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We've been given cause for thanks this morning. I'd mentioned in an earlier post how sick Judy was when we had Angus; he was also very ill as a consequence and had a rough start to life. We had a few months of hell.
As he got older, we discovered that he has Asperger's Syndrome so life has been very interesting. There has been a lot of (very expensive) intervention and we have occasionally despaired of how he would get by. We had visions of having a forty year old, unemployed boy living at home with his aged parents.
He has had excellent teaching and has been aided in the classroom throughout his schooling. The Australian public education system is excellent, particularly in the area where we live. Despite the schooling and lots of outside help, spelling is an entirely random exercise for Angus; we must be one of very few parents who are thankful for Facebook as it has forced him to try harder in order to communicate with friends. One of his female friends provides translations on Facebook for the stranger communications, which are often necessary. Fortunately he loves reading as we have read to the kids since birth.
However, communication remains a real issue for him. That's not just written stuff but being able to interpret body language in others. The fact that he is face blind is a further drama; hilarious discussion ensue as we try to identify who his teacher are each semester- with luck he remembers whether they are male or female, but getting beyond that is a drama.
However, over the last year or two things have looked up. He has really hit his straps in recent months, particularly in maths where he seems to be getting the idea of really complex topics and is topping his class. He is also trying very hard with English, where the opportunity to study literature in his favoured areas (Gothic Horror last semester and this semester, Fantasy Fiction) is expanding his English skills. His teachers are delighted because they can see the pay-off for their efforts. The last report card was great.
However, he has a pragmatist's view of such effort; what's in it for me? Hence when I complimented him on the report card he asked "What do I get as reward?" The offer of a kiss for being a good boy was not well received.
Anyway, today is pay-off day as he turned fifteen. I decided a new bike was in order. I have never had a new bike, always getting hand-me-downs or buying cheap second hand. Angus has also been the beneficiary of hand-me down bikes from his sister ("What's wrong with a boy on a pink tricycle; it was good enough for your sister?"). More recently, Angus came by a free but very second hand racing bike which had working gears, but seemed difficult to brake. There have been sundry minor crashes but no major injuries.
Kids along the Autsim Spectrum often have problems with physical fitness as they tend to be a little uncoordinated and hence do not succeed easily at sport. Hence, encouraging any sort of activity is a great idea. The latest recommendation from the paediatricain is that bike riding is a lot smarter than running because of some physical issues for him. She also suggested fencing, archery and weightlifting. We are okay with the fencing (which he has tried and enjoyed in the past) and weightlifting, but have marked reservations over the archery; not sure that giving a boy a bow and arrows is a great idea.
I went out yesterday to buy him a bike and lucked it in for a 20% discount on a Merida Matts 40 mountain bike. I am surprised at how sophisticated bikes now are. The brake issue may be resolved as the new bike has hydraulic disc brakes, which the bike shop guys say are more reliable and less problematic than cable rim brakes. It also has a locking front fork so that it is easier to ride on-road.
It seems that everything is now made in China (actually Taiwan for this one) and bikes are no different. However, frame quality looks goods and parts are good quality Shimano and Tektro for the brakes.
I was not sure whether Angus would be keen on it. However, it is a big hit, inspected very carefully at six this morning. He disappeared off to school on it, having wandered around the house wearing his bike helmet for twenty minutes before he could reasonably find some mates at school to show off to. Obviously, I got the right idea this time.
Its a pleasure to watch our kids grow up. We feel especially rewarded, knowing where Angus is coming from.
Cheers
Graham
One of the things I like most about this forum, and especially this thread, is that we can all share our ups and downs in life. It makes it kind of a special place.
Bob
There are a few of us (Brenda, especially?) who can really identify with the story of your son. Our Emily has shocked us both with how far she has come in a few years. From being suspended from school and on everyone's watch list just 4 years ago, to pulling near straight A's and being in 4 honors classes this fall (also 15 years old). She still struggles in many social areas, but she is learning how to cope and stay out of trouble. Dealing with kids 'on the spectrum' can be a real experience!
Her passion is music, and we recently finished two round trips of 300 miles each way so that she could spend 2 weeks at 'music camp' at the Crane School of Music, SUNY Potsdam. We were worried about letting her live on campus, and it wasn't all roses, but overall she had a great experience and the school really did it's part.
Funny short story: Back some years ago when we were going thru testing with Em, we asked her Dr. whether she could be expected to ever live happily on her own. Dr. C. replied, "Mr. H, many in your field (engineering) suffer from this or worse, and it's what makes them so proficient and passionate about what they do. It's part of their ability to work night & day without distraction to solve a problem!" She then asked me to go thru a few of the grading exercises, and guess what? I learned a lot about myself. An understanding about things my wife could see but I was blind to.
