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10 Useful Skills For Autism Parents

January 23, 2012 By

Autism parents frequently have to do things that other parents don’t. Our kids are so different, what with their limited communication skills, their sensory challenges, and at times, their superhuman physical strength. It is impossible to parent a child with autism in the same way you would parent a typical child (which means that when you have both an autie and a typical child you have to adopt two different parenting styles, but that’s another post for another day).

In the beginning, it’s hard, knowing what to do. And in a way, it never really gets any easier. But there are things I have learned from experience, that are now second nature. Here are ten of my favourites.

  1. Drywall repair. Many auties, my son included, are headbangers. They may bang their heads out of anger or frustration, or simply to get attention. And then they bang their heads, they don’t mess around. They give the wall a good solid WHUMP that’s enough to make the room shake. The drywall invariably takes some punishment. The inside of my house looks a bit like a pitted golf ball, and there are places where the impact of my son’s head has caused actual holes – big, gaping holes.
  2. Mixed Martial Arts. My husband likes to watch Ultimate Fighter on TV, and although I don’t watch it myself, I have absorbed some of it through osmosis. This has proved invaluable in times when my son has had a meltdown. When most kids have meltdowns, they simply lose their tempers. When auties have meltdowns, they thrash on the floor, bash their heads on the closest hard surface, and can risk hurting themselves quite badly. Even as they are kicking and screaming, they have to be kept safe. Hence the MMA skills. I have become quite the expert at using my bodyweight to restrain my son from hurting himself. The difference between me and the Ultimate Fighter guys, of course, is that I try to avoid causing pain, I don’t get paid big money for my efforts, and I have a mental age that’s higher than my shoe size.
  3. Dishwasher Racing. My son hates – and I mean hates – for the dishwasher to be open. Anytime I have to unload it and repack it, I have to deal with this kid repeatedly – and with increasing volume – telling me to close the dishwasher. He plants his bum on the kitchen floor, right in front of the sink, so I cannot get to the dishes. Sometimes I actually have to slide him out of the way. I have taken to setting the oven timer whenever I start doing dishwasher stuff, and the idea that he can visually see how long it will take does seem to soothe him. But God help me if the dishwasher is not packed, closed and switched on by the time the timer expires.
  4. Stealth Hair Cutting. My son, like many other kids, dislikes haircuts. But he doesn’t dislike haircuts in the same way most other kids dislike haircuts. He dislikes haircuts in the same way most people dislike having a kidney forcibly removed while fully conscious and able to feel pain. Rather than risk traumatizing my child, I give him haircuts while he is sleeping. This involves a lot of patience, as I have to wait until he is very asleep. If he’s not asleep enough, he will wake up as soon as I touch his hair and he will scream loudly enough to startle the llamas in Peru. I have to creep around in the dark like a burglar, and sometimes it takes several nights to get the job done.
  5. Mediation. OK, this is a skill that any parent with more than one child has to learn. But when one child has autism and the other doesn’t, you have to raise your mediation skills to a whole new level. It’s a bit like trying to sort out a dispute between one person who only speaks Zulu and another person who only speaks Icelandic, when you only speak Pig Latin.
  6. Jumping Through Hoops Of Fire That Are Constantly Moving. OK, that may be a slight exaggeration. But dealing with school boards can really feel that way when special needs concerns are brought into the mix. I am getting really good at making suggestions to teachers and therapists that are phrased in a way that makes it sound like it was their idea. If it gets what my son needs, I really don’t care who gets the credit for it.
  7. Improv. If I had a dollar for every time a random stranger made a stupid remark about my son needing “a good hiding” or “proper discipline”, I’d have enough for a five-star trip to New Zealand, including flights, hotels, meals, and a Lord Of The Rings tour. I have learned the art of the Quick Comeback. If someone is being rude and intrusive while my son is having a hard time, I am no longer shy about saying things like, “My child has autism – what’s your excuse?”
  8. Distraction. This is a concept that most autism parents are well aware of. Sometimes I can just tell that a meltdown is just around the corner, and I want to do everything in my power to head it off at the pass. I get favoured activities or treats within arms’ reach, try to stop or somehow control whatever is winding him up, talk to him, sing to him, throw out mental arithmetic problems at him (the kid’s like Baby Rain Man with numbers – what can I say?) I have about fifty-fifty success with my efforts – but I will take that over ninety-ten in favour of the meltdown.
  9. Planning for Change. If there’s one word that makes autism parents everywhere tremble with fear, it’s change. Our kids don’t do well with change. They like the same places, the same people, the same routines. When we go on vacations, we have to take most of our family’s belongings with us so that we can replicate our home environment as closely as possible. Every summer, we put together social stories in preparation for the new school year, that include pictures of the new teacher and classroom, and we take our son to the school so he can get used to – or stay used to – playing in the playground there. I contingency-planned my wedding like it was going out of style – and all of those efforts paid off.
  10. Appreciating the Little Things. Where an autism parent is concerned, there is no such thing as a small accomplishment. All achievements, ranging from new words added to the vocabulary to giant cognitive leaps, are causes for celebration. As the parent of a child with autism, I have really learned how to smell the roses. Life is full of challenges for me and my family. But every single day is a blessing, and every single night, when I kiss my children goodnight, I am grateful for the people they are. And no matter how hard the day has been, I feel like the richest person on the planet.
Filed Under: autism, Children, life, parenting, Special Needs Tagged With: , , , , , ,
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Autism Diagnosis: Blessing, Curse, or Both?

