Red day !

We met DS's psychologist during our visit to India in Dec-Jan. She was very pleased with DS's progress and said that the next step for us to get him do things independently. Since then we have been modeling some stories via his alter-ego. We bought a mobile for him and also seeing if he can describe the sorroundings around him. He now can say right-ahead, right-adjacent, right-behind, left-ahead etc, in describing what he sees...

In any case, one of the things we have been thinking about, given his age, that he needs to sleep alone. He has slept with one of us all the time, and lately sleeping in the same room but not in the same bed. He had agreed to sleep in a different room recently... However, I think I was the one who was resisting the idea, perhaps given his fear of darkness and general anxiety. DW was saying it was not DS, but me who was making all the excuses as to why he cant sleep alone. DW was cool, she just moved on quickly... I was the one who wasn't letting go easily. I felt as though I wasn't looking after his safety, although intellectually, I know by doing this, i probably look after his safety more... Stepping back, I think DS is really growing up in his own mind and perhaps really wants to be treated so.

Anyways, as I had said earlier, there is a time to hold on to and there is a time let go - not just mentally, but also physically !

Directional Sense !

DS just amazed us yesterday.

DW was going for a lecture last night and us boys were to have a night-out on our own (which we did and a bit of that in the 'ps').

As we get out of our residential area, in a complex maze of roads, we need to hit a freeway to head to the destination.  From Steven's Creek, we get on to the ramp as an entry into free-way for 3 of them - 85 North, I-280 North and I-280 South. That entrance is quite complex and you kind of go around, that its easy to lose your bearings directionally (atleast for someone like me who is directionally challenged).

So the two key roads to this post are, Steven's Creek Boulevard and I-280. We had to get of SCB and then enter I-280 and travel South. 

As soon as we said thats the way we are going, DS remarked that Steven's Creek boulevard goes in the same direction as I-280; but SCB is called SCB east and SCB West; where I-280 is called North and South. If you see the picture below you'd see what he means (although I-280 takes a turn towards South-East, much further out)... I was quite amazed that he got it - he is not into maps much. I thought it was a remarkable observation or mapping in his own mind !! The two roads are circled in red in the map...

We later on tested if he understood the directions - and asked him what happens if we travel North and take a right-turn or travel west and take a left turn. He got those... jujeebee !

____________

ps: After dropping DW off at the venue, we went to a mall covering the 1.5miles in about 4miles (I did tell you I'm directionally challenged and I'm the only person on the face of the earth, who could lose the way with GPS showing you the way !!). At the foodcourt, DS was all eager to eat McDonald stuff and fries. As we went to the food court, he saw Panda Express (Chinese fast food) and switched over. A few years ago, such a change could not have been imagined !

History, Geography and Comprehension !

We somehow think that DS would do well in descriptive subjects because of his memory retention. The belief is that he would do well in history, geography, life sciences and not that well in math.

So we are setting out to teach him history. But we are starting small. We have a white-board where, we have drawn a timeline. Starting from 1950 (when Rajnikanth was born and for some reason he is a big fan of Rajnikanth - if you ask him, he'd say because Rajnikanth ate Chillies in the movie Sivaji and he finds that funny), we drew a timeline uptil 2009. And started 

mapping out various events, as to who were born at what date etc and other events. And

 then we told him, if we are at 2009, looking back uptil 1950 is history. Then we drew the map of South India and mapped where each of those events took place - i.e the name of places - and termed it Geography. The picture that you see on the whiteboard on the left top corner is that of Rajnikanth (in the movie Sivaji - thats yet another way of getting him to accept the white-board)...

So far good; so we knew he would retain the information. But because of the articulation challenges, I was doubtful if he comprehended the "history" part.

Two days later, he was talking to DW. He has been struggling with the fact as to what would happen to the HAL airport since the new airport in Bangalore had come up ! In his talk to DW, he said, "Amma, I know what they can do with the old HAL airport. We could leave it as is. It would be the history for Bangalore"...

Comprehended. Articulated. QED.

Questions, questions...

