Archives for September 2010

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2010 Run for Autism 2:22:38

September 27, 2010 By

Last week I actually thought I was going crazy. I was leading up the Big Race, which meant that I was running 60% of my usual mileage.  Which in turn meant that I had this build-up of energy that I could not expend in the way I usually do, which is to lace up my running shoes and hit the road. As a result of all this, I was hovering around at home, engaging in these weird frenetic bursts of activity, filling up everyone’s Facebook walls with meaningless status updates, and generally being a bit of a nuisance. Thanks to over a week of very little sleep, I advanced about eight levels in Frontierville.

I started experiencing odd little aches and twinges – tightness in the glutes, a rickety left ankle, what felt like an impending cold – all carefully designed to mess with my mind and convince me that I was not ready for this race.  When I looked back at six months of training, I didn’t see all of the long runs I had clocked up, the hill training or speed reps. I saw the gaps – the long run I missed six weeks ago because of a cold, the two speed training sessions that I was forced to do on a treadmill because of my schedule, the midweek run that I had to cut short because of a thunderstorm.

I was, in other words, experiencing the phenomenon known to runners as taper madness. Some runners are able to completely chill out and relax during their tapering.  Others tend to bounce around inside their own heads as if they’re trapped in a pinball machine on steroids.  Guess which category I fall into.

On Saturday night I went around the house, setting every audible alarm I could think of.  The alarm clock beside the bed. The alarm clock in the living room. The timer on the oven. My BlackBerry. I was so paranoid about oversleeping on the day of the race (never mind that I had been too wired to sleep for a week), and I figured that out of all these alarms, I was bound to hear at least one of them. Of course, all that meant was that on Sunday morning, I woke up at 4:30 and had to creep around the house turning off all the alarms to avoid waking up the kids.

As it happened, my wonderful husband-to-be got me to the starting area without incident, with plenty of time to spare. I checked my bag – a remarkably efficient process, considering I was in a bag-check lineup of maybe 2000 people, and I was in and out of there in less than ten minutes. Then I made my way to a prearranged meeting spot for the Geneva Centre for Autism team photo.

As I lined up at the start line, I could feel those tight glutes, that rickety left ankle, the sense that I was getting a cold and therefore not in the best physical shape. But then magic happened. The starting siren went off and as the crowd surged forward, my glutes instantly loosened up, my ankle found stability, and I was breathing strong and clear. As I crossed the start line, I winged a prayer to whatever supreme being you happen to believe in, put a picture of my son George in my head, and went on my way.

I had a series of mini-goals to accomplish for the race. I knew that the Geneva Centre representative would be at around the 6km mark along with the photographer, so my first goal was to simply get to that point. Once I passed them, I would be almost a third of the way there! As I had thought would happen, I got a great boost of energy from seeing people I knew who were cheering my name, taking my picture, and waving a banner for the cause closest to my heart.

That energy boost was enough to get me to my next mini-goal: the 10km point.  I felt a sense of exhiliration as I ran over the timing mats, and shortly after that, I reached the turnaround point.  Now I was not only more than halfway, I was physically heading back towards the point from which I had started. I was getting tired and pushing myself harder than I had in my training runs, but by breaking down the large distance into smaller goals, I was able to keep going.

With 8km to go, I started running in 2km increments. I reasoned that no matter how rough I started feeling, I would surely be able to manage 2km. As long as I focused on nothing else – not the full distance of the race, not the distance I had run or the total distance that was still to come – if I focused only on the 2km segment of the moment, I would be fine. I told myself that if things started to get really bad, the only thing I had to do was get to the end of those 2km, and then I would figure out what to do next.

And sure enough, before I knew it, I found myself with 2km to go.  I was feeling completely exhausted at that point, feeling as if I had little or nothing left to give. I took one last one-minute walking break, took a deep breath, a braced myself for the finish. With 1km to go, I turned onto Bay Street, and then I knew I would be OK. I knew that the crowds of cheering spectators lining both sides of the street would carry me for the last several hundred metres. The crowds got louder as I got closer to the finish, and despite feeling utterly devoid of energy, I found myself passing other runners leading up to the finish.

