Tipping point, 7 years thence ...

I'm not a big proponent of Father's day or mother's day or day. IMO, its not consistent with our eastern culture, but is very relevant in a western culture, that encourages so much of independence and individuality. In any case, given that we too have become nuclear and removed from joint family, the sentiments of day is becoming more relevant...

...anyways, the above point is orthogonal to what I'm going to write here :-) 7 years ago, I wrote an article - on a whim, i had sent to the newspaper in India, The Hindu. The editor (who has since become a good friend), told me that she will publish it that weekend paper, since it is also father's day weekend. The article was published a day before the father's day.

Through these years, we have made significant progress with DS. One main concern that always stays in back of my mind is if DS would be able to live independent life. That is a constant thing that gnaws at you all the time. But there is a couple of incidents in the past weeks, that I hope is a culmination of all the hard work put in by DW, has the compass pointing true north.

A week ago, we were all going to store to get groceries. As we went out to the car, we heard the music in the air - we realized that it was "concert in the park" day, in the park adjacent to where we stay - during summer, we've 4 weeks of concerts, followed by 4 weeks of movies and end with 4 weeks of play (all weekly once). So we decided to walk to the concert - the DS of old would've felt really uncomfortable about the last minute change; but DS was quite ok - he started asking questions about concert, what it means, and related to the concert he went in middle school; then he asked me if I had been to any concert - I told him I had been to Dire Straits and Pink Floyd concert a long time ago - then came the kicker - he asked me if I had bought the T-Shirt I was wearing at that concert - I was wearing a Pink Floyd T-Shirt; I was quite surprised, that he kept the conversation so contextually relevant and able to connect the dots and have a social conversation. For some unknown reason, at that time, I suddenly felt very very positive that DS can and will possibly lead an independent life.

Then came yesterday - we were all going to a movie in the evening. A movie that DS likes, but in a theater that he hates. But I was not feeling like going to the movie - so asked him if he could change the plan and go for a long drive. He immediately accepted, but then added the icing, by proposing this - "Appa, tomorrrow is father's day - your special day - how about I take you to the movie ? We can go for the drive today and have the movie as a special for you. Also, I'm going to help amma cook your favourite chicken dish; you could have the chicken-leg and I'll just have the small pieces"...

Two  incidents that tells me that he is trending true-north on the awareness, social interactions and also being empathetic ! I dont know, if I'm being right, but on this father' days (2012), seven years since I had asked for pieces of normalcy, we're getting big chunk of those ! I wonder if we have crossed the tipping point !

Ecosystem Engineering...

I had earlier talked about how we try and use all the resources available to us in DS' learning and development. We've recruited my (DD's) family and friends to send DS mails, talk to him, give him questions, problems etc.


The thing we are asking the extended ecosystem :-) to focus on is to share their emotional experiences in their life (or as they remember me - DD) as they grew up, apart from giving him some simple academic, but real life problems.


My dad has gotten onto a nice cadence with DS - sending him mail once a week - it has been a wildly successful experiment. DS actually spends time with his mail now - opens a sheet of paper, makes key points from my dad's email and responds to that. My dad's email loosely has three parts, apart from the current status of his life - the sections being (1) sharing his life experience (2) asking an unknown question, so that DS needs to use google or otherwise to find answer and (3) giving him a simple math problem...


Here is one such example of the email:
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2.  When I was a young boy  studying in the 10th standard I got poor marks in Algebra test and when the paper was give to me I got 0 out of 25 but in my geometry paper I got 24 out of 25.  So I got 24 out of 50 which is a pass mark.  I did not tell my father about this as I thought he will get angry and scold me.  I was telling lies that the marks did not come out and finally on a day he told me to get the marks on the next day or he will come to the school and find out the matter.  So on the next day I told me but to my surprise he did not scold me but told me to do better in may next examination.  From that day onwards I decided not to tell lies to my parents or to any other person.
3.  Since you are fond of strawberry I will give a sum on that:  You go to a shop to buy some strawberries and shopkeeper tells you that the price of one packet is. 8.50 dollars.  Being satisfied with the price you bought 5 packets  for which you have given a 50 dollar note.  He was impressed by you and gave a discount and paid back one 10 dollar back.  How much profit you had made. ?

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The interesting thing about #2 above is that it serves two purpose - one is that to say everyone is fallible and prone to make mistakes, which is a big thing for DS (since he is loathe to make mistakes and that has been a previous inhibitor in learning) and secondly teaches some of emotions.

Even some of my friends have been sending emails to DS. The unintended consequences of this has been, the DS's emails to his friends are much more cogent and tends to be a lot more normal.

Well, we will take all the help we can get and we are thankful, that we are getting so much help !

DS's jokes - compilation !

One would see from DS's jokes that he loves to play on words - he still does... 