January 12, 2012 By

Receiving my older son’s autism diagnosis four and a half years ago was both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, this diagnosis meant that there was something wrong with my son. I had known this for a long time, of course, but having it told to me officially meant that I could no longer hide behind the cloak of denial. I had to face the fact that my child had a developmental disability that would, in all likelihood, affect him for the rest of his life.

On the other hand, though, having the diagnosis meant that we could now get our son the help that he needed. Instead of having a vague sense that there was “something wrong”, we had a name for his condition. We had something to Google, we learned what services to seek, and we entered the labyrinthine world of special needs funding. Although we were devastated, having the diagnosis did make us feel a little more empowered.

About two years later, I stumbled upon an Internet support group for parents of children with autism. This group was not designed to diagnose, or debate, or judge. It’s primary purpose was – indeed, is – to give parents a safe place to talk about the daily challenges of autism, to vent about whatever was bugging them, and to freely utter the phrase, “Autism is bullshit” without having someone jump down their throat.

This group has turned out to be an invaluable resource for me. I have made friends there. I have been able to give and receive advice. I have come to appreciate that in the autism world, there are children both better off and worse off than my son. I have been allowed to express hope and despair, I have been able to laugh and cry.

And I have been able to learn. Through the experiences of other people, I have been able to develop some strategies to help myself, my son and my family. I have come to have a better understanding of what role my younger (neurotypical) son can play in his brother’s life. I have realized that even the strongest of marriages can be strained by the presence of special needs, and I have learned some ways to deal with that. I have learned about how different things are in the United States vs. Canada where autism services are concerned.

I have learned about the difficulties some parents experience, first when it comes to getting a diagnosis for their children, and secondly, when it comes to getting and retaining services. And just this week, I have learned that all of this may be about to change under the new DSM-V diagnostic criteria. Whether it changes for the better or for the worse is an opinion still up for grabs.

Tomorrow: how will the autism diagnosis change, and what does it mean?