I rounded the last bend, and the finish line was in my sights. Right on the other side of the finish line, I could see a welcome and familiar figure – my man, having talked himself into getting a media pass, was crouching there with his video camera. I dug deep, and somehow found a reserve of energy that enabled me to sprint for the last 100 metres. Two hours, twenty-two minutes, and thirty-eight seconds after starting the race, I crossed the finish line, waving both arms triumphantly in the air and smiling so much I thought my face was going to split in two.

Six months of dedicated training, almost $500 raised for the Geneva Centre for Autism (which was part of a total of over $35,000 raised collectively by the Geneva Centre runners), a personal best time for the distance that beat last year’s time by six minutes.  What a day. What a phenomenal event to be a part of.

Am I hurting today? You bet. Will I do it again next year? I’ve already started to plan the training!  My Run for Autism is over, but only for this year.

With Holly Bannerman from the Geneva Centre for Autism

With John Stanton, founder of The Running Room

Filed Under: autism, running Tagged With: , , , , ,
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Running lets me be… and other reasons for running

September 21, 2010 By

One of my co-workers recently asked me why I run, just what it is about the sport that I find so appealing.  There’s a part of me that understands where this question was coming from.  Back in my twenties, when I was smoking thirty a day, not caring what I ate, and generally leading an unhealthy, sedentery lifestyle, I would have been hard-pressed to get why anyone would voluntarily spend their Sunday morning running twenty or thirty kilometres.

When my co-worker asked the question, my response was, “Running allows me to just be.”  This is probably not a very satisfactory reply to be on the receiving end of, but it was the best I could come with at the time.  It’s an interesting question though, one that I will try to answer now.

Here, ladies and gentlemen, are the top ten reasons why running is the sport for me.

1. I’m crap at tennis.  And baseball, and soccer, and pretty much everything else that requires hand-eye coordination.  I have to do something (trust me, I do – I have the kind of metabolism that works just fine when I exercise, but grinds to a screeching halt when I don’t), and the simple action of repeatedly putting one foot in front of the other is something that even I cannot screw up.

2. I’m very competitive with myself.  This is another reason I should never play tennis.  If I miss a shot or send the ball into the net, I get really mad – not at my oppononent for being better than me, but at myself for making a mistake.  Running allows me to channel my inner competitor by targeting personal best times.

3. You can run anywhere.  If you’re, say, a golfer, and you find yourself in a place with no accessible golf course, you’re pretty much S.O.L.  You can’t exactly take your golf clubs down to the nearest main road and start hitting the ball into traffic.  Well, you could, I suppose, but there would be a lot of broken windows and people thinking you were completely off your head.  As a runner, on the other hand, I can take my sport wherever I am.

4. You don’t need a lot of stuff. Tennis players and golfers have to lug around lots of bulky stuff.  And don’t get me started on hockey players – have you seen those bags they use to put all their kit ‘n’ kaboodle in?  You could stuff a dead body into those things and no-one would be any the wiser.  I could technically go to a race without even having to take a bag with me.  Shoes are on my feet, hat is on my head, fuel belt stocked with water, energy drink and gels is around my waist, race number is pinned to my shirt.  When I do take a bag, all it contains is a bottle or two of water and a sweatshirt to put on after the race.

5. You don’t have to join a team to participate in events.  With very few exceptions (such as the Boston Marathon, which you have to qualify for), I can sign up for pretty much anything I want. No-one cares how fast or how slow I am, and the only person who gives a damn what my finishing time is is me.

6. Runners have a great sense of fellowship with one another.  When I’m out on my long runs on Sundays, I always encounter several other runners.  I don’t know any of them from Adam (actually, I do – I have a friend named Adam, but you know what I mean), but we exchange waves, smiles, thumbs-up of encouragement. You feel a kind of kinship with those other souls out there who are pounding the pavement.  From time to time, I even receive shouts of encouragement from other runners who are not actually running at the time.  I know they are runners, because they say things like, “Great leg turnover!” or “Keep going and you’ll get that PB!”