1. Changing the rhyme "To market to market:" to  "one market, Two market" (very young age of 3 or 4)
2. Appa kalla grass irrukuthu - Dad has grass in his legs (aged ~5)
3. Mom teaching, Wild animals will be in forest and zoo it will bite. DS said: Mosquito is a wild animal.
4. Dad: If you tell samething daily we will get bored. DS: Appa is going to same office.
5. DS cousins: Do you like Amma or chicken? DS: (Diplomatically) Amma makes chicken.
6. Changing his cousins name "Aishwarya" to "Aish-varadhu" in our language (meaning Aish wont come)
7. While DS taking bath mom saying, "Rub your legs and hands nicley"  - DS laughing "I dont have an eraser here".
8. At school, while playing a teacher asked, "How are you?" DS responded, "Better than you" - dont know what he was really thinking !
9. Changing the song "O Sona O Sona" to  "A Sona, A Sona"
10. VadaPalani – Morphed to dosa palani
11. Egmore station – Morphed to Egg-"less" station
12. Mom: Do you want this MTR pickle, DS: "Give me fullR pickle."
13. What is the difference between butter and butterfly? DS: "butter"
14. Who is the president? "Not me"
15. Dad switches the GPS off, in the car; then DS says"I am the GPS and giving directions" and imitates GPS
16. Mom explaining who a Don is, what he does etc. DS asks, "Do you like don?" Mom: "No"; DS says, "then you should like dusk."
17. DS has his favorite teddy bear, names him Bapu. Dad also calls DS Bapu, at times. Once when Dad called Bapu....DS brought his bear and gives it to dad, saying "take, you asked for Bapu", with all smiles.
18. Making fun of his teachers name Mr.Wan(g) – Mr.Truck
19. Mom talking about helicopters, DS talking about the number of blades in it. DS asking "Will there be an helicopter without blades." Mom thinks; DS says, "A toy broken helicopter!!!"
20. In our friends house there were two side tables, small cube & a medium sized cuboid, DS was curious asked what it is? Our friend explaining about the medium side table, there is a place to keep small stuff like remotes etc., DS asking about the small one, she said "It is solid." DS asking, "Do you call this liquid?"
21. As Ds was going to school, it was drizzling, dad said, "Once you go to school, you run fast to your class, so you don't get wet." Evening when DS came back dad asked,"Did you get wet before going to your class?" DS, "only 1%, but one day I got wet 100%" Dad little worried asked "when was that?" DS,"while taking shower."
22. We wanted to go to our friends place, DS did not want to come, so saying,"I can't come, I have a meeting with my friend."
23. "Appa-Amma have cereals in mornings, thatha-patti watches serials at night"
24. When DS and his friend playing he purposely left 8 while counting. When she asked, "Where is 8?" He said, "It is gone on a leave."
25. Ammavasai – pattivasai (Ammavasai in Tamil is new-moons day; its also a play on the word Amma (meaning mother) - DS changes it to Patti, meaning Grandmom)

(Jokes as compiled around May 2009)

Dream Come True (Learning)

(Chronicled by DM)
One day DS came from school very excited, handing me  some brochures and stating, "I get to go in a stretch limo, if I do this". It was a school program for school children to recruit subscribers for magazines; who gets the most, gets to go by stretch Limo for school dance. DS wasn't quiet sure about what needs to be done, but he was filled with enthusiasm and very optimistic that he will sell more so he could enjoy the experience of going in stretch Limo. This is quiet unusual of DS, first sharing about something that happened in school and secondly showing a great motivation!!!


At that time (about 2 years ago), I was very thrilled we have a good external motivator as DS was resisting to learn anything new, we came with an plan of learning to do 16 (his favorite number) new different things; and named it Stretch Limo Project, wrote the list in the white board (9th Jan 2010). DS was very excited at the idea and was eagerly looking forward to go in Stretch Limo. I thought he would learn the 16 things which will create a bank of successful learning memories for him. We planned,  we would start learning from the list during weekends. After initial few weeks,there was resistance and avoidance. It dawned on me that DS is not feeling competent to learn as there were many gaps in his learning process and also negative memories associated with learning, as a result he is shutting down, just finishing that is minimally required or just plain avoidance. 

In order to activate the learning process for DS, the main things were

• ability to accept novelty/new 
• ability to tolerate uncertainty 
• replace old negative memories associated to new positive memories

I wanted to facilitate to regulate his emotions, creating experiences, increase his awareness while learning, gradually reducing the guidance, making him independent. I understood the regulating DS emotions was key to reduce his learning anxiety, which I learnt from PACE place. I spotlighted the following which evolved over a year responding to DS needs.

• Encourage DS to ask for help if he doesn't know. It is ok, if DS doesn't know - it can be learned; but it is also a process which takes time. Somethings can be learnt quickly, something takes hours to days.
• Let him observe, show and share how we learn when we don't know: Experience of looking for unknown things at  Fry's, Best Buy - they were good places to role model.
• Give DS easy work (which he has learnt) Vs New.
• Ask DS to rate how he felt his learning experience from 10-difficult to 10-easy. Every experience starts as 10-difficult, over a period of time becomes 10-easy.
• It is ok to make mistakes, which are part of learning - Share about the mistakes we and others make.
• Make guesses without worrying if the answer is right or wrong.
• Trying again and again, same and different ways.
• Positive learning attitude for learning giving our best; not just finishing.
• Change his ingrained thoughts to positive ones. DS thinks he is not good if he makes mistakes or doesn't know.

DS ability to learn, try new things and tolerate uncertainty had increased to great extent. DS is able to reflect some negative memories, figuring out how to change them to good episodic memories.


One week we decided to work only on Limo Project, which made him realise that if he does everyday, more than one, he could learn faster. During last summer holidays (in 2011), DS decided to work on two things everyday, so he could finish all the 16 which he did (20th Aug 2011).  However, unfortunately, we could not hire the limo soon after for variety of reasons - school, non-availability, time-change etc.


