Mindreading.

Mindreading. One word, no space. Not referring to David Copperfield style parlour tricks - I'm back to thinking about theory of mind, understanding emotions, understanding people, all that jazz. I'm exploring the Small Boy's interpersonal side. In the Autism research community , "mindreading" - one word - is the buzzword that describes all that - the ability to work out through your eyes and ears what's going on inside somebody else's head. Particularly, their emotions.

One of the most effective weapons in our armoury at the moment is Thomas the Tank Engine. The Small Boy loves Thomas. Well, no surprise there - he is, after all, a Small Boy.

I love Thomas too but for a different reason. I love him for the faces. Clear, round, single colour - perfect for thinking about expressions.

"Look. There goes Thomas going along the track. What sort of a face has he got on? Happy face? Yes, I think that's a happy face. Thomas likes going on his tracks. Uh-oh. There's a cow on the line. Beep beep! She's not getting out of the way. What sort of a face has Thomas got now? Look at those lines on his forhead. Those are grumpy lines. I think Thomas has got a grumpy face on. He doesn't like having a cow in the way."

Thomas gets us happy face, sad face, surprised face and grumpy face, so far. I'm looking for more. I think we can probably get in bored face, excited face - maybe scared face (do trains ever get scared?) before we've exhausted the emotional range of Thomas the Tank Engine. After that, I'll be looking for some good boy-friendly books that do body language. Not much of that in Thomas.

We go to Social Skills group every week at the moment. The Speech Therapists in charge report that the Small Boy has a limited range of emotions he understands - happy, sad, anything beyond that is "funny face". But I'm not so sure. Where it counts - understanding emotions in context - he's way ahead of that. Witness the following dinnertime scene...

The chief protagonists - one Small Girl. One grumpy, wriggly, squirmy, whiny Small Girl. And one Daddy. I forget what her issue was, TBH. I do recall she was pushing the parental buttons for all she was worth. And the viscious spiral escalated.

SG: Squirm squirm squirm

D: Instruct Small Girl to Sit Up With Legs Forward.

SG: Whine. Squirm in the other direction

D: Instruct Small Girl to SIT UP NOW and EAT FOOD.

SG: Whine more. Listlessly pick up fork in two fingers. Trail it towards food at..........about.......thissssssss.......s....p....e....e...d..........

Drop food in lap due to inadequate hold on fork.

D: Instruct Small Girl to SIT UP, HOLD FORK PROPERLY and EAT FOOD.

SG: WHINE! Get up, run into bedroom, slam door

D: Silently rise, follow Small Girl to bedroom.


Small Boy's comment. "Daddy want to Smack Julia."

Well labelled.

Words - the Final Frontier.

My Small Boy is now very much in favour of words. He understands the power of them. In fact, he believes in the power of them a little too much. So we get conversations like:

"Can't go to the playground. It's wet and raining."

"No. Is actually not wet playground. Is wet inna house. Playground is dry."

There is a little corner of his mind that is telling him that if he insists hard enough that the playground is dry, the playground will in fact become dry. And the house - which he can see clear enough is not, in fact, wet at this point - will become wet in its place. Basically, he believes in primitive nature magic. Sadly, it's not quite working out for him. He needs to work on his incantations a little.

His belief in the power of [em]my[/em] speech is a little closer to the mark. After all, if he can induce me to say important words like (not-so-random example) "Time to play Minecraft* now" then it's true, this will actually turn it into Minecraft playing time.

It does not, however, follow that taking my lower jaw and moving it up and down will cause me to say the magic words. Apparently worth trying as an experiment though.

The biggest roadblock for the Small Boy at the moment, is the problem of conflicting labels. See that cat in front of you? It's also an animal. And a pet. That roast potato? That's food. Also dinner. Trying to keep things simple, he has an intense aversion to this concept. No! Is NOT dinner! Issa tater! This is probably what's behind the whole "Yourcraft" confusion too. How can "mine" be a word for a hole in the ground? It's already the word for something that belongs to me.

Learning about grouping things - people, animals, foods, clothes - is an important abstract task. Important for being able to sort out and categorise and organise your world too.

Ah! Organisation! That sounds like a whole blog post in itself...



* Logically enough, Minecraft is only Minecraft to the Small Boy when he's playing it. When somebody else is playing, it's "YourCraft". Or "Rachel's Craft" or "Daddy's Craft". After a fair amount of time spent laboriously pointing out the difference between mine, yours, his and hers, I can hardly complain!