7. You can get all kinds of cool stuff at running stores. Seriously.  You don’t just get shorts and shoes in running stores, you get all kinds of things. Fancy shoelace thingies, race number holders, fuel belts, gel bottles, reflective gadgets.  Watches, heart rate monitors, pedometers, things that hold your music player so you don’t have to.  Sunglasses. Recipe books. Hats – who knew there were so many different kinds of hats?  And that’s before you even get to the section of running clothes.

8. I get to use my Garmin.  This is kind of related to the previous point, but deserves a point all of its own.  I love my Garmin.  It’s a training watch that does everything but slice, dice and make the coffee. The built-in GPS tracks distance as I’m going, so I can make adjustments to my route on the fly. The “virtual partner” tells me at a glance whether I’m running on target, or whether I need to slow down or pick up the pace.  The heart rate monitor is a barometer of whether I am in good shape.  And when my run is done, the watch starts sending data to my computer as soon as I’m within range.  By the time I sit down, there’s a new window open on my computer that has all of the run data, including my times for each kilometre, and a nifty little map of where I’ve run.

9. The feeling I get at the end of a race or a long run is phenomenal. Part of it is the sense of accomplishment at having finished the run, part of it is the “runners high” that gives you a general sense of wellbeing and happiness. When I’m nearing the end of a run and eeling really rough, I motivate myself my reminding myself how great I will feel fifteen or twenty minutes from now.

10. Running allows me to see a thought through to its completion.  I am a mom.  I a mom of two young boys, both at demanding stages of their development.  When I am at home, any thought I start to have in invariably interrupted by something that sounds like this: “AAAAAARRRRRGGGGGHHHHHH!!!  Mommy!  George won’t let me play with the Lego!” followed by an assortment of thumps and bumps and slamming doors.  When I’m running, I can actually formulate plans, generate ideas, compile shopping lists, decide what to wear to work the next day. If it wasn’t for those five-times-a-week runs that happen at ridiculously early hours of the morning, I would probably go completely barmy.

Filed Under: running Tagged With: , , ,
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The adventure that began seven years ago

September 18, 2010 By

When I was a little girl, I didn’t play with dolls. Being a bit of a tomboy, I was much happier getting my knees scraped up and playing with potato guns with my brother and his friends (my poor mother would reach into the bag of potatoes while preparing dinner, only to pull out potatoes that we had used in our potato guns and then put back, full of holes, where we had found them).  I’m pretty sure my mother worried about me.  I had very little interest in typical little girl activities, and by all appearances, I was not dainty and girly, and I had the maternal instincts of a gnat. How would this rough-and-tumble kid grow up to have a functional spousal relationship, not to mention kids?

I didn’t do much to ease the concern of my parents when I was a teenager and later, a young adult.  Socially, I was a late bloomer, and when I did finally start dating, I was going out with entirely unsuitable people. I had my first honest-to-goodness, genuine relationship with a decent human being when I was well into my twenties.  I was with the man in question for two years before life simply took us in opposite directions.  That break-up came about a year after my brother came tumbling out of the closet, so my poor parents despaired of ever having grandchildren at that stage.  To be honest, I kind of gave up hope for myself as well.  I was thirty and alone, and about to move to a place where I knew no-one.

When I was finally expecting my first son at the ripe old age of 33, I started to worry for entirely different reasons.  I was convinced that I was going to be a crap mother.  I had no patience at all.  I had a quick temper.  I’d never really felt comfortable around children, and I wasn’t really sure that I’d know what to do with my own child. I knew a whole lot about being pregnant – what to eat, how to exercise, what all of the little aches and pains meant – but when it came down to it, I knew nothing about actual babies.

