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George And The Silent-E Machine

May 16, 2013 By

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It’s been more than a few days since I last posted here. I could give you all kinds of reasons for this, like lack of sleep, lack of energy and lack of time. Ultimately, the reason for my mini-hiatus can be traced back to one thing: the silent-E machine. Known to most people as the dishwasher.

My son George is the one who started referring to our dishwasher as the silent-E machine. He is a big fan of the Leapfrog movies. If you have young kids and you don’t know about Leapfrog, Google it. The movies are fun and educational, and entirely appropriate for youngsters learning how to read or count. Anyway, one of the movies features the Leapfrog characters in the Letter Factory learning about how silent E’s can change the way a word sounds. The silent E’s are manufactured by a machine called – you guessed it – a silent-E machine.

After George watched this movie several dozen times, he decided that he wanted a silent-E machine of his own. He grabbed one of his fridge magnet E’s and placed it on the dishwasher, and hey presto! We had a silent-E machine.

George is very particular about routine, and part of the essential routine is that the silent-E machine be turned on right around bedtime. Usually, he will quite happily go to bed and drift off to sleep with the silent-E machine running in the background. And this is fine. If he wanders out of bed from time to time to check on the progress of the cycle, I’m OK with that. He likes to make sure that all is well in the world as he knows it.

About a week ago, the silent-E machine started to act up. I started running it only at times when I could keep a constant watch on it. Which meant running it outside of George’s regular schedule. Most autism parents will bear witness to the fact that this is a recipe for disaster. The entire household applecart was severely disrupted, and all of us started getting a lot less sleep.

Then, on Mother’s Day, we reached a point of not being able to use the silent-E machine at all. We had to start lugging dishes up and down the stairs so we could borrow my mother-in-law’s dishwasher, and this meant that her dishwasher was being run at the wrong times.

Oy.

It got ugly. Now George was staying awake more or less through the night, crying about his beloved silent-E machine, and running up and down the stairs at odd times of the night to inspect my mother-in-law’s dishwasher.

I am hoping that it will all be fixed tomorrow. The problem seems to be nothing more serious than a clogged pipe, and I have acquired some chemicals to pour down it.

Wish me luck, friends. It’s been a rough ride.

What happens when normal routines are disrupted in your house? Is there chaos or does everyone go with the flow?

(Photo credit: kevin dooley. This picture has a creative commons attribution license.)

Filed Under: autism, Dishwasher, Routines Tagged With: , , , ,
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In Pursuit Of A Dream

January 17, 2013 By

When I finished high school 25 years ago, I had the idea that I would become a research psychologist. I was interested in the clinical aspect of it, but I did not think it would suit my socially awkward personality. If I went into research, though, I would be able to satisfy my desire to try and figure out what makes people tick. In some small way, I might even be able to make the world a better place.

I graduated high school with good grades and went off to university to pursue a Bachelors degree with a psychology major.

You know how life has this way of barging in and messing up all your plans?

Life barged in and messed up all my plans. During my second year at university, I met someone who I initially thought was charming, but who turned out to be a chaotic and disruptive force. I compare that part of my life with a tsunami. A gigantic wave rushes in and knocks over everything in its path. When the water recedes, the landscape is completely different. Some things have been turned upside down, others have completely disappeared. Virtually nothing is recognizable, and the only way to move forward is through a process of recovery and reinvention.

One thing is clear: after such a disruption, nothing can ever be the same again.

I did finish my Bachelors degree, but I abandoned the dream. I did not have good enough grades to pursue further studies, and even if that weren’t the case, my sense of self had been so completely obliterated that it would not have been possible.

In the 20-odd years since then, a lot has happened. I spent some time drifting, both metaphorically in my own mind and literally through travel, and eventually washed up in a career. I moved to Canada, had children, got married. I have buried my father, been thrust into the role of special needs mom, started running and discovered a passion for writing.

I have a lot to be thankful for, including the fact that in spite of the storm that I endured all those years ago, I have managed to make a life for myself. There has always been an undertone of regret, though. Regret for the poor decisions I made back then, and regret for the fact that I had a dream that got swept away. While the career I did end up in has been pretty good, I have never been able to shake the feeling that this is not what I want to do, that I have been living my whole adult life in response to things that happened a long time ago.