DS has been asking tons of questions these days ! Here are some of them:

1) Why do we sleep at night and be awake during the day ? What happens to people in the night shift ?

2) Why can't we eat breakfast, lunch and dinner together ?

3) Did the fruit "orange" get the name from the color (orange) or did the color orange come from the fruit ?

Emotional Intelligence... (or whatever) !

DS has been throwing up surprises as usual.

That day, DW was cutting vegetables and DS was elsewhere. He heard DW gasp and came and asked her what happened. DW told him that she had cut 

herself in a very very small way. Immediately, he wanted to fix it. DW told him that it was ok, but he looked up the "injury" and wanted to "take care of it".  He asked for the "first aid" box (his words - schooling process, I guess), picked it up; looked for a band-aid and then asked DW if she wanted a big one or a smaller one.

On the choice, picked one himself, peeled it off and put it on DW's fingers. DW was over the moon. She said it was her "appalam" experience !

(DS has been a fount of such suprises of late and he has been asking so many other things too... Would blog that a bit later)

Raining Jokes !

This morning, when DS left for the class, there was a slight drizzle. Since he doesn't like wearing caps, I had told him that if it rains heavily when he reaches school, he may want to run quickly from the bus stop into the class room, so that he does not get wet.

Later in the day, during the evening, I had asked him if he got wet in the rain this morning. He said no, he did not get wet. He got only half percent wet. Then added in a serious tone, but "that day, I got completely wet..., fully 100% wet..." (He is also getting the percentage concept these days!)

I was naturally worried (cold, cough, fever and all that flashed through my mind), and asked, "really, when was that ?"...

He responded with suppressed laugh and twinkle in his eyes, "I was standing under the shower !!!".

Joker !!!

Telling him...

We have been thinking for a while now. When do we talk about two things (1) death... I.e., we will not live forever and he would be living on his own without appa and amma, but perhaps with his wife and children and his cousins (2) the 2nd point being that he is special.

On the first one, we have been kind of talking about it... We talked about my grand-parent's passing away when he grew old. His athai-patti (my favourite aunt, if I may add), who he has seen, had passed away. So, we had talked about death... But didn't think he had internalized it...

The second point was that he is 'different'... We have been kind of talking about it in generalities... That people are different, I am different, I like so and so, DW is different... Etc and you are different. You like Thayir-sadam uncle (tamil actor Vijay) and amma like (yet another tamil actor) Surya etc... 

We got an opportunity, to (again, kinda) bring them together. A slight by-story. We travelled from India + we have been told that DW should not be lifting heavy objects. So, I told him that he is a big boy and he need to help me more. Since then he has been stepping up... Even being flexible, to carry the two galon milk carton (that he does not like)... So we have been using the fact that he is 12 and he needs to help out at home much more... he needs to "listen to himself" (his own term - there is another story there)..

With that introduction... a couple of days ago, he had that laughing thing going for a while. He had done that in the Winner's class (now called Teach Social), but I did not know about it. On return, he also laughed a bit at home. We plunged head-on... We told him that laughter is ok and if he feels like laughing he should. Particularly when he is with us it is not a big deal, since we are all different and he is different too. And then we told him that once he is big enough to be on his own and when we aren't there any more, others around may not understand why he laughs and may find it strange. He said right off - that he doesn't like talking about it (ie death); we did tell him that there is still a long way to go; that we will live upto 75 years old, by which time he'd be my age etc etc...

The crux of the story is yet to come :-). During later part of that evening, while we were walking, he was thoughtful. And he said in a very serious and quiet tone that he laughed during the Winner's class...

We started with something in mind and it has lead some where else. He is reflecting more on his own actions... 

Our Intentions for DS

I had been to a seminar two weeks ago, run by an long-time educator, by name Dr.Jean Schweitzer. Her blog is at this place. Her email is also available there. She has also written couple of books around how movement is neccessary for children to learn. There is something that Dr.Jean asked me during the seminar, that continued to stay in my mind. "What do we intend for our son ?" - So DM and I thought about it. We thought it might be good for us to do the 9 codes (movement) talking through the following (not verbatim but something like that):

1. Heart Code: The possibilities are endless for what DS could become. He has great sense of humor, highly sensitive, cares for people and enjoys company of people who can reflect him. He likes to be happy and keep people around him happy.