Seven years and one day ago, on September 17th 2003, I spent the day cleaning my house to within an inch of its life.  I didn’t know what had come over me: I am not exactly a poster child for domesticity. I was even cleaning windows, for the love of God.  My nine-month-pregnant self was tottering precariously on a chair making sure there were no cobwebs in the corners of the ceiling. That afternoon, I went to the grocery store and stocked up.  When I got home, I cleaned out the fridge and rearranged cupboards.  I think Gerard, the soon-to-be Dad, was a little frightened by my sudden flurry of activity.  I may have been just eleven days away from my due date, but wild horses couldn’t have stopped me.  I was a woman possessed.

Six hours later, when I felt as if I was being turned inside out by contractions, I realized that I had spent the day nesting.  I had read about this nesting phenomenon, but at the time I hadn’t really put two and two together.  It is debatable, of course, whether I was nesting because I was about to go into labour, or whether labour was induced by all of the nesting activity.

A few minutes before 11:00 the following morning, September 18th 2003, the pain was forgotten as a brand-new baby boy was placed gently in my arms. As I looked at my George, into those big eyes that looked so innocent and yet so wise, I was struck by the enormity of this life change. Five minutes previously, I had been just another woman – admittedly one going through an intensely painful experience without any drugs to kill the pain.  Now I was a mother.  I was responsible for an entire human being.  How he turned out, what kind of life he had, would depend to a great extent on my actions.  The weirdest sensation I had was that I was actually ready for it.  I was not afraid (although, to be honest, some pretty intense anxiety would hit two days later, when I was sent home and expected to actually keep this miniature human alive without the aid of nurses telling me what to do).

George the baby

Seven years on, my miniature human being has been transformed into a long, lanky beanpole of a kid whose pants keep getting too short for him. I still experience anxiety, but of a different kind, and I have just accepted that anxiety and worrying are just normal parts of parenthood.  I have faced many challenges, survived another childbirth (also without drugs – do I not learn from these things?).  I have discovered that contrary to what I used to think, I actually do have deep reserves of patience.  I have learned what true unconditional love means, and that those maternal instincts that many people thought were missing when I was a kid were lurking in there somewhere all along.

I have watched my baby grow into a wonderful little boy.  Things are sometimes really difficult for him, there are times when we cannot reach him in his autistic world.  But more and more, we are making connections with him.  We are seeing the spark of intelligence and the emergence of a wonderful quirky sense of humour. He is quick to smile and when he’s with the people he loves, he is generous with his hugs.

On September 18th, 2003, my life changed forever. Not only did I become a mother.  I became George’s mother, and that is something truly special.

Happy seventh birthday to my beautiful boy who has touched the world with his own special brand of magic.

George the boy

Filed Under: Children, parenting Tagged With: , ,
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The wheels on the bus go round and round – or do they?

September 15, 2010 By

My younger son James, who is all of four years old, walks to school because he does not qualify for bussing.  I drop him off at the daycare on my way to work, and one of the daycare staff walks him and a few other kids to the school where they attend Kindergarten, just a couple of blocks away. When they are done with school, they are picked up and walked back to the daycare.  It is an arrangement that works very well.

The fact that James walks to school is a godsend. It means that I only have to deal with the annual frustration of getting the bussing right for one child instead of two.

Ever since George entered the school system three years ago (cripes, has it really been that long?) there has been one issue or another with the bus arrangements.  Don’t get me wrong, I know what a scheduling nightmare it can be.  I am the first to appreciate the chaos that must reign in the bus companies in September of every year. I can imagine how tough it is for the drivers to deal with last-minute route changes and impossibly tight schedules.

But how far is my tolerance supposed to go? Where does one cross the line from being patient and understanding to wanting heads to roll because your child is being shuffled around by the system?

Our bus requirements are a little bit different to those of most families by virtue of the fact that George is picked up from one place before school and dropped off at a different place after school.  Gerard takes him to the therapy centre in the mornings.  A school bus picks him up at lunchtime to take him to school.  Another school bus picks him up from school at the end of the day to bring him home.  The issue is not with the pick-up and drop-off locations, it is a simple matter of timing.