Lies, and the lying liar who tells them.

Yep, one Small Boy. Looked me straight in the eye and said "Julia did it" (left the scissors sitting out in the rain).


Not. A. Chance.


What sort of parent would be so stoked to find her son embarking on a career of deceit and untruthfulness? One who's concerned with his milestones.


Way to go, Small Boy. But I'm keeping a close eye on you now...

Words - the continuing story

So this is what I learned about promoting language development at the "zero to one word" stage - it's not necessarily about knowing the words. In fact, the Small Boy had previously been using a number of words and phrases before he was two, and then stopped for months. Things like "onna bike", "back door", "juice", "breakfast". And he responded appropriately to a lot more than he said ("this way". "Follow Daddy". "Time for jamas". "Brush teeth") and I'm sure understood the meaning of a lot of words that he didn't need to particularly respond to.


And yet, he wasn't using these words. Why not?


One thing I now believe about this stage of language development is that the crucial hurdle he needed to get over was confidence. His life was filled with people - mum, dad, big sisters - using all these complicated phrases at him. And for "complicated", read "two or three words". We thought we were making things nice and simple for him. Not nearly simple enough.


The message from us to him for this next phase, simply stated was this - you CAN communicate with just one word at a time, if that's all you've got. You're allowed to. Really. Look. Observe...


Daniel.


Daniel?


Juice?


Juice!


Hmmm. Cup.


There! Cup.


Pour. Juice!


Hmmmm. Lid.


Lid?


There! Lid!


Juice. Tasty.


Book?


Book.


Sit.


Book.


(read read read read)


The End.


Again?


(read read read read)


The End.


Again?


(How many times can you read the same picture book over again before you go insane? Well, it turns out I can do at least 'a couple of dozen a day for six weeks or so.' More than that, I wouldn't like to promise. Let me say, I am now really solidly grounded on what the wheels on the bus do. Apparently, they go round and round. ALL day long)


One of my favourite things from this stage was working out all the non-verbal ways he had of communicating things with us. There was the old "bring the juice bottle" trick. That was fairly straightforward. Less obvious - going to the garden to get two sticks (one for him, one for me). That meant "lets go for a walk" (and trail our sticks on the ground). And pretty soon, the words started to come back. More. Juice. Bear. Train. No.


And of course, the big favourite. AGAIN.


Again?

Wool, meet eyes. Eyes, wool

So, the "C" in "TBC" of my last post is still going to be happening - but first, a word from the wonderful world of Now. In which I have to confess that my Small Boy totally faked me out this week, and I have to brag about it.


It's no longer winter, so of course the entire household has chosen this moment in which to all get colds. In particular, the Small Boy was coughing up his lungs on a regular basis, and being dosed with cough syrup on a similar timeline.


He rather liked it. He began following me round the house saying. "Cough drink? Need a cough drink! I coughing!". And I would explain to him that you were only allowed to drink cough drink twice in the day - once in the morning and once after tea, and now we had to wait till after tea.


This pretty much held him for the first day.


The second day, clearly he had time for the wheels to turn inside his head - to interesting effect. On my third morning refusal of the "cough drink" he got very serious.


"Mamma. I go in bathroom. You stay outside." He backed slowly into the bathroom, watching me closely to ensure I didn't move, and closed the door carefully."


One minute. Two minutes. He came out. "Mamma, I drink a cough drink." Yeah right, I thought. I could clearly see the medicine cup on the sink, and the cupboard door, where the cough syrup was, still closed. He just got himself a drink of water in the medicine cup, I thought. That's fine by me.


Nope. When inspected, the cough syrup bottle was clearly open, and the medicine cup had cough syrup residue in it. Oops! The Small Boy was paying a lot more attention than I thought he was.


The really good part about all this (apart from the fact that cough syrup is actually not dangerous in large doses, and all the things that ARE dangerous in large doses are behind nice tight childproof caps) is the amount of forward planning and Theory of Mind implied in this little escapade. What does Mumma say? No cough drink till after tea. What will happen if I get myself cough drink? She will take it away. How do I stop that happening? Aha! Close the door and then she won't know!


It's not quite lying (an important Theory of Mind step) but it's a sort of proto-deception, familiar to me from the girls. The canonical exaple of this in our family is from the Taller Girl, aged 3:


"Take your finger out of your nose!"

"Mummy, look over there."

"Why?"

"So that I can put my finger in my nose!"

They get a lot better at it as they get older.


