I was chatting with a cousin of mine yesterday. He's under a tremendous amount of stress right now, and he was telling me about the effects it was having on him. "It takes me half an hour to get socks on in the morning," he complained. "The heels - I can't get the sock straight, and the seam on the toe hurts, and when I finally get it all straightened out, the sock is too stretched out and I have to start again with another one."
Hm. That sounds like someone I know.
Later, he went on: "The freaking lights are screwing me up. Can't you see that flickering? I don't know what's wrong with everybody that you can't see it."
Hm.
Saturday, February 23, 2008
Friday, February 15, 2008
Databases and Favorite Things
This evening, I was working on an informatics course I'm helping to write and opened up one of my database design texts to review some stuff. Rosie climbed up in my lap and started asking questions about data flow, read part of a section, and then asked if we could make a database of our own. Um... sure, I said. "We need a REALLY huge piece of graph paper," she said. Her dad jumped in and explained why we have computers - they can do really huge imaginary sheets of paper. Fantastic! says Rosie. Let's go make a database on Mom's computer!
I have to admit I was somewhat bemused, since I was trying to imagine whether this would have been remotely interesting to me as a child. Possibly not, no, but data flow was always interesting. I remember those vacuum tube things that the old-style drive-through bank tellers used were utterly maddening/fascinating to me due to the idea that information went through the tubes. I imagined them expanding exponentially in massive recursive patterns till I went nuts with it. Teh tubes! No wonder I work on the net.
So we made a database of people in the house, listing names, hair and eye color, favorite color, and 3 top fears. When we got all the data in, I tried to show Rosie how to sort the data, but unfortunately I'd somewhat automatically created a key field with sequential numbering. The sorting disarranged the sequence and Rosie had a litter of kittens and a near-meltdown. Well, OK. We'll get into the beauties of data manipulation later. In the meantime, the gaps in some of the fields bug her (the cat's cell phone number, for instance, is a necessarily blank field). Ah, a child after my own heart!
We went to one of the teacher stores as a treat and I got Rosie a big tub of the only toy she's been willing to play with the past three weeks. Her homeschool teacher had given her a very small set of pattern blocks for conceptual math manipulatives - only 30! Rosie kept saying. So now she has 250 pattern blocks and can create huger and more complex symmetrical patterns out of the blocks. I said musingly to Rosie's dad, "I think most people make pictures with these things instead of patterns, which seems really weird," and he laughed and said that's why we were married.
I have to admit I was somewhat bemused, since I was trying to imagine whether this would have been remotely interesting to me as a child. Possibly not, no, but data flow was always interesting. I remember those vacuum tube things that the old-style drive-through bank tellers used were utterly maddening/fascinating to me due to the idea that information went through the tubes. I imagined them expanding exponentially in massive recursive patterns till I went nuts with it. Teh tubes! No wonder I work on the net.
So we made a database of people in the house, listing names, hair and eye color, favorite color, and 3 top fears. When we got all the data in, I tried to show Rosie how to sort the data, but unfortunately I'd somewhat automatically created a key field with sequential numbering. The sorting disarranged the sequence and Rosie had a litter of kittens and a near-meltdown. Well, OK. We'll get into the beauties of data manipulation later. In the meantime, the gaps in some of the fields bug her (the cat's cell phone number, for instance, is a necessarily blank field). Ah, a child after my own heart!
We went to one of the teacher stores as a treat and I got Rosie a big tub of the only toy she's been willing to play with the past three weeks. Her homeschool teacher had given her a very small set of pattern blocks for conceptual math manipulatives - only 30! Rosie kept saying. So now she has 250 pattern blocks and can create huger and more complex symmetrical patterns out of the blocks. I said musingly to Rosie's dad, "I think most people make pictures with these things instead of patterns, which seems really weird," and he laughed and said that's why we were married.
Thursday, February 14, 2008
Vitamins... hm...
Based on a comment I'd read on a forum (you can see the probable mistake here), I wondered if B-vitamins and fish oil would help Rosie focus and settle down a bit. After one day of a megavitamin B and that popular fish oil I can't bring to mind right now, she was incredibly easily frustrated and regressive emotionally. I mean, yow.
Now, that could be overdosing the poor kid on B vitamins or it could be total overstimulation due to a play we went to (not the symphony, another event), but in any case it was a marked difference. Vitamin deficiencies - this was the kind of thing I was hoping to get her pediatrician to help with, but no. When we saw him last week, it was pretty much, "Well, congratulations, she has Asperger's, she'll be fine, here's a list of therapists." Well, crap. Of course she'll be fine, but I know I have vitamin deficiencies that make me muddy-headed if I don't keep up on the supplements, so knowing if she does too would be damn helpful I would think. I thought since he was a bloody researcher, he'd have some ideas on best things to do. Bah!