Months ago, before we’d started making bussing arrangements for the new school year, the therapy centre made it clear to us that George’s pick-up time from there had to be no later than 11:45. When the morning kids are dismissed from the therapy centre each day, the afternoon kids come in. The therapy centre does not have the staff to be dealing with both the incoming afternoon kids and the morning kids whose busses haven’t shown up. Like many special ed programs, the therapy centre has a problem with staffing.  They don’t have teachers and therapists wandering the halls with nothing to do.

When I filled in the bus request form, I wrote the requirements on it as clear as day.  In big bold letters, emphasized with yellow highlighter, I wrote that pickup was to be no later than 11:45.  I gave the form the George’s teacher, everyone went away for their summer vacations, and that was the end of it.

Until George’s new bus driver called to tell us he would be picked up each day at 12:05.  Initially we weren’t too bothered by this, and neither was the therapy centre.  September, we thought.  New schedules, the need to transport kids to and from all kinds of places at all kinds of times, logistical nightmare. We notified the bus company that the pick-up time was a problem.  The bus company said it would be fixed within a week.

In the interim, Gerard would have to close down his shop each day to drive to the therapy centre, drop George off at school, and return to work.  Taking an hour out of his day that he really cannot afford right now.  After a few days of this, Gerard called up the bus company to ask them how things were moving along, and he was astonished by the stone wall of resistance that he met.

Not only had the problem not been sorted out, no-one was even trying. No-one wanted to try.  The general message Gerard got, in talking to one person after another, ad nauseum, was that the schedule was what it was and that nothing short of an act of God would change it.  Meanwhile, our son, who has autism and therefore a built-in resistance to changes in routine, is expected to sit idle for anywhere from twenty minutes to half an hour, not knowing what he is expected to do next or who’s coming to get him.

Gerard is nothing is not persistent, so he started phoning his way up the chain within both the bus company and  the school board.  He has been met with a variety of reactions ranging from indifference to arrogance to downright hostility.  At no point has he been anything other than polite and professional, and yet the responses have been baffling.

Through all of Gerard’s discussions and conversations with a number of people (he lost count somewhere after seventeen), a disturbing trend has emerged.  The bus scheduling difficulties had, for the most part, been resolved for the general schoolgoing population by the end of the first week of school.  By stark contrast, the vast majority of special needs kids still don’t have their transportation sorted out.  At the therapy centre that George attends, there are ten children needing transportation between the centre and school.  Of these, two children have correct bussing arrangements in place.  Which means there are eight autistic kids who are still confused about their schedules and anxious because they don’t know what’s coming next or when.  Although I don’t have any statistics, I hear similar stories from other therapy centres.

This whole situation is wrong on so many levels.  For a start, there’s the fact that this should not be a big deal.  We should not be getting this kind of resistance to a simple request that was made correctly in the first place.  But far more importantly, the special needs kids in our society are the ones who experience displacement, anxiety, and confusion. Why are there elements in our society that treat them as an afterthought?

As of this point in time, the problem has still not been resolved.  However, the supervisor (Of the bus company?  The school board?) has admitted that the situation is unacceptable and that it will be sorted out.

On a side note, I am fascinated by the reactions I’ve received from friends and acquaintances I have spoken about this to. One guy told me that all bussing should be done away with because there’s no real need for it.  He started on the age-old story about how, as a kid, he had to walk five miles to school in the snow and five miles back.  Yeah, right.  I’m going to let my son with autism walk to and from school by himself.  Then there was a lady who insisted that this is something I should just “suck up and deal with”, that as a parent it is my responsibility to get George to and from school.  This is not strictly true: it is my parental responsibility to ensure that safe transportation arrangements are made for my child.  As long as those arrangements are in place, the responsibility falls to whoever the arrangements are made with – in this case, the bus company.  It is also my parental responsibility to go to work each day and earn a living so I can feed, clothe, and shelter my children.