Anyway, it's a definite positive step in his mental development, and I'm immensely proud of him. Also, the cough syrup is SO going on the top shelf now.

Words, and how to get them.

In August of last year, as I may have mentioned before, the Small Boy was using two "words". They were "no" and "oh no." That was not much of an achievement for a kid of nearly three (and was considerably down from the count we'd had some six - nine months earlier)


These days, he communicates verbally about all sorts of things. Not very easily - I can see his little brain going chug chug chug at very simple questions. He doesn't like questions much - they come on someone else's schedule. But an exchange like "How old are you?" (*think* *think* *think*) "Are you three?" (....) "Are you four?" "Yes! I four!" still makes me smile, considering that even a few weeks ago the answer to that would have been to hide his head in my armpit.


How did we get from there to here? One of the things that brought us was the "It takes two to talk" program from The Hanen Centre. I fell in love with this book the first time we used it - full of devastatingly simple, obvous-after-the-fact insights that just worked. We used this in conjunction with Speech Therapy, getting a photocopied chapter to take home with us after each session. That's probably somewhat illegal, considering I think we ended up with about a third of the book, so I won't mention the name of our Speechies, even though they're great too.


At the beginnng, it didn't even look like "speech" therapy. We just played with toys in the therapist's office on the floor. But with one important twist.


"You're showing him how to play with the toy", said the therapist." That's great. You're showing him really nicely. But Stop It! Stop showing him. Look and see what HE does."

It was a box of magnetic people, in halves. Clearly the aim was to mix and match the halves to put different leg halves together with the top halves. He was ignoring both bits. He was sticking the box on his head and using it as a hat.

"Ok. Now you do the same."

Small Boy with box on head. Mumma with box lid on head. Box falls off. Lid falls off. Small Boy laughs. And then...

"Did you see that?" He looked you straight in the eye. AND he looked ME straight in the eye too. He's looking for our reactions. He's engaged. Now do it again."

And we did it again. And again. (that's a bit of a theme with the Small Boy). After a while, we added some language ("Up!"). And we did it again. And again...

(To Be Continued...)

Mumma is Bored and Cranky...

...is my latest must-use phrase-of-the-month. I don't use it nearly often enough. Why's that? Let me give an example.


Vic Market, thursday last week. Car park is packed, so I slip into a street spot outside. Feed the meter with my single one dollar coin, which gives me...hmmm...


Twenty minutes. For all veggie and meat shopping for the five of us all week. Including the Smaller Girl's birthday party. This is very much not going to happen. Nevertheless, off we set in our trolley to zoom round as fast as possible, and trust to the ticket inspectors schedule to keep them far away from us for the next hour or so.


So we make a good start, grapes, tomatos, 'taters in the bag, and then comes the fateful phrase.


"Mumma! Big Wee!"


This is not going to do our schedule good, but the Big Wee is not to be denied. So off we go to the toilet block.


The toilet block at the market, as it happens, is huge. We're into "pack a bag of sandwiches to make the trek to the far end" territory. It's an embarrassment of riches to someone keen on taking control of the [i]choices[/i] in his life. And making sure that the choice he makes is exactly correct.


You can see where we're going here.

"Daniel! This toilet?"

"Nope. Diffent one"

"Ok, what about this toilet?"

"Nope. Diffent toelet"

"This one?"

"Dis one!"

"That one's got someone in it. Ok, we'll wait."

Half a minute later, person inside comes out. Small Boy promptly transfers his attentions to [i]another[/i] toilet (a previously rejected one) which now has someone in it, who we wait for, and comes out, prompting his transferral of attention to another toilet, and meanwhile the clock on the parking meter is going tick tick tick and I can see the pattern, he's going to work his OCD way all the way back to the first stall, waiting for people to exit toilets all the way, my Bored And Cranky levels are rising to the ceiling, and I crack it and produce the ultimatum "this toilet or NO toilet" which leads to tears, collapse on the floor, and exiting the toilet block with no Big Wee having been performed. (We circled back again 5 minutes later. It was much more successful then)


All of which is the sort of stuff which will have the stricter half of the parenting demographic collapsing with laughter at my wussiness ("just stick him in the first one available FFS!") but in fact mostly when I allow him to make his own choices he does so within a moderately reasonable timeframe, and I've already got "I'm going to fold the clothes - tell me when you've made your mind up." as a well-used response to endless dithering. We don't have a very high-pressure lifestyle, and mostly he does have space to take however long he needs over a decision. Just not on [i]this[/i] particular occasion.