So this year, as DS enjoys when the weather is warm, we planned to hire a stretch-limo during Spring break.  With DD's niece/her husband, we set up an elaborate plan, saying that we were all going out in their car, that was parked in the visitor's parking. Getting to their car, we just walked past the limo ! 

As we did that, DD  surprised DS by revealing we are going in streach limo. A great suprise for DS, and his dream has come true. The Stretch limo project has created a postive learning experience, which I feel is our foundation for future learning.

A Precious Birth Day Gift

The following (between the lines :-)) is the narration from DS's mother who was with him, when they both went shopping for my (DD's) birthday gift.
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 DS and I decided to surprise DD by getting a gift for his Birthday; DS felt quite happy about the enterprise and a bit excited. I really wasn't sure how he will actually do the shopping and how much scaffolding he'd require.

One evening, when  DD was out, we decided to go to a nearby Target store. However, we needed to take care of something; DD has a habit of asking DS about his day before calling it a night. We decided that we will tell DD we are going across to the shop to get roll of quarters, which is something we frequently do, for our bus-fares.

Once that was set,  DS told me, that he would like to buy a shirt for DD. He checked with me the size. At the store, DS went to the Men's shirt section; and then it was a revelation to me, how much he engaged and present he was. He shared that DD prefers half sleeves to full sleeves; so the first target was half-sleeves. Browsing, DS saw some T-Shirts and commented that his dad has many similar shirts, so ruled that out. Next step was, the half sleeves shirt place, checked the size of each shirt indulging in self-talk ("Dad doesn't like this color much,, he already has a shirt in this color, etc etc").  And finally chose one shirt.

I told DS it is my turn to buy the gift from sport section, as we walked through the aisle; again, DS was very engaged as we walked past shelves of sports equipment - he observed and connected sporting likes of  DD:  shared DD doesn't play basket ball, DD already has weights and proposed that we buy tennis balls. I counter proposed that we buy from Golf section as DD started playing Golf recently; and finally settled on some Golf stuff.

It was very heart warming to see  DS engaged in the whole process of getting a shirt for DD; and also very engaged in the process of me choosing a gift. Thinking about DD and his likes/preferences, the whole time was so amazing and would be a cherished memory ! To top it all,  that night during his prayers DS was  thankful for going to get roll of quarters at a different store ! :-). He was savvy enough not to give out what he present he got, in spite of his dad asking him (and wondering aloud) what his birthday gift might be.

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I'm so awe-struck with DS's choice of shirt and how he came to it - how much engaged and present he was and his thoughtful-ness ! I've been wearing the shirt two-days in a row :-) Will post the picture sometime!

A present of Cricket bat at age of 8: Rs.20/-

A night out with friends at the age of 25: Rs.1500/-

A present from my son now: Priceless !!! 

Update: Here is the pic of the shirt...

Leveraging the Ecosystem...

As every other parent of a special child, we too leverage the ecosystem of our support, whichever way we can. We have encouraged our DS's grandparents, cousins and my (DD) friends to write to DS via email. Early on, we needed to sit with DS for him to go through his gmail account and prompt him to respond. The framework DW used to teach DS, was that of a train - it has an engine (greetings, how are you, etc), the carriages (body of the mail with content) and caboose (the final byes, etc etc). The train analogy was used, since DS is a vehicle lover.

Now-a-days, no one needs to sit with DS - every saturday, he logs on to his gmail account and starts responding to emails.

Now that he was on auto-pilot on this, we had asked my (DD) dad, 6-8m ago, to ask him some math questions, in a way, that it is not overwhelming to DS; but position it as something my dad learned when he was the same age and had trouble learning it. Thus, a little by little, DS had graduated to solving progression etc. Last week, he had solved, 3, 5, 8, ___, 17, 23 progression !! (Yay!!!)

So we decided, it is time to up it, a bit. So we asked my dad to ask DS another question (#2) apart from the Math Q (#1). The math question would be the routine, but the second question would be some fact-finding. The intent of asking the question is NOT for him to find the answer. But discover the process of finding the answer. To get my dad to understand, here are the samples that we provided my dad with:

Who were the presidents of USA before and after Clinton ? DS will not know - but the knowledge/resolution process could be:

• DS asks us (or)
• he asks his teacher at school (or)
• he googles
• ... 

How many 100s/centuries Sachin Tendulkar has made in his international cricket career ? DS wont know this; again, his options would be:

• he can ask me (or)
• he can google (or)
• he will figure out just like cars sites (that he loves to go and visit), there are cricket sites too...

So, the intent is, to make him discover the process of learning by himself (functional) rather than finding the answer (skill/knowledge). The belief is, if the process is set, the learning would be a resultant.

The first installment of questions have come through to his mailbox. We'll know how DS handles it soon !

Motivation...

We are seeing some motivation with DS for the past few days, including the time in India during our vacation.

Once he is back from school, post his customary break,  he has been on-task - he and his DM do functional math (currency, percentages etc) and then simulate it by acting a shopping scene. He also has shown a great amount of interest in doing an online reading program ("raz-reading") that his class-teacher has suggested. He seemed to be looking forward to it and ensure that he does that at least once a day. He is also showing quite a bit interest in reading a story books - like a mini-novel - called "The Ravens Mystery Series". So much so, that DW has placed order for a set of such books !! He is also on task for the physical exercise with his Master; and ensures that he voluntarily asks me to join him for 15min of exercise on days when Master doesn't come home for the training...