Things are not the same now as they were twenty or thirty or fifty years ago.  Back then, parents were fine with their kids walking to school.  There was less high-speed traffic on the roads, there were fewer pedophiles about, and parents could send their kids out of the front door in the mornings with the reasonable expectation that they would see them again at the end of the day.

In the case of younger or special needs children, if there wasn’t a bus available, Mom would be available to walk her offspring to school.  Back then, Moms tended to stay home more and the Dads were the breadwinners.  In most modern-day partnerships, both spouses have to work full-time out of economic necessity.

The argument that “what worked when I was a kid will work now” just doesn’t hold water.

Filed Under: Children, School Tagged With: , ,
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Reflecting on 9/11

September 11, 2010 By

Nine years ago, I was working as a consultant for a small company that developed software applications and websites for businesses.  A lot of my time was spent either at client sites around the Greater Toronto Area or traveling to various locations within North America.  My home base was the office serving the eastern half of North America, located in the west end of Toronto.  My workspace was near the windows facing east towards the city centre.  We had a nice view of the Toronto skyline with its distinctive CN Tower, then the tallest free-standing structure in the world.

I happened to be in the office on September 11, 2001.  I was walking from the kitchen to my desk, armed with a cup of fresh coffee, when one of my coworkers handed me a printout from the CNN website.  It showed a picture of the World Trade Centre’s North Tower, with smoke billowing from the top half.  My immediate reaction was that this must be one of those elaborate Internet hoaxes involving Photoshop.  When I realized that this was actually a legitimate photograph, I thought the same thing everyone else did: that a freakish and tragic accident had occurred.

As I scrutinized the printout, I heard a shout coming from the direction of the conference room: someone had been able to get the temperamental TV to work, and we all spilled into the room just in time to see live footage of the plane hitting the South Tower.  An hour later, we were still sitting in the conference room.  We were incapable of speech; someone muted the sound on the TV because the frantic commentary of chaos was violating the silence that we all needed.  I don’t think anyone moved for about ten minutes.  Eventually, someone at the back of the room whispered, “Oh, my God.”  That utterance was a catalyst for everyone to rush to their phones to call family members, pausing on the way past the window to see if the CN Tower was still there.

There was no question of any work getting done that day.  We all spent the day on the phone, contacting loved ones South of the border to find out who was alive and who wasn’t.  My parents called from South Africa, unashamedly relieved to hear my voice.  Toronto is not that far from New York, especially to people watching the chaos unfold from the other side of the world.  After talking to my parents, I went crazy contacting people on Instant Messenger and by phone.  By late afternoon, there were two people in New York who I had not been able to reach.  I went to bed that night not knowing whether they were alive or dead.  I didn’t sleep.  I suspect that most people didn’t that night.

The husband of one of my missing friends emailed me early the following morning.  As soon as the South Tower had been hit, she and all of her coworkers had been evacuated from their office a block away to some hall somewhere.  Phone signals were jammed: for several hours, my friend’s husband did not know whether or not she had been buried in the rubble of collapsing towers.

I never connected with my other missing friend, Jason, who had an office in the North Tower.  At lunchtime on September 12th, I spoke to a mutual friend, Mark, who had commuted to work with Jason the previous morning.  Jason had dropped his dog off at the vet on his way to work, so he was late.  The two friends had gotten off the subway at the same stop, and then they had gone into a Starbucks for their morning coffee.  With coffee in hand, Jason had gone into the North Tower, waving goodbye to Mark, who had to go a few blocks further.  The time was about 8:35 a.m.  Eleven minutes later, the North Tower was hit.  Jason could have left the building in those ten minutes, I said to Mark.  Not likely, was Mark’s reply.  Jason had said something about a 9:00 meeting for which he had not prepared.  He would have been sipping his coffee and working on reports at his desk, which was right in the flight path of American Airlines Flight 11.  I said to Mark, “I hope Jason got to finish his coffee.” People say the oddest things in times of stress.