One of my "despairs" with the current high stakes testing in schools is that we are focused very narrowly on some areas and I'm afraid of students who will only have "failure" and then lose the drive to develop the abilities and talents that may be the ones that our society needs in order to survive in the ever-changing (with an exponentially accelerating rate of changing) world we are facing.
Many of our greatest inventors and thinkers - DaVinci, Edison, Einstein, Gates (?) to name a few - had great difficulty with some skills, but there is no denying their talent and contributions.
Who's to say that the Asperger's way of looking at the world is "wrong"? It's diffferent ... and sometimes it's harder for us to figure out a way to work with them successfully, but I'm convinced most of them are working with us the very best way they know how!
One of them once commented that most engineers may fall somewhere along the autism spectrum. When I look at them now, I can often see some of the signs.
I think one of the most difficult things about the autism spectrum is, well, the spectrum! Each of these individuals is so unique in their symptoms and the traits they express, that there is no one way to approach them as a group.
As parents, our willingness to rise to the challenge certainly seems to make all the difference.
Graham, I hope your son continues to enjoy his new gift. As for the 40-year-old living at home, if my son keeps up his current attitude of everything-is-everyone-else's-fault, he'll be out on his [non-permissible content removed] at 18 regardless of his willingness to prop himself up, but I'll try my best not to literally throw him out the door. It is truly impossible for anyone to externalize more than this boy. :mad:
That said, I am very thankful for the progress he has made with his ability to recognize language and social cues. Steve, your mentioning of the focus these children can achieve clues me into something.... that might be why my children can get so infuriated with each other! My daughter wants to be close to her big brother and learn what he's doing when he is working on one of his projects, but the slightest interruption by her sends him through the roof! Of course, her way of retaliating is to wait until he has refocused, then beat him over the head (literally) with something. :sick:
LOL.
Now I'm in marketing - I love shades of gray. The grayer and murkier, the better. Like juice's wife, I can take almost any poor statistic and dip it in the gray to make it look good!!
Mention of the paint engineer is funny. I dealt with a guy some years ago, who had been diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome late in life. He was a spray painter originally but had an obsessive thirst for quality and colour match, resulting in him building the largest specialist panel shop in Melbourne, specializing in very high value cars. He aid that the really irritating thing about Asperger's is that he cannot let and invoice with an error go out the door, even if it would have gone in his favour.
He had worked for one of the major paint companies, where his focus was critical in developing their products and consistency of product quality.
Having established his business, repairing high value cars, he had some spare time and developed an interest in Australian Aboriginal Art. Totally self taught, he is now one of the leading experts in the field.
Cheers
Graham
When *I* was a kid right here in the US, my CRAYOLAS spelled it grey, and that's how I was taught to spell it in school ... I still sometimes spell it grey - and the other day when I was typing my post, I CORRECTED my self from grey to the more US-accepted gray .... lol
as far as I'm concerned, it would have made more sense to change the word they to thay ... would be easier to teach my kids to spell the more common spelling for the sound!
At first Emily pushed back, but with time embraced it to the extreme. In many states marching band is a competitive sport, and the director was looking for Arlington School District to retake the NY State Championship this past season (in the end they placed 4th, a very worthy showing). He became aware of some of her ‘issues’ as time went on (we had to get a 504 in place due to her eyesight problems), but in the beginning he knew nothing about her. Just a quirky kid he thought. The more he beat on Emily, the better she did, and the more she liked it! I mused to my wife that she’d make a great Marine. Paris Island would be her favorite vacation spot!
Over the year the man has not been terribly nice to her, but seems to respect what she can do. She rose to first flute & concert-mistress of the 9th grade band, and he gave her extra perks along the way (like handing her a piccolo 6 weeks before a concert and putting her center stage). He just expects that she’ll rise to the occasion and get it done.
We started Marching Band cycle again, and after a few weeks of basic field training, he assigned parts. Em came home most disappointed as she was flute position 16 of 18. Usually numbers are a reflection of talent & stature, and she was at the tail. If you have ever seen one of these programs, they last about 8-10 minutes, and the kids learn it on paper from a ‘dot book’. Each page represents a position in time, at maybe 3-5 second intervals. So a 10 minute program has well over 100 pages, and if you flipped thru it, it would appear like a moving picture. From a master plan, Em began filling in #16, page by page. She quickly realized that #16 led the line multiple times as formations shifted, and in the grand finale, she became ‘lone man’ centerpiece who gives a salute to the audience. Once again, he wouldn’t even say hello to her, yet relied heavily on her to take the challenge and succeed – in a position that even trumped the section leader.