So, not sure, if he is becoming a bit more aware and self-regulated of what he he needs to do, but this is a welcome change for us. The place where he seems to have shown some regression is ability to be in the group at Teach Social. He seems a bit restless and indulges some minor inappropriate actions - like laughter...

I wonder if it is to do with the change in diet !

Making of a cheese cake...

We are in the process of going through a 4d off, as a part of Thanksgiving holiday.

We had decided that we would make a cheese-cake on one of those days. The process to make was to go find a recipe (from book, net or ipad), get the ingredients by going to the store and then come home and make it.

I've this habit of picking up some odd books during garage sales - one such book was a big recipe book that details all kinds of cakes and dessert. So, it was the turn of DS to go through the book to find one. His DM gave him a start page to look at - he looked through it and zeroed on one of the recipe - my suspicion being he just pattern matched 'cheese cake' with one the first title he saw ! :-) But he is not supposed to get off that easy, right ? So I took him to index and told him to look for recipes under cheesecake, and page #s. He found several and kind of understood the difference between contents and index page of a book - we think so. Next is to look for recipes in iPad with the all-recipes and epicurious app. Found several again - the key learning here was the reviews - he understood the number of stars made a difference... In any case, we finally, rejected all the recipes and went back to a simple one from the recipe book.

Next step, go to the store and get all the ingredients. Shopping list - check ! But, both DW and I were pretty much clueless about where to find the ingredients - most of them. For example, the recipe list said 'softened cheese' - so how is it different from other cheese. Implies that we need to ask around at the store with the employees there - as we did this, we gave running commentary that we didn't know and hence we are asking around. Finally got all the ingredients and it was now time to make it.

I've probably stated this earlier in these chronicles. DS, although, doesn't like the sound of blender, has adjusted well with it at school during their cooking classes. But at home, he still has that - so typically, we work that when he is at the bath or out taking out the garbage. Yesterday, it was cold and I didn't want him to go out simply. So I told him the option of staying in a room behind closed doors; he didn't like it, got angry and said, he'd actually operate the blender himself ! He did so (and a day later, he believes that sometimes good things can come out of anger :-)). It was pretty good experience then on - he wanted to operate the egg-beater, to mix the egg, cheese, sour-cream etc... He was completely involved in the whole exercise, helping out, doing (or more than) his part, cleaning up, switching pots and pans etc...

Here is the photo of the end product...

Later on during the night, we went to the movie Real Steel across the street. He enjoyed the movie - also he broke a "rule" for that. He doesn't like to go to a movie after dinner, because it would imply a late-night movie, which he doesn't want to go to. Yesterday, we had dinner and then went to the movie - he really enjoyed it... the only question he asks these days is this - how long is the movie - he has had the Avatar experience - not a 3-hr boring movie ! :-) How true !!! I wouldn't want to subject my greatest enemy to that experience (in fact, not to any of James Cameron experience ! :-))

Type of Questions...

DS doesn't like to be asked questions. I believe it stems from the fact that he doesn't like to be tested, because he could be wrong. The same reason he is a not a big Math-liker. Because Math has only rights and wrongs and he doesn't like to be wrong...

...similarly questions are the same for him.

A few days ago, I had asked him a question as to why he likes Indian cars more than US cars. That put him in a spin. He started talking through his thinking and was not really clear why I had asked him that question. Did I mean that he should not like Indian cars ? Did I mean that he should know more about US cars ?

We actually discussed through that like part of it - what could be the reason; he had spent more parts of his life in India ? There were new cars every year in India and he could incrementally learn ? Always the first like is a lasting like ? etc etc...

But to us, it gave us a model... There are three types of questions:

1. Learning Questions - the questions people ask him, when they do not know something. Like when he is asked directions
2. Thought Questions - the questions people ask him, when they want to get his opinion or his reasoning - things that make him think about the topic or himself. There are no right and wrong, but its very subjective
3. Test Questions - the questions people ask him, when they want to know what he knows.

of course, the #3 is the one he hates. But, this is the first onslaught :-) He now is aware that these three types exist. The awareness if the first step of internalization... Lets see where it goes.

Non-Expression is not same as non-emotion !

We had an incident that happened two days ago closer to home. Summary: A guy who got stressed out at work, got a gun, shot around 10 people at his work place (3 fatalities), and then drove his get-a-way car, abandoned it ~4miles from the incident spot, got into the parking lot of our (DD) company, shot a woman wounding her in attempt to car-jack that failed. He was at large for about 24hrs after which he was found and shot dead.

The thing about this was, the suspect's work-place is about 1.5mi west of our home, and my work-place (where the attempted car-jack happened) is about 4mi south-east of our home and DS's school is about 2mi south. When the incident happened and the police were trying to find him, we were all stuck in limbo...

- DS was in the school-bus that got stuck in traffic near school and turned around. We (DW and I) weren't sure how to bring him back, since I had taken the car to work. But, fortunately, the bus itself dropped DS in an hour

- I could not get out of work, since there was a lock-down, since our company wanted us not to get out until the suspect was caught or the perimeter was safe enough to get to the car.

- 5hrs later, we were all evacuated since the police wanted to search our premises if the suspect was able to get in.

so, all in all a stressful day for all of us.