Filed Under: autism, Autism Diagnosis, Autism Friendships, Autism Services, Developmental Delay, Doctor, Learning Disability, Special Needs, Support Groups Tagged With: , , , , , ,
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Campbell: A Story Of Kindness

December 15, 2011 By

Tazz and Campbell

Once upon a time, I had a child and called him George. I had all kinds of hopes and dreams for that child. We were going to  take him on the kinds of outings kids love, and for his birthdays, we’d invite his friends to come too. We would delight in watching him grow from babyhood to childhood as he ran and jumped and played with his peers; we would laugh at the funny things he said as he was learning to talk; he would make cookies with me and we’d go for picnics at the zoo. When he became a big brother he would take pride in helping with the baby.

One day, when George was almost four, the hopes and dreams crumbled as a doctor gave me the news that George had autism. As I sat there in shock (strange really, since I’d known for a year that something was wrong) I did not yet know that at some point in the future, I would come to accept a new kind of “normal”, that my hopes and dreams would take on a different, but still meaningful form, and that while the journey would take us on the scenic route, we would still see many wonderful things along the way.

It hasn’t all been a cakewalk. There have been hard times. I have had to learn how to restrain my son with my bodyweight to stop him from hurting himself. Speech is still sporadic enough that we celebrate every single word, every single sentence. It saddens us that George does not have friends, preferring to play by himself.

One of the hardest things to deal with has been the reactions of other people. We get rude stares in grocery stores, and complete strangers tell us that what our child needs is “a good hiding”. When people see George having difficulty in a public place, they jump to the immediate conclusion that he is misbehaving. Don’t get me wrong – sometimes he is. He may have autism, but let’s face it – an eight-year-old boy is an eight-year-old boy. Most times, though, George is having trouble with the brightness of the florescent lighting, or the overabundance of sounds, or all of the conversations going on around him that he does not know how to filter.

I sometimes wish for a magical potion, a Perfume of Arabia that I could sprinkle onto people to open their eyes and help them understand.

In the absence of a Perfume of Arabia, the best I can do is write about my experiences and hope that it will make a difference to someone’s life. Like it did to a reader, Tazz, who along with her dog Campbell, had an incredible encounter with a special needs child. With Tazz’s permission, I am sharing the story here. I’m not even going to bother rewording it. Tazz’s words can speak very well for themselves.

“One thing I learned is to never ever judge what I see a child doing, because for all I know there may be a problem I do not know about. Turns out this info came in very handy for me not long ago. There is a family who are members of the church I am currently attending part time. Their son has some kind of a problem that they have not quite diagnosed yet. However, it causes him to sometimes have horrible meltdowns. I was walking down the hall one day during Sunday School time going back to class from the bathroom when from a room down the hall a ways I heard the most heartbreaking crying I ever heard, and knew it was this little boy having another hard time. His mother was doing all she could to calm the child. I followed my heart and took a chance. I softly knocked on the door, and asked if I could help. She had come to the door with the melting down child in her arms, and when he saw Campbell his screaming stopped. I mean like turning off a switch. I asked if I could bring Campbell in and visit for a minute. She agreed and we all sat on the floor with the little boy calming down and petting Campbell. They are now looking in to the possibility of getting a therapy dog for this child. Campbell has come to rescue this child a couple more times since that day. Because now if we are there, and this child starts to have a problem they come and get me from where ever I am and I happily go and help. Well, Campbell helps.”

Is this not the most amazing story? Tazz had an instinct and she followed it. She and her dog were exactly what that little boy and his Mom needed. We special needs parents all need people like this – people who don’t necessarily know the circumstances, but who open their hearts to people who really need it.

To Tazz and all of the people like her, thank you. Thank you for being there. Thank you for being you. You restore my faith in the goodness of human nature.

This week’s Indie Ink Challenge came from Head Ant, who gave me this prompt: What would your proverbial “perfumes of Arabia” take care of? Fiction or non-fiction.
I challenged lisa with the prompt: Write about anything you like, but include the following: cotton candy, a dog, and a broken-down taxi.

Photo credit to Tazz. This picture was taken at an event to remember the victims of domestic violence.