So, where am I going with this? Remember that discussion about when to head to the ER?
We were invited to a pool party on Saturday afternoon. Em brings her dot book so that she can continue working thru her role. Even at a social event, she can’t leave an obligation behind. Sounds typical, right? It’s 8 PM, and we are heading thru the house to the car. She takes a tumble towards the bottom of a flight of stairs. As first my reaction was, oh, it’s just Emily being Emily. Gangly body & weak ankles – if she isn’t concentrating, this stuff happens to her. She never shows outward signs of pain, a real stoic. But this time the expression on her face told all. We got her seated, and I ran my hands up her legs. Something just didn’t feel right. A few hours later we had the news – broken fibula near the ankle, and the end of the season for her. I haven’t seen her break down and cry like that in years.
Or is it a grey area?
My brother caught a tough break in high school, as did I (for an entirely different reason). He was spectacular at basketball, and worked really hard at being so despite is natural talent at sports. Far and away, he was the go-to, do-anything guy on our team and honestly was a rare gift, especially at a "Class A" school with a total high school student body size of approximately 40 (grades 9-12).
Our senior year, he would have tears in his eyes after games and practice, often hobbling around afterward due to ankle pain. It turned out he had bone spurs in his ankles, which had grown quite large and were impeding the movement in his joints. When he played and pushed those joints, they would retaliate through extreme pain and some inflammation. The doctors estimated recovery at 8-12 weeks, which would put him out for the season, so he put it off for a few more weeks until it was obvious to him that he just couldn't play to the caliber he expected of himself any longer. So, he bowed out for the season and had the surgery done knowing that it would be the last time he played competitive basketball.
In a way, it may have been a great thing because it humbled him just a little bit and, perhaps, started him on a path toward moderating his incredibly inflated sense of self-worth (e.g., arrogance).
Cheers Pat.
In some people adversity makes them even more determined to succeed, and I just feel given what Emily has overcome in her short life to date, this will no doubt [prove to be the case with her latest setback.
Cheers Pat.
I washed my car. :sick:
We shall see...
Looked ridiculous for a while there, like a "Just Married" car or some type of parade float, LOL.
Kids...
Think about it as "voice blindness" as relates to the post earlier about "face blindness" ... they just don't discriminate and "see" or "hear" the differences ...
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504763_162-20086810-10391704.html
So much to catch up on in one week! Such wonderful life stories!
tom
Emily is doing well. She has a strong spirit. We went to the field for band practice this morning so that she could be with her friends while I talked to the director. He was of course vague as expected, but we'll just have to wait and see. We then went over to a new Planet Fitness that just opened down the road from the HS and signed her up. The orthopedist (sports oriented) gave her a list of exercises to help her keep her leg strength, and speed her recovery.
Is it a job requirement that band directors have to be off by a beat or two? I think my own band director in high school was much the same way.
Since the broken bone is the fibula, she can still bear weight on the leg, correct? I hope she follows the exercise schedule, because it is amazing how quickly muscles can atrophy when they're not being used.
As an aside, even though muscles generally rise to the challenge of use, my leg still bothers me from time to time where the soleus muscle tore in my right calf. Maybe it will turn out to be "debilitating" after all. :sick:
in many ways I have always felt 'different' from my fellow teachers ... not sure that it's a good thing for me "emotionally" or even from the standpoint of advancement within the field ... but I do think it's a good thing for kids to have different types in the teaching field to be able to find someone to relate to a bit more ...
My fibula healed "fast" back in the 80's - 3 week hard cast, 3 week walking cast with some weight bearing during the walking cast stage. That's when I learned to drive manual with one foot. :-)
An older friend here just broke her fibula after taking a mountain bike header and she's bummed because the "dissolving" of the bone is going slow and she got put back into a hard cast for another 3 weeks when she went to the doc last Friday. It's her right foot, so she's not able to drive at all.
Now off to the Maine Seacoast for some very much needed R&R!
Cheers Pat.
I've always been pretty 'geeky' ... while I did take an "overview" course in PowerPoint at one time, it was because I needed the 'hours' of credit for a job I had - I had already 'taught myself' what I needed to know in the program. Taught myself how to use word processing programs and spreadsheet programs way back about 25 years ago because there were things I thought it would help me by knowing ... just would sit until I could figure it out ...
and then .. you do start a task that you'd swear you'd done before and ... well ...
I have a folder of papers that I ended up carrying with me last year (school calendars, forms, etc) just because I move from school to school and it wasn't always easy to locate it where I was at the time. I'm trying to move to less and less paper all the time, and I thought ... OK, I'll scan these in and then I can upload them to the school servers (remotely from home) and then I can get to them wherever I am without carrying them around ....