DS was quite worried about the safety of me, car when I was at work, and then as a family when we were all home. He was watching to the TV news to see if the suspect was getting caught.

I was quite concerned about DS's reaction and the stress. I had sent a note to his school asking if they'd have some counselling facilities and how they'd manage student's stress. I had talked to his class teacher about it. He had said that at school, they will talk about it as a class and see if any further counselling is required.

This is what I got from the class teacher today.

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Just wanted to let you know that DS did fine today. He was a bit wound up but we expected it. We did have a class discussion about yesterday and he shared with his class how scared he was about being close to the first situation and then your being at He told us that he cried when he heard you call on the phone as were alright. He thought it was special time for the two of you being together last night as well. I think you know, he loves you deeply!

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Was so touched and overwhelmed ! Yet another proof that debunks the fallacy. Definitely, the inability is around expression; not love.

2011: DS' Summer of Content & Contentment !

This summer has been one of the most satisfying ones for us. Something clicked, and it is as if everything was in sync and in rhythm... not just routine, but rhythm.

(To me

Routine = a set of activities done in a similar order, where as

Rhythm = a set of activities done in a similar order, but with great mental engagement and mind-share; where there is an emotional investment).

Here is what we did with DS during this summer:

1. We worked on the comprehension. We have a guide who comes home for 2hrs/week and works on stories with him. Try to structure his imagination to a cogent set of thoughts. Some of the key words we have used are: "What is the central idea" ? "Central theme" ? "What is peripheral ?" etc.
2. We worked on "structured Chaos" - Take an unknown situation, like assembling railway-model and then "try" it. The key-words we used were: "Lets try", "Lets make a guess, even if it is wrong", "lets take 3 guesses"
3. Focus on the "effort" and not "result". I believe this has resonated with DS. Basically, in any thing, we want him to try; and we rated him on his "effort" in the scale of 1 to 10; and not made a big deal of result. So, when he does something, we used to say, "your effort today was "10", and the result was "7", but when you did the same thing a week ago, your effort was "10", but result was only "3". The intent being, if he puts in an honest effort, the results would improve. I think he has understood this.
4. We focused on physical activity (with a physical trainer - Master Jay - see the link here - the write-up on the last para); Master Jay comes home and trains with DS twice a week - not just physical exercise that helps him in his posture, but also inter-hemispheric integration and proprioceptive awareness. We believe it has helped DS stay with a conversation, make him more perseverant and be present to the situation. Needless to say, when I work with him on rest of the days, I always have used the 'effort' and 'result' grading !
5. We worked on his independence - ability to plan his time, calendar and finish per calendar. This is in rudimentary stage :-).

We will continue to work on the above 5... We feel very good about his progress and how DS has let us to work with him, this summer. He has started seeing with increasing regularity, within himself, the ability to be self-aware and self-regulate more and more. There are fewer non-negotiables for him these days...

Self Regulation in distress situation...

Major breakthrough yesterday. Usually, we talk about self-regulation for DS while he is acting silly; Yesterday was the incident about self-regulation in distress. This is the first step towards problem-solving in distress conditions...

Here is the incident:

He has this favourite you-tube video. It is called - "Fiat vanishing from Bombay'. This is a video about phasing out Fiat cars out of Bombay that someone has posted in you-tube. I believe he likes this because, he doesn't like the Fiat car; and it was something that is deep in his psyche. The first time he went to Bombay (aged around 2) to meet our sisters family, they had brought their Fiat to pick us up from the airport and the noise of the car perhaps scared him a lot.

The poster/owner of the youtube video, had removed the clipping yesterday. The usual DS would go ahead and cry and melt-down leading to tangential statements like not wanting the computer yesterday. However, yesterday, once he found that out, he went to the room on his own to "handle" it. DW and I were still unaware of all these, since we were watching TV. Appears after about 10 min he came and told his DM that his favourite video is gone, but he will go calm himself and come back. We could see he was struggling to keep calm and keep his tears off. Then he went away for another 5min and came back much calmer...

He is still disappointed, but we believe he handled it extremely well and is handling it well now. He has thought about alternate way to save some of his favourite videos.

I hope he is able to generalize this experience and apply to others too... Although its a 'proud moment' for us, we (particularly I) need to realize its a still grieving moment for him. And not talk to him about how proud are we, as to how he handled the lost of the video... because any such talk probably reminds him more of the loss ! DM has intuitively understood this and kept away from him and taken the pressure of usual routine off today.

Our belief is that his physical exercises (the training we started with a private trainer) along with DM's internalization of Pace's approach is helping the inflection.

How to extend the motivation ?

DS, we believe, is quite bright and understand things well. In our opinion, his two main areas, where he lacks are these: (1) Motivation and lack of it (2) Communication effectively what he understands.

We would love to find some "magic" on the motivation part. When he likes something, he goes all the way - not just with the cars (surprise !), but also his learning comes through clearly, in areas when he wants to apply. For example, he doesn't like math very much - my view is that, that is because, in math one is either right or wrong; and he doesn't like being wrong. So learning math is always stressful for him; he wants to check-mark it and finish whatever is in front of him in the paper. Thats the background.

His mother has instituted a process with him, where he earns money and spends money. The way he earns money is by doing things faster than the assigned time. So, if he has 20 minutes to do something, he finishes it in 15, he is 5m early - this will earn twice that - so he earns 10c. He uses this money to spend on what he likes - watching movies, taking breaks, chicken etc.

