are not kind to computers.
Exams may not be as much of a problem as you think - with breaks & extra time then they are no more rushed for me than any other candidate, and exam boards have all sorts of things like an amanuensis (scribe) and use of technology to make sure you get tested on the subject not handwriting. Lessons are much more of a problem for me than exams 'cos in lessons you have to keep up with the class (except stupid multiple-choice answer exams, where i get muddled as to which boxes are which and got 30 on an IQ test using them once. grr.).
lurks - completely get the 'what are you on about' bit - takes a while for people to notice that i have elastic shoelaces, and a tendency to walk into lamp-posts and in front of passing traffic, and yes if i'm not in a hurry i can write clearly, but that's many many many hours of practice and exercise books full of squiggles... and food - probably my most embarrassing dyspraxic moment ever was a few weeks after i'd started uni, when a male friend from the uni running club invited me back for tea after a long run. he cooked spaghetti. three years later he still threatens to cook me spaghetti just as a wind-up.
Poi (a bit like juggling balls, but on string so much easier) are my preferred co-ordination training gadget - good for bilateral co-ordination, plus you can do tricks with them at parties, whereas no-one goes 'wow' when you've learned to throw a beanbag into a shoebox from 3 feet. Good Christmas present, especially glow poi which look very cool in the dark. housemate is a semi-professional juggler, but for some reason although I can borrow most of his kit I'm not allowed to play with the fire poi. Spoilsport ;¬)
but
he says he doesn't need it!!!!!
and i am just criticising his typing skills!!
(although his younger brother is keen as he can see the advantage of touch typing)
i will leave it a bit and then try again
thats what i reckon
i will try again over the summer holidays i think
Was it that you couldn't face it, you couldn't eat it or you ate it so slowly or you couldn't twist it and eat it properly?
Am learning so much on here, thanks all for posting.
We must be the only household that has one in the kitchen. We actaully have three in various places in the house.
Went to a reunion at Nottingham Uni with Mrs last summer, and was slightly stunned to find a pinball machine there that almost 30 years later had her name as the highest score achieved.
it slides all over the place, and it's too squishy and thin to cut up and eat in bits, and it's too stringy to eat with a spoon, and it doesn't like staying on forks, it just falls off. I like pasta, but spaghetti is just a silly shape. My parents are strict about formal table manners so i had to learn to eat most stuff with the 'correct' cutlery & not make too much of a mess. but spaghetti involves eating long stringy things on the end of forks, so every little finger-wobble is magnified, and then silly people cover it with slippery tomato sauce which has an amazing ability to get everywhere. for this reason i'd managed to avoid eating it in public for many years so rather out of practice too. Having bits of mushroom & garlic in your eyebrows is not a good look when trying to impress friendly second-year :¬(
I didn't really learn typing 'till i was 16 (i was in hospital & really bored) - maybe with more computers in schools it might be useful, but it wasn't 'till i got to 6th form that i was allowed or had access to a computer for most schoolwork (though i did used to type GCSE essays & then had to handwrite them before my teachers would take them, and was known to be the best person to ask when the school computers were going wrong - shame i didn't keep that up more, now all the stuff i'm really good at is on BBCs & Acorns & MSDOS stuff no-one uses any more. most of my time at uni i've been living with compscis, but i don't know if that's just a York thing).
pinball goes right over my head. By the time i've noticed that anything is happening, then the balls are already at the bottom of the machine.
sorry, i have a tendency to ramble a bit - i'm a psychology undergrad doing my dissertation on attention shift in developmental disorders, so threads like this are a bit like asking my trainspotter friend how to get from Glasgow to Swansea on the 21st January (you will find out what all the trains you will go on are called, and their numbers, and all about their tilting axles or new brakes, and the really interesting new thingybob they are trying out on the points at Bristol Parkway, as a sort of exchange for finding out how to get home. and if you don't actually tell him not to then you get to hear about the latest improvements to his computer programme to keep track of all this, which he taught himself 'Pascal' programming language specially to write).
So please do tell me to shut up if necessary!
This is sort of what my dissertation is about - it's very common in Pervasive Developmental Disorders (PDD) [things like Autistic Spectrum, Dyspraxia, AD(H)D, Dyslexia, etc] to either have particularly focused attention (monotropic / Autism end) or have very rapid attention shifts with difficulty sustaining a particular focus (polytropic / ADHD end). 'normal' / neurotypical is somewhere in the middle of the two. this can explain both anonamolous perceptual experiences and differences in social and intellectual functioning. For example I'm on the monotropic end, and i get very bothered by some sounds that other people don't seem to notice, like the sort of high-pitched whine that computers make, 'cos of hyperfocusing on that and not being distracted by other ambient sounds in the same way, and i'm not very good at eye contact because trying to process someone's voice & tone & body language is already a lot to focus on (this also being one reason why PDD are more common in males - they are already more monotropic to begin with). but the advantage is that i can get really interested in whatever i'm doing - my mum says that a herd of elephants trampling over me wouldn't bother me if i've got a book, and if i've picked an idea to be interested in then i tend to keep on with it for a long time in as many ways as i can - like when i decided to learn about bacteria at primary school i ended up reading stuff about how flagella work that i didn't even cover at A-level, or after i decided i shouldn't hurt anything alive then i ended up reading all the ecology & nutrition & things i could, and going vegan & being a rather militant greenie. i've never been very good at being moderate & middling in what i do just 'cos i want to know everything & do everything about whatever particular thing interests me.
There are also all sorts of other interesting acquired syndromes which affect sensory integration and/or simultaneous perceptual awareness affecting other bits of the brain - the one i'm currently most interested in is 'Balints Syndrome', although i don't think i'll be able to fit it in i'd like to look at anomalous sensory perception in the schizophrenias because some of what i've read & seen is a lot like trying to make sense of permanent sensory overload. but that's too big an idea to do for undergrad dissertation really, and i must not just read the entire library & plan a PhD instead of actually writing my dissertation.
But anyway, I reckon that Ritalin works by increasing frontal lobe action in hyperfrontal children, thereby producing a paradoxical calming reaction to a stimulant.
Anyway, here endeth inappropriately-perseverative ramble - putting them on the internet is much better, no-one actually has to read them then if they don't want to. sorry if it's a bit confused, it's very hard to write in straight lines when your brain is stuck several paragraphs away from your fingers :¬)
Wow, that's pretty good even by my standards - I've never had to split a post into three bits before!
even us neurotypical folk have trouble coping with a long flowwing narrative with that much information in it
:-)
also, on the spaghetti front
some people with dyspraxia are touch sensitive - and this does not just mean touch on their skin - boy1 hates having his hair cut, but tolerates it because he knows he will be teased at school if it is too long, it's down to his collar now, i like it longer actually
the touch sensitivity includes what they put in their mouths. he has from a baby, always spat out "slimey" food
any pasta, mushrooms, eggs in any form
so he would never eat spaghetti anyway, by choice anyway.
he would do his best if he was a guest in someone's house
he tried noodles at home once
and threw up
he just couldn't swallow it without gagging
but he tried
i smiled at the thing about being lost in a book
I rememeber-------
My clumsiness miraculously disappeared if there was music
"glass bubble"
can't seem to get that total concentration any more