A friend of mine says I expect this cooperative collaboration from people that just isn't there most of the time. That is probably true. I do sort of expect that.
Now, that could be overdosing the poor kid on B vitamins or it could be total overstimulation due to a play we went to (not the symphony, another event), but in any case it was a marked difference. Vitamin deficiencies - this was the kind of thing I was hoping to get her pediatrician to help with, but no. When we saw him last week, it was pretty much, "Well, congratulations, she has Asperger's, she'll be fine, here's a list of therapists." Well, crap. Of course she'll be fine, but I know I have vitamin deficiencies that make me muddy-headed if I don't keep up on the supplements, so knowing if she does too would be damn helpful I would think. I thought since he was a bloody researcher, he'd have some ideas on best things to do. Bah!
A friend of mine says I expect this cooperative collaboration from people that just isn't there most of the time. That is probably true. I do sort of expect that.
Sunday, February 10, 2008
Play Something Nice for Mom!
Rosie and I went to a kids' adaptation of a wonderful symphony, complete with storyteller and visuals. It was a double orchestra, both youth and the regular, and it was a terrific introduction to "how to do a symphony/concert/musical event." When to clap, when it was ok to talk, how the first violin and the conductor are honored by walking on by themselves, the encore. I hadn't really thought about the formal pattern of the event until I saw it through the kids' eyes.
There were booths in the lobby of the hall afterwards so the kids could see and touch the instruments and ask the young musicians questions. It was all wonderful, until... the symphony's sponsor gave away a rather nice recorder to every single child there.
Every single child. Yes. Three hundred and more little kids with recorders, simultaneously tootling and shrieking, in a huge, echoing space. After about twenty minutes, I literally had shudders running up and down my back that I was doing my best to suppress. I thought I was going to cry. I was doing all I could to not burst into tears. And we stayed half an hour after that! because Rosie could not bear to leave all the fun. I know what my personal hell involves now.
Inexplicably, the incredible din bothered Rosie not at all. Or to be honest, if it did, I was too traumatized to tell. If I had remembered to put in the earplugs I keep in my purse it might have helped, but no. I couldn't remember that I had them. When we went home I looked in the mirror and saw that I was pale and waxy, with bruises under my eyes so dark I looked like I had been punched twice. Yeeg. I put in earplugs then, because my ears were - not exactly hurting, but they couldn't stand any more sound. Then I pulled pillows over my head and crashed for two hours.
When I came out of the bedroom, Rosie said, "Mom! I want to learn to play the recorder!"
There were booths in the lobby of the hall afterwards so the kids could see and touch the instruments and ask the young musicians questions. It was all wonderful, until... the symphony's sponsor gave away a rather nice recorder to every single child there.
Every single child. Yes. Three hundred and more little kids with recorders, simultaneously tootling and shrieking, in a huge, echoing space. After about twenty minutes, I literally had shudders running up and down my back that I was doing my best to suppress. I thought I was going to cry. I was doing all I could to not burst into tears. And we stayed half an hour after that! because Rosie could not bear to leave all the fun. I know what my personal hell involves now.
Inexplicably, the incredible din bothered Rosie not at all. Or to be honest, if it did, I was too traumatized to tell. If I had remembered to put in the earplugs I keep in my purse it might have helped, but no. I couldn't remember that I had them. When we went home I looked in the mirror and saw that I was pale and waxy, with bruises under my eyes so dark I looked like I had been punched twice. Yeeg. I put in earplugs then, because my ears were - not exactly hurting, but they couldn't stand any more sound. Then I pulled pillows over my head and crashed for two hours.
When I came out of the bedroom, Rosie said, "Mom! I want to learn to play the recorder!"
Friday, February 1, 2008
IEP
Well, nine hours since Rosie's IEP meeting at her old school, and her dad and I are still practically twitching with irritation. No doubt I'll be doing it every time I read the assessment report. That official language is pretty loaded: disability, maladaptive, impairment, at-risk, deficits. It's definitely not couched in terms of objective language - a child's strengths and weaknesses. An IEP meeting is where the results of the school assessment are presented and discussed and an individualized educational plan offered, which lists accomodations for disability and specific therapies the school district will offer.
One point of strain has been in recognizing some of the inconsistent behavior of the school team. They were pushing their agenda fairly hard, which is that they disapprove of our taking Rose out of a mainstreamed classroom. For the school psychologist, the main issue seems to be that he thinks that keeping her in school is what provides her with opportunities to practice social interaction and allows her access to social skills therapy. This from the guy who told her to try harder to make friends, resulting in her going out and attempting to play with kids who roundly rejected her. I'd like to know how he thinks keeping her in a pressure-cooker situation socially is going to help her. Everyone who is open to admitting it knows how vicious a passel of kids is, particularly on the playground. She's marked out as different already. How is forcing her into this on a daily basis going to help her cope with both learning how to socialize and how to deal with rejection and other situations? For that matter, how is the schooling model used over the last hundred years or so at all normal or positive? Oh, that's something for another rant.