Few days ago, he was short on cash; he owed his mother some 18c, by end of the day. So, before he went to bed, he declared that he would do one of his chores in 14minutes (which has the allocated time of 20min) and will get the another chore done in 7 minutes (assigned time of 10min). That does take care of the 20c he owed. I was really surprised that he worked this out mentally - the equation I saw was 18 = (12 = [20-14] x 2) + (6 = [10 - 7] x 2)... This has mental addition, multiplication and subtraction...

So where does this motivation come from ? How do we leverage this ? Ideas ?

Anti biotics

DS was ill few weeks ago - and he was on anti-biotics. As he recovered from his illness (flu), we found him extremely engaged and high self-regulatory behaviour - for example, getting dressed quickly (with no dreaming), finishing his homework quickly with full mental engagement etc etc.

We went back and checked our notes (thanks to DW, who diligently keeps diary of each and every day of his food habits, his behaviour etc for the past several years), and we found similar impact/benefit earlier too.

Talked to the doctor here and he said he has heard similar stories from other parents.

Of course, during illness he is also on a very strict GFCFSF (sugar-free) diet, since he just eats Rice-dosa and rasam-rice... (but because of his dehydration, we did give him salt+sugar water).

Wonder if there is a connection between AB and being in the moment !

The Change

DS just had a flu and came out of it - He seem to have come out of the chrysalis phase suddenly ! Wonder if this is due to the Antibiotics, but more on that later..

I (DD) had called home from work. Usually DS doesn't pickup the phone at home. This time he picked up the phone and addressed me: "Hi Red" - this is the way he usually calls me. I was very surprised to hear DS speak. I asked him if DW had asked him to talk. DS replied, that he picked the phone on his own, since his mom wasn't available. Then I ask him, but you had said "Hi Red", what if it was somebody else. DS said, "I saw you name in the phone."... And to us, this was cool - this guy not only picked the phone that he usually doesn't like, but was quite engaged in the process and regulated his response accordingly ! Cool...

Another incident: usually he goes to Gym in the morning with his mom. Few days ago, he was holding the door for DW and her friend to come out. The friend of surprised at the chivalry - his response: I was holding the door for both of you like a gentleman. Additionally, he also remembered and thanked our friend for a very good chicken curry when he met her at the gym - the curry, the friend had shared the day before. He told her that the food was very good !

To crown this all (can there be anything more ?), DS is very scared of the vacuum cleaner noise, such that we use it at home when he is not around. At DS's school, they were trying to make the kids learn to use vacuum, but DS was so scared of it. However, in a class discussion, he had set a goal for himself that he'd use the vacuum and will overcome the fear of vacuum cleaner noise. Two days after that resolution, he spilled cheese by mistake. When the teacher asked" how are we going to clean", expecting DS to say, "I will pickup". To the teacher's surprise, DS said, "I will use the vacuum to clean" and went ahead to do so. His teacher was blown away...he immediately called home to let us know. Now DS feels very proud about overcoming his fear!!!

DS seemed very focused the past two weeks. A few days ago, I tried to teach him frisbee, by breaking down into micro-steps; last weekend, when we went to a picnic with his cousin, he very diligently tried throwing the frisbee and did so successfully !

We are crossing our fingers and toes. DS seems to have gone to the next level of self-awareness and self-regulation. He understands what could offend and is building concentric circles of social behaviour - what is acceptable within home isn't acceptable with his cousins; and what is with them will not be acceptable outside of them.

Will keep you all posted.

Transition Pains... ... and gains...

Have not posted for a long time. There were quite a few things happening at work and at home. Has been a year of tough transitions all across. It has been frustrating and uninspiring; not much motivation to blog... not only on this blog but on the other one too.

Regarding DS, he has moved on from the middle school (where he had really settled and doing well) into high school. In US, going to high school implies, one physically shifts school. For both, DW and I, this was one of trepidation. As expected, DS had enormous challenges in settling in the school. We started with resource classes and special day classes. He seemed to have hard time coping with difficulty quotient that he had become disruptive in the class; and we had complaints frequently. So we had to pull him off these resource class (and replace it with work at home - more of that later). Also, the school resource specialist have worked with the class teacher for certain techniques. Since the past couple of months, DS seems to have settled down very well at school and he now says he loves the school and the teachers in his class* (* see note at the end of this post).

Re his development, physically he has grown very tall - taller than 5'10" (and just hit 14) and stronger, helps me carry grocery bags from the car, including 20-25 pound rice bags. He continues to go to Karate & Tennis class. Over the summer, he has learned to swim the breadth of the pool without keeping his foot down and breathing between strokes. He now goes to once a week swim class, where the teacher says he is quite a natural in his back-stroke. As the soccer season got over, the basket ball started. He wants and is very excited to go to the basket-ball practices.

On the emotional intelligence side: he has become quite flexible - the techniques we learned at Pace Place has helped in getting him to break most of his inflexible rules - so much so that his mother can drive a car (but he would not sit with her - knowing how she drives, even I dont :-) ). He has learned to be in the grey area - or the understanding of it. He has begun rating his experience from 0 to 10 - so its always not black or white as it was before. It was a moment of revelation for us, when he rated two bad experience in negative. And articulated that -3 was worser than -1. He has pretty much on his own on the computer these days - surfing to check for cars, researching about maruti and see helicopter crashes... Sometime, I do wish he surfs the normal ;-) sites that teenagers of his age do !!