I'm realising that what all this probably looked like from his point of view was: "I'm choosing a toilet...I'm choosing a toilet...la la la...I'm choosing a toilet...I'm choosing a...Hey! Don't pick me up and PUT ME IN THE WRONG ONE!
What are you DOING all of a sudden!" All the sighs and foot-tappings, short phrases, rising tone of voice...they all mean absolutely nothing to him. What he really needs is for the mumma to get down to his level, look him straight in the eye and say "Daniel. Mumma is now Bored And Cranky!"

(and she's not going to take it any more)

The Year In Review

Within the last couple of weeks, it has been the one year anniversary of our first development assessment with our Maternal and Child Health Nurse, when we were wondering what on earth was up with our little boy. At the time, he was 6 weeks off his third birthday, she gave him the assessment for two and a half year olds, which he comprehensively failed (final score: 13/100).


This is how far we've come since then:



September 2010:

'doing his own thing' most of the time, not really playing with anyone.

Two words - "no" and "oh no"

No interest in toilet training

Wouldn't draw or do any craft type activity

Couldn't wait more than two seconds for anything.

Grumpy and sad and sick-seeming




September 2011:
Wants to play all the time - I can hardly get away! except when I let him have computer time, and even then he gets bored after a while and comes looking for people.

Plays with his sisters whenever they are available, initiates (very simple) conversation with trusted acquaintances, can answer questions from same.

Understands how to play tig, hide and seek, duck duck goose and a number of other games of our own devising.

Speaking in short sentences - often stringing two or three together "on topic". Understands and uses pronouns.

Completely day toilet trained as of last month

Cuts with scissors, glues, draws, paints.

Understands and accepts "first this, then that", "five minutes more" and doesn't pitch a fit about them.

Greets me with a big smile every morning.

The Power of Yes

The Power of Yes is this week's new discovery in Small Boy Land. It's a little thing, but it makes me smile greatly. Within a few days the answer to "Would you like a sandwich?" has gone from


"Like a sandwich


to


"Yes, like a sandwich"


to just


"YES!"


He pronounces it with great relish, and is clearly very impressed with his new discovery. It's versatile! It's efficient! It decreases the number of words he has to produce to get his message across! Win - win - win.


Inconveniently, however, it does come at just the time when I'd realised I could use his echolalia to promote good manners. I was formerly having some success in prompting "Like a sandwich please mumma?". Now that conversation is going something like this:


"Sandwich!"


"Sandwich please mumma?".


"YES!"


Small price to pay. With that big grin on his face, how could I deny him?

Big Sister - Junior therapist

I definitely haven't written enough here about the awesomeness that is the Taller Girl. The Taller Girl is four years older than her little brother, and, at seven, is old enough to understand that there's something 'different' about him.


She is incredibly protective of him - sometimes a little too protective in fact. At playgrounds, she will intercept small kids bounding up to him with "what's your name" or complicated instructions on correct playing of whatever game is currently taking over the playground, and act as his barricade. "He doesn't understand you. He doesn't talk." No longer quite true, as it happens (although he's still more than usually quiet, particularly outside the family) and I have to encourage her to have a more optimistic view of his abilities. Under the best of circumstances, a seven year old is always going to take a rather superior view of the abilities of a three year old brother!


But the most valuable thing she does is play, play, play with him. The Smaller Girl also plays with him, but generally by playing down to his level. The Smaller Girl is a big bouncer, squealer and runner-about - these things are certainly very attractive to His Shortness, and they can happily bounce squeal and run about together all afternoon (or until accidental grevious bodily harm is inflicted one upon the other, and we experience a different type of squealing). When the Taller Girl plays, she extends him.


Last week she was home for two days with conjunctivitis - enough to exclude her from school, but not exactly sick. So they drew. Her drawing is, of course, far advanced of his, but not so far advanced that he can't appreciate and aspire to the level she's at. He drew trees - she drew trees too, but with branches. An interesting new development. Now he can do branches too - fat boxy affairs, scaffolded (of course) with dots. She drew fishes. So he wanted to draw some fishes too (which sadly proved a little hard, so we ended up with 'mumma draw a green fish!'. But the attempt was there). Currently he's decided that eggs are what he's drawing this week. I can understand the attraction - they're really easy to get right.


And while all that was going on, I did the dishes. That's valuable too.

In Praise of Dots

Occupational Therapists are great. This is what we learnt from our OT a couple of visits ago:


One dot on the page. Dot to the right. Dot below. Dot to the left. What does that make?