Filed Under: autism, Dogs, Empathy, Helping, Indie Ink Writing Challenge, Special Moment, Special Needs Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,
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10 IEP Survival Tips For Parents Of Children With Autism

October 25, 2011 By

If you want an autism parent to break out in an instant sweat, just mention the initials IEP. The Individual Education Plan, which is theoretically in place to help children with autism and their families, can instead be one of the biggest sources of frustration. The IEP process, during which the child’s educational goals for the upcoming year are formulated, is about as much fun as a root canal. It is also just as essential. Without an IEP, our special needs kids would be eaten alive by a school system designed to teach “typical” kids who can do “typical” things.

Putting together an effective IEP requires collaboration between the parents and the school, and differing viewpoints can lead to difficulty. The school views the child as one of a number of students requiring IEP’s. They want to get the job done as quickly and efficiently as they can: the less interaction they have to have with parents, the better. From my experience, teachers like to draw up the IEP, send it home for parental signatures, and be done with it.  Parents, of course, view their child as a unique individual. They want their child’s IEP to be given care and consideration. They don’t want a cookie-cutter IEP; they want a plan that reflects their child’s needs. After all, the “I” in IEP stands for “Individual”.

It doesn’t have to this frustrating. There are things parents can do to derive real value from the IEP process. Today I want to share with you some tips that I have learned over the years, both from my own experiences, and from other people who have been through the IEP wringer. If you have tips of your own, please feel free to add them in the comments section.

1. Parents, educate yourselves. Find out the special ed laws in your area. Make sure you know what you as a parent are entitled to request on behalf of your child. Do research on the IEP process. If possible, try to get your hands on the IEP form if you haven’t already seen it. If you know what information the form calls for, you can be better prepared.

2. This is not a battle – or at least, it shouldn’t be. No matter how frustrated you are, avoid approaching your child’s teacher in a confrontational manner. You are not on opposite sides of the table. You are members of the same team, working together for the benefit of your child. If you adopt a collaborative attitude, chances are that the teacher will do the same. At the end of the day, your child will derive a lot more benefit from a cohesive team than from a roomful of bickering people.

3. There is another reason to play nice with your child’s teacher. The special ed community is fairly contained. There is a good possibility that the professional you are dealing with today will crop up in some other role in the special ed world at some point in the future. I’m not suggesting that you give in to what the teacher wants. I’m just saying, be nice. Treat all of the professionals you encounter with respect. Yelling at an uncooperative teacher may get you some short-term results, but it will also burn a bridge that you may need further down the line.

4. Be realistic. Your child’s goals should be formulated with reference to where they are today. A child who has not yet learned how to count to twenty is probably not going to be able to add triple-digit numbers.

5. Instead of requesting goals in absolute terms (“I want my child to be reading by the end of the year”), phrase them as an ongoing process (“The ability to read one- and two-syllable words, with a view to reading simple story-books.”)

6. Remember that kids don’t necessarily do the same things at school that they do at home. My son’s teacher, who is with him for the third year in a row, sent home an IEP draft that included the goal for him to rote-count to 100. I was initially perplexed, because he’s been counting to 100 since he was four, but it came out that this is not a skill he has demonstrated at school. Conversely, he has shown more promise in interactive play at school than he does at home.

7. Don’t be shy about writing comments on your child’s IEP. The IEP form does not allow a lot of space for comments – feel free to break out a separate sheet of paper, write your comments on that, and staple it to the form.

8. As a parent, you have the option to meet with the teacher, or to just add your comments to the IEP and sign it. I strongly recommend that you meet with the teacher. Even if it’s the same teacher for the second or third year, the goals will have evolved, and it can be very difficult to keep things in context without a face-to-face meeting.

9. If the IEP does not include a goal that you feel should be there, be persistent. You may need to compromise on the wording of the goal, but make sure it gets written into the IEP in some form.

10. Remember that the IEP is not cast in concrete. We don’t have crystal balls, and we cannot always say that the plan we come up with in October will still be valid in, say, February. If a strategy or goal that was written into the IEP is not working, talk to your child’s teacher about modifying it.