Maybe I cannot pursue the dreams I had back then. Maybe those dreams belong in the past along with all the ugly stuff that happened there.

What about new dreams, though? Is there anything stopping me from pursuing them?

In a move that has surprised absolutely no-one except myself, I have made the decision to go back to school. I have enrolled in a post-graduate certificate in fiction and non-fiction writing, and this will be followed up with a Masters degree in creative writing.

It is daunting. Quite apart from the extra time commitment that this will involve, my mind keeps drifting back to how my first shot at a university education went so wrong. I freely admit that I am scared. A part of me feels like that naive kid who made dumb choices. On the other hand, though, this might be a chance of personal redemption, an opportunity to get it right.

I owe this to myself, and I owe it to that scared, overwhelmed kid of long ago who gave up a dream.

(Photo credit: Raoul Luoar. This picture has a creative commons attribution license.)
Filed Under: Dreams, life, School, Second Chances, Trauma Tagged With: , , , , , ,
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Autism And The Ontario Teacher Dispute

January 10, 2013 By

Going back to school after a two-week vacation is hard, especially for a child with autism whose routines have been completely turned upside-down by unaccustomed time at home, unaccustomed time in a hotel, and the whole Christmas ordeal.

This week has been rough for both of my kids, particularly my firstborn. George reacts to changes in his routine by not sleeping, which means I haven’t had anything remotely approaching a good night’s sleep since before Christmas. Now that the kids are back at school, and familiar rituals and schedules have resumed, the sleep issues are slowly but surely diminishing. Usually it takes a couple of weeks for the status quo to fully return.

This time round, though, there are a couple of wrinkles that are likely to hamper our return to our own odd version of normality. One of the wrinkles is actually a very positive one: for the next few Wednesdays, George will be attending a social skills program after school.

On the one hand, he gets to go to the therapy centre that was his home-away-from-home for three years. It’s a place he knows and loves, and the program is one that he desperately needs.

On the other hand, he has not set foot in the therapy centre since he was discharged 15 months ago. It is no longer a part of his daily life, and going there is a big change for him. As disruptive as that is for now, his participation in the program represents progress, and we are excited to see where this might take him.

The other wrinkle is a little more contentious in nature. For those not living in Ontario, here’s the short version of the story:

Last year the Premier of Ontario introduced legislation that would have the effect of screwing over the teachers. The teachers’ unions got involved and tried to negotiate a better deal. The inevitable happened – things went nowhere fast and the unions recommended a course of protest action for the teachers.

In December, there was a series of one-day walkouts staged by school boards across the province. By then, pre-Christmas stuff had already started to throw the routines off, so this didn’t really bother us. The biggest effect was that James’ Christmas concert had to be rescheduled to a date that was impossible for me (oh, the guilt!).

The one-day walkouts failed to have the desired effect, and now the teachers are not in a legal position to strike. They can, however, stage a one-day protest (although to be honest, I’m not clear about the difference between the two), and this is exactly what they are planning to do tomorrow.

Looking at the issues alone, my sympathies are with the teachers. They are entrusted with the task of shaping futures, and they deserve some respect. My opinion is kind of moot anyway: regardless of who’s right or wrong, the teachers have to do whatever the unions tell them to.

But speaking as a special needs parent, I have to say that I am kind of miffed at this latest development. At a time when I am trying to get George settled into the flow of a routine that’s already different, an unplanned three-day weekend really throws a monkey-wrench into the works.

That there are issues to be resolved is beyond question. I just wish this could be done in a way that does not impact the kids. I can handle the inconvenience of having adjust our family’s schedule to accommodate the kids not going to school for a day. I can live with them missing out on one day of instruction. In the grand scheme of their educations, a single day is not going to make much difference.

What I find hard to swallow, though, is the fact that special needs kids like George are going to endure an extra dose of stress and anxiety because of this.

I’m not sure what the solution is, but I cannot help thinking that there has to be a way to avoid making children bear the brunt of grown-up problems.

(Photo credit: Pylon757. This picture has a creative commons attribution license.)

Filed Under: Ontario, Politics, School, Teacher, Teacher Strikes Tagged With: , , , , , ,