Across...down...across...up...a square!


Another dot on the page. Dot below. Another dot below. Down...across...up...a triangle!


The Small Boy has been having a lot of trouble with the concept of drawing. He likes in in theory. But then he gets that pen on the paper, and his perfectionist nature rears its ugly head, roadblocking him. He draws a line and it's not right!. Tears, and a piece of paper is flung away. Next paper. Another line. Not Right!


Dots are calming, dots are soothing, dots help him to stay in control. The line that he draws from one dot to another may be exceedingly wobbly - it may even not hit the target dot. But that's okay. As long as he has another dot to aim for, he can handle this.


After we learnt the square/triangle/diamond exercise, I started extending him. First we did square inside a square. Then circles (lots of dots). Then for a couple of weeks we were doing aeroplanes. I'd do the dots, we'd join them up together (hand over hand). With the more complicated figures, he seemed to have not quite so much confidence to do it all himself (and in any case Mummy Help is always appreciated).


Then a few days ago he was in the kitchen by himself for about half an hour beavering away, and when I finally came in I discovered he'd created this:

http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif


They're trees. Big rectangle with dots for the trunk, more dots for leaves on top, and "two eyes a nose and a mouth". I believe they're probably based on the Mean Stuff-Stealing trees from Pyjama Sam


Oh, and he used the kid scissors to cut them out entirely by himself too.


Did I mention I like dots?

Auditory Processing Fail?

I have recently realised something about auditory processing. Apparently, I'm kind of crap at it.Perhaps.


This links back to a longstanding ... mmm ... difference of opinion between myself and the Spouse over my "not listening" to things. As in, we're sitting down side by side at our respective his 'n hers computers, me watching iView and him playing WoW and chatting away to his guildies. And then he'll say:


"mmmbl mmmblbl mm mmm mbl"


And I'll say:


"..."


Because, of course, I'm watching my program. I don't know what he's said to me. I'm barely even aware words came out of his mouth. In fact, I've always considered it extremely weird that he would expect that I would automatically know that he just said something to me (as opposed to the guildies) - obviously I can't be listening to him at the same time as listening to my TV program. You can't be listening to two things at once, can you?


Can you?


Well apparently, according to a big involved conversation we had on this topic, you can. Or at least I can't but maybe you can.
Apparently, all this time when we've been pursuing our respective evening's entertainments, the Spouse has been chatting with his guildies AND listening to my program AND processing the content of both of these AT THE SAME TIME!


Frankly, this blew me away. I would never have remotely considered that this would be possible. When I'm listening to a thing, I'm listening to ONE thing. My ears are totally tuned to that. Other noise doesn't even register. And if I'm not actively listening to something, I'm not in processing mode at all. Come and say something to me out of the blue and you'll have to wait for the system to boot up before you'll get any meaningful answer.


The question then arises of course - who's normal and who's weird? Am I unusually crap at this task, or is he unusually good?


I was online recently with a person who really does have full-on auditory processing disorder. From his account, he has the worst of both worlds. He can't filter out an auditory input to effective non-existance, but he also can't process more than one at the same time. So multiple people talking at once leaves him with a confused meaningless jumble, nothing to catch hold of.


Which brings us back (of course) to the Small Boy. Is this possibly the source of his language difficulties? Has he inherited neither his dad's ability to process multiple sound channels at once nor his mum's ability to switch focus and filter out the excess?


Complicating this also is the fact that I'm not sure that what I do with filtering sound is really the sort of thing you inherit. It's more a sort of trick I've picked up to make sound more manageable. Problem - I've no real idea how exactly I do it. I've no idea how or when I learnt to do it. I've no idea how to teach it to someone else.

I, you, he,she

Pronouns are something the Small Boy has always had problems with. He does the classic autistic echolalia thing of repeating what you said straight back to you. As in:

"Do you want some toast?"

"You want some toast."

That means "yes".

Actually, a more usual answer would be "want some toast", with the "you" left out completely. Clearly he feels that pronouns are tricky and unreliable, and should be avoided wherever possible. Or at least, he did feel that.

On the subject of echolalia, a quick digression. I divide his echolalia into two categories - meaningful echolalia and non-meaningful. The non-meaningful is straight out quoting from TV or other places, context-free. He does a bit of that (though usually when he's quoting he acts it out as well, so I tend to class that as rudimentary pretend play) but more often it's meaningful, as in:

"Do want your book?"