2. Focus: He could have been like every other kid or he could have been very different - but he is what he is today

3. Express: We enjoy him for what he is and love him very deeply. He is our healer. He give us joy with his actions and his care. He is loved by his extended family. As he is fortunate to have all of this, we are fortunate to have him. 

4. Expand: We can worry about several what ifs. But we will work on one 'what if': on visioning that DS would have a happy life ahead of him. Regardless of what he is, he will live independently, will have a family on his own that would be supportive of him and sensitive to him as he would be to them.

5. Align: He would be happy and at peace at himself, like that indelible image in my (DD) mind of his flips inside the water; or the image of his peaceful face in the swing with the soft instrumental in teh background.

6. Eliminate: We are not going to let fear cloud our intentions

7. Create: We will create environment for him to learn on skills and knowledge that will help him in his journey and live a life beyond us.

8. Transform: In this environment and with the intentions of being an enabler for DS, we will look to change our lives, working with DS in a positive way.

9. Integrate: We are certain that we will have Providence in our corner, showing us the way and give us the fortitude to bring the intentions and actions together, at end of which our intentions for DS bears fruit.

DM and I plan to do the 9 codes ourselves saying those words.

The Tastiest bite ever !

DS did an amazing thing today !!!

He usually likes to eat Appalam (pappad)

 after food - sometimes before food and sometimes during food - basically he loves appalam. Since he knows how to operate the microwave, he just opens the shelf, picks 2-4 (he likes even numbers too :) ), microwaves it on his own and eats it.

Today he did the same, but he did something beyond. 

He took 5 pieces, microwaved them, then brought one to me... He has seen me eating appalam a few times too. He told me that since he has seen me eating appalam often, he thought he'd make me one !!! No prompting, none. He just did that on his own !!!

I was over the moon ! If I could kept the appalam

 forever, I would have !! However, here it is - one the other form that I could preserve and enjoy it !!

Parallel World...

DW and I hit upon an idea... We want to create a parallel world, where there is a boy named Rahul, who is 4 years older to DS... We were wondering if we keep talking to DS about Rahul 4 years from now as he goes through his life... everyday (or once in two days, but few times a week), about 4-5 sentences about Rahul's day or week...

Here is a bit of intro about Rahul:  

Rahul is a wonderful boy (of +4 years of DS' age)... He is highly sensitive, humorous and very affectionate. He cares about people's feelings but cannot express it well. He likes to have people around him and they have to be happy. Although Rahul likes people, he is very shy and finds it tough to make social conversations.

Rahul likes to listen to music; Although he could discern music well and repeat the notes, he is just learning to play the keyboard. Rahul also likes to watch movies and likes Kirigami/Origami - he likes to see various forms and structures with paper. Rahul loves to understand the details of certain things, particularly that of things that locomote - cars, buses, aeroplanes, trains; but not so much about ships or helicopters! Rahul likes to understand directions and roads; although he can visualize the map so clearly in his head, he will have trouble articulating it. He once brought his grandparents home when he was 11 from a walk, when they were a bit confused about the way. Rahul is extremely organized and he could plan a trip to the minutest details.

Regarding school, Rahuk likes descriptive subjects. He does not like Math so much, since he could be either right or wrong; and he hates to be wrong, not just in Math but anywhere. Although, he is not very academically oriented, he can comprehend some of the subjects well. He can remember things that he hears and see very well, although he does not like to read visually. He is good in Life-sciences, history and Geography. He is also very good in English vocabulary.

Rahul likes to cook and eat some good food. He loves chicken and ice-cream; although he cannot eat the latter very much, except on "exception days".

Rahul has some trouble with certain noises and a sense of overwhelm sometimes. But he has found defense mechanisms for those. Rahul also has challenges with unexpected changes in once in a while, but he can talk it through himself. He finds parallel within his mind from the past and draws upon those experiences...

In this story, Rahul goes to school as every other boy of his age, finds a friend, finds his mojo and his own space in the world...