Another inconsistency that has me grinding my teeth is that they kept dangling this offer of both group social skills therapy and individual help at making friends, using the buddy system - if we'd keep her in regular school. This was first brought up in mid September. They didn't do a damn thing to help her all the way through the end of December. If they could see perfectly well that she was unhappy and struggling and that she needed a buddy, why didn't they help her? That doesn't require a diagnosis or permission for therapy of any kind - which they also had by the beginning of November. Their intern told me they wouldn't have group social skills therapy because there weren't other kids who needed it. The team - psychologist, teacher, principal, speech therapist - saw that she was struggling to make friends and didn't do anything to help her, though they outlined from the beginning what they ought to do.
We were so grateful for the representative from the home school agency who came to explain the homeschool program to the team, and brought the report from Rosie's supervising teacher that she was thriving and that she thought Rosie would finish all her second grade work early. It countered wonderfully her classroom teacher's emphatic, bristling, angry comments about how Rosie couldn't finish work, melted down or refused to do work with a time limit, was defiant, and had produced very little work from the beginning of the term to the time when we took her out. If we have another IEP - say, at the county level, or if she ever returns to the regular classroom - I really want to have a psychologist who specializes in autism and an advocate present.
I think I'll be snorting steam from both nostrils over this for a while yet, even considering that I have nothing to sustain that anger at this point. The attitude that Rosie was a nail sticking up that must be hammered down is just infuriating. No true sense of accepting or accommodating differing abilities or cognition.
The home school representative asked us on the side why we went ahead with the IEP at all, since we had already decided to pull her out of the classroom. Three reasons, really: firstly, her pediatrician, who's a specialist in developmental disorders, is relying in part on the assessment to help him get a baseline, and I want to see if any therapies are available to us through the agencies he's a part of; second, getting this broad assessment helps us understand where her difficulties are so that we can help her better; and third, if she does ever return to a regular classroom, I want to be sure that she does get accomodations that she needs in that environment.
One point of strain has been in recognizing some of the inconsistent behavior of the school team. They were pushing their agenda fairly hard, which is that they disapprove of our taking Rose out of a mainstreamed classroom. For the school psychologist, the main issue seems to be that he thinks that keeping her in school is what provides her with opportunities to practice social interaction and allows her access to social skills therapy. This from the guy who told her to try harder to make friends, resulting in her going out and attempting to play with kids who roundly rejected her. I'd like to know how he thinks keeping her in a pressure-cooker situation socially is going to help her. Everyone who is open to admitting it knows how vicious a passel of kids is, particularly on the playground. She's marked out as different already. How is forcing her into this on a daily basis going to help her cope with both learning how to socialize and how to deal with rejection and other situations? For that matter, how is the schooling model used over the last hundred years or so at all normal or positive? Oh, that's something for another rant.
Another inconsistency that has me grinding my teeth is that they kept dangling this offer of both group social skills therapy and individual help at making friends, using the buddy system - if we'd keep her in regular school. This was first brought up in mid September. They didn't do a damn thing to help her all the way through the end of December. If they could see perfectly well that she was unhappy and struggling and that she needed a buddy, why didn't they help her? That doesn't require a diagnosis or permission for therapy of any kind - which they also had by the beginning of November. Their intern told me they wouldn't have group social skills therapy because there weren't other kids who needed it. The team - psychologist, teacher, principal, speech therapist - saw that she was struggling to make friends and didn't do anything to help her, though they outlined from the beginning what they ought to do.
We were so grateful for the representative from the home school agency who came to explain the homeschool program to the team, and brought the report from Rosie's supervising teacher that she was thriving and that she thought Rosie would finish all her second grade work early. It countered wonderfully her classroom teacher's emphatic, bristling, angry comments about how Rosie couldn't finish work, melted down or refused to do work with a time limit, was defiant, and had produced very little work from the beginning of the term to the time when we took her out. If we have another IEP - say, at the county level, or if she ever returns to the regular classroom - I really want to have a psychologist who specializes in autism and an advocate present.
I think I'll be snorting steam from both nostrils over this for a while yet, even considering that I have nothing to sustain that anger at this point. The attitude that Rosie was a nail sticking up that must be hammered down is just infuriating. No true sense of accepting or accommodating differing abilities or cognition.
The home school representative asked us on the side why we went ahead with the IEP at all, since we had already decided to pull her out of the classroom. Three reasons, really: firstly, her pediatrician, who's a specialist in developmental disorders, is relying in part on the assessment to help him get a baseline, and I want to see if any therapies are available to us through the agencies he's a part of; second, getting this broad assessment helps us understand where her difficulties are so that we can help her better; and third, if she does ever return to a regular classroom, I want to be sure that she does get accomodations that she needs in that environment.
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