"Not want your book!"

The meaning is fairly clear, but the form of the words is echolalic. He's using my words as a kind of structure to hang his own sentence off - probably because it's infinitely easier for him to recognise a word and its meaning when presented to him than it is to call up the word itself from memory.

This week, however, he's suddenly jumped to "Not want MY book". And "Mummy, you draw a airplane". And "Not in my jamas and bed". Over the course of about two or three days. He's still definitely avoiding pronouns, but now on the rare occasions that he uses them, they're generally being correct.

This is huge, and I have to think that it has implications for developing self-other knowledge and theory of mind. Understanding that when I speak I say I and when you speak you say I is half way to realising that you are a person, and I am a person, and we both have equal and separate points of view, which put us at the centres of our own worlds. And when you understand that, you're ready to be a part of society.

Little Scientist

Ever get the feeling your kid is experimenting on you?

Back around the "just gone three" mark, when the Small Boy's words could still be counted on your fingers, I was continually on the lookout for signs that he understood one particular word or another. The aim was identifying individual words - there were a number of long(-ish) word strings that he clearly understood the meanings of, but extracting the specific units of meaning within those sentences was something that may or may not have been happening. So I would watch closely for signs of understanding, and set up word games to try to test his knowledge.

One of these I remember quite clearly. It was called "Where's Bear" and was played with a cast of a) Bear and b) Wombat

"Where's Bear"

{holds up Bear}

"Look! Bear! There's Bear! Where's Wombat?"

{holds up Wombat}

"Yes! Wombat!"

... and so on and so on. That was pretty much the whole game, which could go on for about fifteen minutes (which is actually rather a long time to get excited about two stuffed toys being raised ten cm multiple times). The above was the ideal - in fact the game frequently went more like this:

"Where's Bear"

{holds up Wombat}

"No! That's not Bear. That's Wombat! Where's Wombat?"

{holds up Bear}

"No! That's not Wombat."

So, totally useless from the point of view of testing his knowledge - except that I knew for a fact that he most certainly did know which of them was Bear and which was Wombat. This was Bear the Beloved, Companion of the Bedtime ... not know Bear? Impossible! And besides, he had that look in his eyes. I was busy testing him, but he'd turned it right around and was testing me. Hmmm... she said 'Bear' - what will she do if I hold up the wombat instead? Ooh! That was interesting! Lets do it again!

Of course, this has implications for IQ and language development testing, where they do just that - present him with a variety of options and ask him to identify which is which. Since he had absolutely zero motivation to identify objects correctly just because someone has asked him to, he won't. It's much more fun to identify them incorrectly, and see what your tester's reaction is.

Now that I have a Talking Small Boy, I've pretty much given up on the language testing thing. Current scheme is terribly scientific - does it "look like" he understands? If so, keep on going.

It's not the testing that matters, it's the skills. As long as the skills are developing, I can live with the uncertainty of not really knowing excatly how fast.

The Incredible Pointing Finger

I have a story I tell about the Taller Girl when she was a baby, and it goes like this:

Being a First Child, the Taller Girl was fair game for every baby fad that might happen to come along, one of which was Baby Sign Language. The theory is, kids find Sign easier to learn, in the first instance, than talking, so if you start off teaching them some sign in the early months you can get communication happening earlier than it might otherwise do, and not only does this potentially mean Early Talking (and we all like Early Talking - more on this later) but also it is far pleasanter for the baby herself to be able to make her needs understood, and all-round makes you and your Small Person have a happier time. And we all like happier times too.

So I was up for that, and I decided that the best time to go for teaching her signs was when she was sitting up for solid food, since not only was she strapped down and a helpless victim for my experimentation (hah!) the idea of food was very motivating for her. I didn't pay much attention to whether the signs I chose were "real" signs in ASL or Auslan, since I figured it didn't make much difference at this point so long as I was consistent. So I started off with two - a cup-drinking motion with thumb and little finger extended for "drink" and a "T" for "toast".

For a month or so I taught her these conscientiously at every mealtime, making the sign each time before I handed her the object, with very little obvious result. And then one day she's sitting there eating her toast, and looking thoughtfully at the cup and ... she does the sign for "drink"! And I give her the drink. And this absolutely beatific expression comes across her little face - like, "Hey! I move my hand like this and I can make them DO STUFF! Whoa, the power!"

The next day, she figured out she could get the same effect by grunting and pointing. She never actually made a hand sign again.