Scan them in... and I can scan a PDF (which is fine for the calendars) but I was having difficulty scanning into a Word file. (And I've done it before, although it was YEARS ago.) So the program says I need to find the CD for the printer and install the OCR software. (I probably installed drivers for this computer from the internet, and it didn't install that software.) So, I go digging for the CD (which I know I have somewhere) only it's not where I think it should be. Go online to see if I can find the software through the printer maker ... nope ... look for a free PDF to text converter, and finally find one that I think I can 'trust' and download it ...
Well ... it didn't seem to work, and I had to go in and change some printer settings, but it still didn't work ... so after trying that for awhile, I finally went digging for the CD again ... In the 3rd stash, I finally found the thing. Next challenge ... I have two CD drives on my computer, but I never use them. I bet I haven't used them more than 1/2 dozen times in the last few years. When I do, it's a whole 'circus' just to get the drawer to eject. (They've been this way for years, but I don't usually need them so why bother about it?) I finally get one drawer open and pop the CD in ... but can't find the file that I need for the OCR software ...
Go back online to see if I can find any help as to what to look for. I guess mine is so old, it isn't the 'exact' name but I did finally find it and load it in ... So ... let's try it again ... oh yeah .. gotta set the printer settings again so it can find the program I want to save it in ... and ... try again ...
WOOHOO .. Word opens ... and ... it's blank .. totally blank ... nothing on the page ... and I'm about ready to give up .. (about 2 hours worth at this point with a couple of VERY short breaks - 5-10 min ea) ... and I realize ...
somewhere in all this I've taken the ()*&*(&^( document OUT of the scanner ... LOL .. there is a REASON why this last one is BLANK !!! Put the document back in and scan again ... and ... YAY !!!!! ....
And I felt like I knew nothing about scanning a document ....
oh well ... lol .. at least now I can do the rest!!!
If I looked at the evidence, though, I would have no choice but to conclude I am simply deluding myself. :sick:
I feel so stupid these days - I just don't retain anything anymore.
Remember that story about me taking 2 hours to figure out how to scan into a word file? Well, I already had another frustrating incident earlier in the day ...
I have a program (Tutronics) that is made for helping teachers who teach phonics and reading. It is a database of words and I can set up a profile for a student (or group) and then enter the "sounds" the kids know and create a word list for only the sounds/letters/spellings they have been taught (lessen the frustration for those kids who already struggle).
So I had spent some hours a few years ago creating word lists to go along with the reading system and strategies I was using with the kids on my caseload, but a couple of years ago we received a computer program that is the 1st one I have ever thought was worth the time to put kids on it to help with the reading instruction. I have wanted to revise the lists to match the sequence of skills in the program. I brought home a "scope and sequence" of the skills (which is nothing more than a list of the letters/sounds/spellings and the order they are taught in the program).
Spent about an hour and a half on the 1st 17 lessons, and got to lesson 18 and it wouldn't let me enter the "blend" of sounds that are "st", because I hadn't put in teaching the "t". I go back and look in the list and can't find where the "t" is taught. It was 4:00 at this point, and I called our main special education office thinking that at least one of the people there would have a manual for the program in the office ... and guess who had just left for the day???
Today I went by the office and found the manual on the bookshelf in one of the offices, and started trying to find where the "t" was taught. Turns out it's the 2nd lesson which means I have to go back and "redo" every lesson from 2-17 because I should have had the words that included "t" with all of the other sounds ... We finally figured out there is a "typo" on the scope and sequence, because the "t" is Lesson 2, and it says "f" ... and "f" is taught later ...
So ... yesterday was a day when I "worked" a lot without really accomplishing much ....
(And the sp ed office wants a copy of the files with my lists when I'm done ... lol .. not the 1st time I've created these things and shared them .... and ... while we're on this topic ... teachers have traditionally shared anything with one another that we create in order to help and improve instruction for all students .. where is the incentive to do that if I can make more $$ by creating these things and using them to improve my students skills more than another teacher in the same building? ... just sayin ... )
Those are early signs of insanity, Bren.
Just kidding!
Totally common, actually. And I will add that for whatever reason it seems like the smartest people make the silliest mistakes on the computer. Perhaps it's because they are concentrating on something else?
The wise economist here often forgets to plug things in.
Anyway, I finally just got an iPhone 4 at SAM's Club ($50+ cheaper than at Verizon or the Apple Store). I have to say I'm just blown away by the iPhone—and love how it syncs with my Mac computers. Bookmarks, email, addresses, calendar, everything! Make a change on one device, and it automatically updates the other one. Every day I seem to learn something new about it, especially with adding apps. Just loaded an Edmunds app and an (Edmunds) Inside Line app. It's just great.
Bob