Filed Under: autism, Education, goals, IEP, School, Special Needs, Teacher Tagged With: , , , , , , ,
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Autism Meltdown: Surviving The Storm

August 24, 2011 By

It all started when I turned on the light in the kitchen. My almost-eight-year-old son George sidled up to me and, as usual, said, “Turn off the light soon.”

George hates the overhead light in the kitchen, and whenever it is turned on, he glues himself to my side and repeatedly tells me to turn it off, like a stuck record. I am so used to this that I barely notice it anymore. I just carry on with whatever I need to do, which last night included unpacking and reloading the dishwasher.

Uh oh. The dishwasher. This is another source of extreme discomfort for George. He gets very anxious when it is open, and like a record stuck on a different track, he tells me over and over again to “put it back soon”.

This – the combination of the light and the dishwasher – was a precursor to the explosion that would happen later in the evening.

I was probably not helping, at least, not at that point. I was in an agitated state of mind, having just come home from a stressful workday. I was multitasking too much, juggling about six tasks simultaneously, and getting stressed because neither of the kids would eat their dinner. I was frazzled and fraught. There is no other way to put it.

The explosion gradually built up throughout the evening, and finally erupted when George turned on the kitchen tap and found the water hotter than he expected. He screamed in outrage and started running around in a panic. I caught him, and using an expertise borne of experience, I used my body to restrain him from thrashing around and hurting himself.

I determined that he was not burned or injured, and sat there wrapped around him while he screamed. And screamed and screamed.

It has been a while since George had a meltdown this bad, but I knew that there was not a thing I could do to diffuse it. This was going to last for as long as it lasted, and we were just going to have to ride it out. Fortunately, my husband was home, so I had someone to tag-team with. One of us would stay with George, while the other would comfort our younger son James, for whom these meltdowns can be mysterious and frightening. Every thirty minutes or so, we would switch kids. Anything else that either of us had planned for the evening was abandoned.

After two hours or so, George finally started winding down. My husband and I cautiously allowed ourselves to breathe. He went back to the work he had been doing on his computer, and I went into the kitchen and made a cup of tea. I got the kids into their pajamas and gave them their bedtime milk. Because they were both still unsettled, I allowed them to chill out on the couch for a while before going to bed.

The period of relative calm turned out to be the eye of the storm.

The dishwasher had been running in the background without anyone paying attention to it. George, with his super-sensitive ears, heard the quiet click that heralds the end of the dishwasher’s cycle, and just like that, he was off again. For another hour, this poor child was experiencing an emotional storm that I felt ill-equipped to help him weather.

The worst part of all this was not the screaming. It was not the panicked running around and frantic scrabbling with the dishwasher. The worst thing by far was the look in George’s eyes. He kept looking directly at me, trying desperately to communicate – something. If the eyes are indeed the window to the soul, then my son’s soul was frustrated, unspeakably sad, desperate – almost tortured. It broke my heart to see him that way, to see him in such obvious pain and to be unable to help him.

Much later, when everything was finally quiet and when the entire household (sans me) was asleep, the question of why kept running through my mind. What happened to trigger the worst meltdown we’ve seen in about a year? Could the light and the dishwasher have suddenly morphed from a source of anxiety to a source of full-on panic? Was the hot water just too much for him to handle? If I had not been stressed and agitated, would the situation have escalated to such an extreme degree? In an interesting theory offered by my mother – one that resonates with me – could yesterday’s earthquake have unsettled George and made him more susceptible to stress?

As with most things autism-related, there are no definitive answers. Every question just spawns more questions. All I can really do is go with my instincts and strive to be the best mom I can be.

(Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/powazny/3782692376/. This picture has a creative commons attribution license.)

Filed Under: anxiety, autism, Meltdown, parenting, Special Needs Tagged With: , , , , , , ,
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