Now, nine years later, I reflect on that day along with the rest of the world.  I think of Jason and hope he died instantly, with no pain or stress.  I look at my two children, neither of whom was alive on 9/11, and I pray that the world will be a habitable place for them when they are adults.  I watch coverage of bigotry and extremism on TV and wonder what’s wrong with people.  I look at the world around me and wonder if we have really learned anything.

Something that’s a bit odd is that right at this moment, for the first time since learning of Jason’s fate, I am wondering what became of his dog, the one he dropped off at the vet on that terrible morning.

Filed Under: 9/11 Tagged With: , , , ,
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Turn, turn, turn

September 9, 2010 By

To everything there is, apparently, a season.  There is a time for the sweltering heat of summer to give way to cooler temperatures and later sunrises.  There is a time for the light traffic associated with school vacations to be replaced by the usual mind-numbing gridlock.  There is a time for yellow school buses to reappear, for kids to start new grades and new schools, for parents to high-five each other over the fact that their household has survived an entire summer at the hands of little hooligans.

For families living with autism, there is a time to anxiously ride out the tough times that invariably come with a change in routine.

And for runners approaching their major race of the season, there is a time to kick up the training for the long runs, and there is a time to taper and rest.

There have been a lot of changes happening in my family, many of them typical back-to-school kind of stuff.  For James, our youngest, the changes have been minimal.  He has just started Senior Kindergarten, although I must admit that I have a hard time thinking about a four-year-old as a senior anything.  He is in the same classroom at the same school as last year, he has the same teacher and many of the same classmates.  I can only hope that this year will involve less upheaval and trauma then last year, when the much-loved teacher of James’ class suddenly died.

James himself is taking the new school year in his stride.  In fact, he was somewhat irritated when the previous school year ended.  From the day school let out for the summer, James wanted to go back. For the last two weeks of the school holiday, I had to do a daily countdown thing on the calendar to maintain my sanity and also James’.  Now that school has resumed, he’s as happy as a rat with a gold tooth. Will he be like this five years from now? Time will tell.

Change is also afoot for George. Last week he completed his formal one-on-one IBI therapy. On his last day we attended a graduation ceremony held in honour of George and one other little boy who was completing the program with him.  The two graduates stood there proudly holding their certificates (laminated, to prevent ripping) and wearing their little graduation caps.  I looked at my son thinking of how far he had come during his two years in the IBI program. Gone was the completely non-verbal, isolated, uncertain little boy who started the therapy.  In his place was a smiling, happy child, still not exactly talkative but at least talking to some extent. He savoured the attention being lavished on him, and rightly so.

This week George started a new phase in his life.  We are fortunate that although his routine has changed substantially, the new routine at least involves the same places that he is used to, and some of the same people.  In the mornings, he is going to the same therapy centre where he did the IBI, and he is attending a “school stream” program (a simulated classroom environment where there is a teacher as well as a one-on-one support person for each of the five kids). In the afternoons he is bussed to school, where he is in a special ed class.  Over the next two years he will be gradually mainstreamed, the general idea being that by the time he is in fourth grade, he will be fully mainstreamed in a regular class, but with special support.

So far, the change in routine has not caused that much disruption. George seems to be enjoying school stream and school.  He likes the school bus, and as mentioned, both school and the therapy centre are places that he already knows.  So we may get lucky with this one – we may escape the usual transition angst that hits our household at this time of year.

And me?  Well, my run for autism is a mere seventeen days away. My training is peaking round about now, with intense speed workouts and long runs.  My final long run before the race will be this weekend, when I will be hitting the road for 20km.  After that I am in taper mode.  I will run less, pre-race jitters will set in, and I will be driving everyone crazy by the time race day arrives.

Oh, and George finally lost his first tooth.  He has already announced that he wants to buy another pineapple with the money left for him by the tooth fairy.

Filed Under: back-to-school Tagged With: , , , , ,