Socially, he is more in the group. During our annual winter pilgrimage to India, he was sitting with the group whenever we visited our friends. He also attempted and succeeded quite well in asking return questions to keep the conversation going. The biggest change we saw this time, he didn't try to remove himself from the group setting, but continued to sit with all of us.

On the learning side: His comprehension is improving; we are looking using Linda-Mood Bell of visualizing for reading comprehension. Somehow we believe the time has come where he is ready for higher level of comprehension, that may aid his learning. DW is reading a book on that (link here). We have also effectively used the captive-attention time, via long drives: we typically take a long drive through the suburbs in the sparse weekend traffic, during which we have a very fruitful and productive engagement. Stories (that he makes up) have become an effective way for him to communicate his thoughts and experiences. We believe, through the stories, he is not only getting the intellectual understanding, but also internalizing the message.

In the mindmap model I had posted earlier (link here), I believe, DS has made progress in the flexibility, problem solving, perspective taking, understanding the gray areas and some level of independence. He is also begun to accept failures, which implies he is no longer worried about being wrong and hence not attempting. Simply, DW instituted a simple approach - during the long drives, she will ask a question and DS has to attempt 5 answers including 4 wrong answers. Being ok with wrong, we believe, will in turn reduce some of his anxiety.

So, here we go ! 2011 will be the year of 20++ :-) That is how I want to look at this after the 2010...
----
* After all the tribulations of settling down in the high school, DS was one of the 3 students awarded for making the greatest progress since joining ! P....r....o....u.....d !! Of the effort he has made to get here.

Reading and Comprehension

A friend of ours had asked DW re some of what she does with DS on Reading comprehension and if she had tips on those.

Here's her response.

• It is better to start with reading comprehension with simple stories which are direct, doesn't involve tricks, actions/reactions of a character based on their feelings. (Theory of mind skills...intentions/perspectives etc)
• Make use small strips of paper where both (DM/DS) draws the characters, places/objects. sometimes when they find drawing to be difficult they just write the words. As DM reads, DS moves around these papers. for eg..a bird flies up in the sky and sat on branch of the tree... he takes the bird makes flying action....make it go up till the sky, make it sit on the branch of the tree..This kind of worked for DS.
• If the kid is good in drawing, then the parent can read the sentences the kid can draw ..starting with 2-3 sentences per day. These kids have difficulty to make pictures in their mind or imagine as they are reading. This is a concept from Lindamood Bell where they have methods/strategies to make movies in the head as they are reading.
• Comprehension is better when DS reads some passage where he could relate/understand the experience. since he could connect with his own experience. He could understand a book about visit to supermarket than a book about aliens in space.
• DW first tells the story for him to understand and then read the story.
• DS/DW act out the stories and read it again. The character names in the story would be DS's favourite movie characters (Ashok etc from Agni Natchithiram)
  
• Other strategies which we use subconsciously: DW has to explicitly work with him: When they come across a new word..finding the meaning...how it relates or connects to something he already knows or experienced......Some abstract terms, idioms and phrase needs to be worked on separately

Hope this helps...

Keep on Rockin' the free world !

Yesterday DS and I were watching a Tamil movie - "Sachin" - a தயிர் சாதம் uncle movie, that DS likes. In the end of the movie, the heroine professes her love for the hero. Watching that, I asked DS what would he do, if he a girl comes and tells him that she loves him.

DS face lit up and all smiles (with lot of shyness etc) and said that he will feel proud about it. And "I will also love her" :) Then for some reason, he said that a girl in his school tells "hi" to him. I wonder if he likes her. He is the one, who usually doesn't talk about girls and runs away if he bring up the subject. He was all lit-up when he talked about the girl. But he didn't know her name, but she knew his. I told him maybe the next time she says Hi he could introduce himself and ask her for her name and be her friend.

Btw, I also told him that particular girl just might be very friendly - just to make sure that he doesn't take it any other way. She would say hi to a few of his class friends too; and its common for girls and boys to be friends with each other (and gave a lot of examples). My point was to tell him that not every girl who says Hi, are the ones you fall in love with !! :-) Although, I believe for a 9-year old (which is where i think he is emotionally), its perfectly normal to believe so !!! So we had this talk for a while and I was glad he shared that with me instantly in that conversation. It was funny to me (and insightful) that he related the girl saying "hi" to him when I asked him the first question... Probably, its his first crush !

In any case, it brought back some of my own mind-set to the fore. When he first diagnosed, I had this Neil Young's (Rockin' the free world) that seemed apt for DS:

"...
There's one more kid
that will never go to school
Never get to fall in love,
never get to be cool"

Now, with the journey we have come with him (a great deal of credit goes to his DM), maybe, he would just be another average and yet another kid who goes to school, will fall in love and gets to be cool !

Which comes first - Right brain or left brain ?

This has been something on my mind since our last week at Pace Place. The power of right brain (Revolution, inspiration etc etc) versus the left brain (evolution, perspiration etc etc)...

It is quite known that kids in the spectrum have quite a bit of "rules" that governs their day to day life - that kind of shows up as inflexibility and lack of willingness to change and adherence to the sameness. Although DS has made great progress around flexibility over last year; however, there are some few places where he is still inflexible and would not want to change. That stems from a certain of set of rules that he has in his mind. So, we always think these kids are highly logical and analytical and are primarily left brained !