Now I have always told this story as a kind of joke against myself - the best laid plans of mice and mums... But it's actually not really. It has taken years, and two more children, for me to finally get what the actual point of the story is. The point is not "hey, you think you're in control of these Small Folk but actually they have their own agendas and are tricksier than you think." Though this is undoubtedly true. But the point is actually -
only eight months old and already she can point with a pointing finger! Woohoo! Go you Tiny Girl!

Pointing with a pointing finger was one of my goals for the Small Boy in the first part of the year, and he's picked it up like a champ - but we had to work on it. It didn't "just happen" like it did with the Sisters. So, pointing at eight months versus pointing at a bit over three years. It's a bit of a difference. Pointing is not one of those things like crawling or walking or saying their first words that everyone in Mums group is constantly picking over and comparing between children and wondering if their kid is picking up fast enough. But it should be. It's important. And every time I see my Small Boy grunt and point at something, I remember it.

Neurotypicals - how wierd are we?

Recently, the Small Boy has decided that he's a cat. He's been running round the house on all fours miaowing, often with a lead attached to him being pulled by a Big Sister Owner(yeah, verisimilitude fail - actually double verisimilitude fail since it's a firm rule in the house that leashes for Human Pets are never worn aorund the neck, so this is Mumma's scarf tied round his tummy).

Naturally, I am over the moon about this. Pretend Play For The Win! Also, this is treading ground that has already been well worn by the Sisters - in fact, the Taller Girl is still regularly a tiger in her tiger suit, and the Smaller Girl has been treating herself to cat facepaints as often as she can find someone to do it on her.

Still. If this weren't a thing that millions of kids do every day, something that's practically a requirement of a normal childhood, imagine how bizarre we'd find it. Pretending you're a teacher or a doctor or a daddy - fine, training for adulthood, we can see the point in that. But pretending you're a domestic animal? With a tail and whiskers and all? That's trip-to-the-psychiatrist territory.

And that's not the only bizarre thing about supposedly "normal" children. What about attachment toys - those fuzzy beloved companions of bedtime. What - you're saying your kid can't go to sleep without this particular sack of soft fluffy material in the shape of a bear/dog/sheep/cat/cow? That they talk to it as if it's real? Madness! And the universal childhood compulsion to walk on walls, when there's a perfectly good and much easier footpath just there. And invisible imaginary friends - how many kids have one of them?

Beside these peculiarities, 'strange' autistic things like hand flapping and lining up your toys seem totally normal. And just like all those behaviours have a reason, so do all the 'autistic' ones - if we can just figure out what it is.

Peenamite Dynamite

The Small Boy's diction has always been excellent. Even back in September when he was only saying two things, ever ("no" and "oh no"), though there might not have been many of them, the words themselves were perfectly clear. It is absolutely adorable to hear him meticulously and correctly pronouncing "watermelon", "motorbike" or "dinosaur" (to name three favourite things).

There is just one exception to this principle. Vegemite, in Small Boy land, should be pronounced "Peenamite". And I have Absolutely No Idea why. Is it halfway between Vegemite and Peanut Butter? Perhaps. But he doesn't eat peanut butter. He certainly recognises the word "Vegemite" when it's used to him. Occasionally he experiments with the 'V' word ("Vege-ge-mite onna sandwich!"). But basically the alternate seems to have stuck in his mind now as The Way It Is Said, and apparently nothing is getting it out.

Spotty Rash Disease

Spotty Rash Disease - an analogy of Autism.

Suppose that the state of medicine in this country was less advanced than it is. Much, much less advanced. We didn't have the germ theory of disease, we didn't have chemotherapy or radiology or X-rays or even the theory about the heart pumping the blood around body. All we had was a black box - our bodies - and the ability to classify illnesses according to what we could see from observation, from the outside.

That would be pretty hard.

We would probably classify diseases a little like the ancient Hebrews classified animals - where bats were considered a kind of bird, because the 'bird' classification was really 'things that fly'. Or whales were classified with the fish - 'things that swim'. We might end up with 'coughing disease' or 'high fever disease' or 'spotty rash disease'

If you were diagnosed with Spotty Rash Disease - well, this might mean almost anything. In actual reality you might have chickenpox, rubella, measles, a viral rash, excema, a food allergy or the bubonic plague. And maybe you might go searching for other people who had previously had Spotty Rash Disease, to see if their experiences would give you any insight into how to manage your sickness. Ultimately, you'd probably find a number of people who did have (in reality) the same sickness as you, and they'd be able to give you some useful tips. But you'd have to sift through a whole bunch of other 'Spotty Rash Disease' sufferers who actually had a totally different illness, and whose advice would do you no good at all and would likely be entirely contradictory to each other. Put a lotion on it. Don't put anything on it and let it breathe. Rug up warm. Wear light clothes and let the air circulate. Keep of nuts, keep off eggs, keep off dairy, keep off wheat. Just wait it out and it will get better. Take a year's worth of penecillin. Go straight to hospital, do not pass GO.

That's what it's like when you're only looking at the outside.

A person in a support group I belong to has a very wise thing to say - "Labels aren't important. Issues are important." Never mind labels. What issues are you dealing with? Who else is the same? What did [i]they[/i] do about it? Who else is dealing with your specific version of 'Spotty Rash Disease'?

Not My Boy

They say…



Autistic kids don't make eye contact

(not my boy)

Autistic kids don't like cuddles

(not my boy)

Autistic kids need you to do the same thing the same way all the time

(not my boy)

Autistic kids rock, flap their hands and walk on their toes

(not my boy)

Autistic kids can tantrum for hours

(not my boy)



My boy is an introvert

(like his biggest sister)

He is very sensitive to dirt, muck and things that 'feel wrong'

(like his mum)

He wants things to be done The Right Way

(like his dad)

He can't leave off something in the middle

(like his middle sister)

He sometimes thinks Sleep is for the Weak

(like three-quarters of his family)

He wants the world to obey his will

(like more Small Folks than I can count. And sometimes Big Folks too)



Sometimes my boy is kinda weird.



But aren't we all.

I am a parent, therefore I talk about poo.

This is a blog involving small children. And small children, as we know, poo. And make mess. And pick discarded lollies up off the footpath and stick them in their mouths. So really, we might as well start as we mean to go on, right? There will be gross things. And one of the gross things known to parenthood is Toilet Training Purgatory.

I call it Toilet Training Purgatory rather than Toilet Trainng Hell, because the assumption is that eventually we get to leave. Also, the thing about Purgatory is that the suffering is not intended to be pointless. There's an actual reason behind it. It's good for you! All these things are so, so true of the Dread Toilet Training.

When the Taller Girl was still the Tiny Girl I learned all the approved wisdom. Best starting time - "the summer closest to when they're two". So, potentially as young as 18 months. And, dutifully we went through the various stages...

The "training her to wee every 59 minutes" (by taking her to the toilet every hour) stage.

The "use her natural desire not to have a wet bottom" stage (requirements - child who actually posesses one of these "natural desire not to have a wet bottom" things. Oops).

The "drive her batshit by asking her if she needs to go ALL THE TIME" stage.

The "give up and try again in 6 months" stage.

The "bribery by stickers" stage.

and finally...

The "bribery by LOLLIES" stage.

And, ultimately, at about age 3 1/2, we had a toilet trained daughter.

With the Smaller Girl, we were much smarter. We didn't start at all till 3 months after her third birthday. Still took a good six months.

Now there's just the Small Boy to go. So we have a child who's (a) a boy and (b) diagnosed autistic. And yet, this time, it's actually much easier. Because he's better at it? Hell no - he sucks at it, to be completely honest. What's changed is my expectations. I don't have any. Sure, small boy, I'll create the opportunities - your job to take them. Or more likely not. I have a very Zen-like attitude to the whole process this time around. Yes, we may be doing this for a year but hey, it's really just a bunch of extra trousers to wash when you get right down to it. So at this point I'd like to provide the list of reasons why whatever your kid's doing in the TT stakes, you can call it good.

If they drink lots and wee lots it's good because...they're getting lots of chances to get it right.

If they drink hardly anything and wee approximately never it's good because... you don't have to wash a million pairs of trousers.

If they wee on the floor as soon as you say "lets go to the toilet" it's good because ... it's helping them connect thniking about the toilet to the act of weeing.

If you take them, they do nothing, then take a dump in their pants five minutes later it's good because ... you know you gave them the chance at the right time. You did your job - they'll get on to theirs eventually

If they run off to hide behind the shed every time they need to go it's good because ... it shows they know when they need to go.

If they wee on the floor on the way to the toilet it's good because ... it's easier to clean than the bedroom carpet.

If they take a dump on the floor and paint the walls with the proceeds it's good because ... oh ok, you've got me there. I don't actually have anything good to say about poo-smearing.

And if you turn your back and they run off to the toilet and do it all by themselves ... WIN!