However, there was always an hole in this theory... Because we have seen DS to be highly perceptive; and we have seen that our emotional highs/lows do impact some of DS' thinking and his own moods. Particularly, that of his, DM's. And stepping back, we have found that most of his rules comes from situational incidents that happened at that time.

This was around in our thinking and more so, since we came back from Pace Place. And today morning, something happened that kind of made the light bulb go on for me. DS was typing an email to his grand-parents; and DW was behind him, guiding him. When DS made an error, instead of moving the cursor back to where the error was, he started hitting the back-space, that started erasing all that he had typed. DW who was behind him, seeing him hit back-space, reacted (as is wont with any one), with a bit in higher decibel, that he'd lose all that he had typed. DS who heard it (but wasn't seeing his mom), reacted to the voice (probably, a bit startled at the decibel) with an impromptu "rule" - said he'd start afresh and erased all that he had typed, even beyond the error... Post-that, DW did try and get to the mode in describing the mistake as "small-mistake" (vs medium vs large)... But by that time, DS had "rule" in place...

This actually made me think. In the incident above, it looks like an emotional response has led to the logical action. The first emotion (from his mom) was something he wasn't able to handle; His emotional regulation got him to the comfort zone; that was to have a "logical rule" to that emotion; discard/disown and put a distance between himself and the actions/surroundings that had led to that emotion. And there, birth of the rule.

So, is the spectrum primarily right brained (or inability to handle emotions stemming from right brain) or left brained ? [rhetorical question, btw :-) ]

So from our own perspective, it is clear that we need to do couple of things:

• Meet the eye when talking to the DS; and touch is very important for that emotional equilibrium.
• Get the positive emotion first, before explaining the logic behind

The other key observation for me was this - the crucial conversations had to happen with him, face to face, with some kind of touch involved. Any conversation with him, sitting side-ways or across rooms aren't going to help and becomes counter-productive. Thinking about it, this is where the RDI principle of "referencing' could really help...

Easier said than done !! :-)

At a Fast Pace !

Based on a friend's recommendation and talking to another parent who had been through this, we decided to go for the Immersion experience at the PACE Place. [Leave a comment to this blog post with your email id if you need more information on it].

It was a great experience. DW feels very happy about the experience and its as if all the pieces of puzzles are falling in place for her. I'm (DD) more intrigued and I'm in between Storming and Norming phase of Forming-Storming-Norming-Performing phase. I have intellectually understood the concept and have internalized some of them. Its now to get back and do it and make it part of our lives. In any case, our experience has been great and of course, very tiring on all of us. We took some of the challenges with DS head-on (those non-negotiable inflexibility he had). He seems to have come through it. Now the key part of it, is to take that experience and encode it in a way, it becomes repeatable for him. I believe we have some tools for it.

Here is the my list of 13 ! (a bit disparate, but its my list !! :-) )

1. Appeal to the emotional/feeling side before you go the thinking/logical side.
I kind of equated Feeling/thinking ~= Revolutionary/Evolutionary.
Revolutionary changes are quantum leap, where as evolutionary are incremental.
A strong Emotion always trumps thinking.
Do this in the envelope of Bigger-Stronger-Wiser-Kinder

2. Touch, Touch, Touch,
Use Touch to convey emotions/feelings. Silently.
Engage touch while talking.
Disengage touch to communicate disapproval.

3. Anger, Bossy, Irritation (on the DS) countered by higher +ve emotion - push envelope to seek help
(DS base emotion -> safety, fear; ask him to ask questions)

4. Have purposeful motion.
Create obstacles and going around them and create need for purposeful motion (vs Ruminating Emotion)

5. Be conscious of Frequency - Duration - Intensity of any reaction

6. The quantum thing - about preparation and post-summary - Small, Medium, Large (Silliness, anxiety, worry, fun) - The transition between pre and post is the experience. Encode it

7 Use -10 to 0 to +10 to grade silliness, anxiety, worry, fun etc. Do prediction before the event and assess after the event. The difference is again the experience. Through this, look to build anticipation. Anticipation will trump anxiety, which will trump DS's own rules

8. "ASK ME"

9. When throwing a tantrum - "Go to your room" - No anger on our faces - done w/smile (BWSK), as we (DD/DM) continue talking. If 'go to your room' needs to be backed up by a physical push, DD should do it.
Safety is the key" ; can push the envelope up to that point, unless feel safety is threatened
"Ask me 'am i calm'" ?
Hold on to higher positive emotion. Its ok to add edge to the voice.

10. Map the -10 to 0 to +10 scale to Threat (Danger) to Reward (Interest) scale. The key again is the experience. The Fun and the anxiety lines in the graph cross over somewhere during the experience

11. Hand on shoulder or start stop speech to get attention. Eyes follow where the hand goes

12. Baby Brain (makes rules, worries, ruminates, avoids, reacts by being bossy or whiny) Vs Big Kid Brain ( Regulates, organizes, makes sense, deals with the moment)

13. Connector Rx

Here we go - that is my 13 encodes. Now, onward we go !!!

ps: I believe that Eric, Kathi and Steve are perfect complement of each other - this is where the whole was much greater than the sum of the parts...