We also want to see how DS reacts to the story and if it gets him into introspection…

Periodic Inspiration...

I talked about a response to the article I wrote in the Hindu (newspaper)... This is a response that a dear friend of mine sent me when he read the article. In times of confusion and sometimes despair, I read this response... It does inspire to believe in a greater message/cause that is in store for us; and refresh the journey !!

Here is that response:

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Read your article in The Hindu, today.  Great to know you are supporting your son with all you can.  God has made each one of us different, and special in His own way.  It is all about how we make use of what He has given us.  Kurai ontrum ille, Kanna.  Thank you for sharing your experience with a world that is conducting crawling race for babies of few months.

I strongly believe He has given me a lot of talent, and a healthy body. He has blessed me so much that I am very likely to live to see my retirement age, and far beyond unless He chooses to cancel my visa in His own way.  I believe He has blessed me with a "normal mind" that passed though all the required academic exams and job selections with flying colors.  So what?!!

I envy Dr.Hawking.  Born 1942, Dr.Hawking's doctors predicted his early death in 1963 from the incurable neuromuscular disorder--he couldn't use his arms and legs; he cannot feed himself; an an operation by experts in 1985 to assist his breathing cost him what little remaining use of his vocal cords.   Out of that crumpled, voiceless body in a wheelchair, the mind of Dr.Hawking is able to perceive the whole universe and how it works.  So, what is normal, and who is special?

I am sure your son is blessed by Him.  With your help for a short while, he will discover himself.   Help him discover his space--his karma-bhoomi.   Support him to stay there.  Give him emotional support that he can pursue the space for which He gave him all those talents and specialities.  May be mathematics, pure science, literature, art-- what is he meant for?  Help him discover; most important, support him to live there.  In a way, He is blessed.  He will get a special life partner (wife?) for him--someone whose parameters of life will be very different from that of normal people.  He will be blessed with the support from someone who will be willing to make great sacrifices to help him blossom with his special skills.   He will be blessed with low expectations on him from the society and relatives.  He will be blessed with parents who would make enough money so that he will not have to distract himself from His course for making a living.  He is blessed, your son, to have parents like you are.   He is blessed with talents that will make him known far longer in this world than we all will be.  May be your fame would be for being his father.  May be I can narrate your story to my grand-children as I am awaiting in the station to leave this world.   While your son will be busy with God's charter, other normal people will be busy with the charters from their bosses and wives.

God bless!

Affectionately,

xyz

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A time to Heal, a time to let go...

This is not a note about they Byrds' Turn, Turn, Turn...

Due to some thought provoking discussion in a forum, facilitated by one of the brightest brains I've seen, I've been stepping back and giving  a very serious thought. Have also discussed it with DW a lot. I went back to re-read a specific response to my article that got published in a newspaper  for inspiration... (I will post that response as a separate post)...

I was talking this morning with DW. I think, when DS was young I was thinking more with my heart and trust his potential; and ignorance was bliss too...but as he became older, we've become more informed and that had lead to being more analytical and logical. About two-three years ago, I recall DS's psychologist saying that our work with him and not bounding his potential has helped him develop faster than the doc's own expectation. Perhaps as DS grows older, my fear for his future is coloring our possibilities for the present. There could be a possibility that I've started looking at him from "independent living" lens and that alone - have become too analytical about it.

The challenge of being analytical/logical is it constrains the results and not lend itself to discovery of another plane. Yesterday, as I was watching the US VP debate, I had my ear on how DW and DS were interacting and playing in another room. I think DW engages at the level of potential and not possibilities - with being purely invitational (heart) rather than evaluative (brain). I can sense DS more comfortable with her and opening up to her more.

There was this theory that was pointed out to us by this lady who facilitates the forum - called the Presencing. I'm getting the "top of the U" part - to be more invitational - I tried it out yesterday - i just went with DS and cut the papers with him. No words absolutely. He seemed tense first, but I just didn't say anything, just cut with him and he relaxed. I will do this through this week. I'm also going to let DW take the lead in creating the moment and tools. I'll engage with DW offline to design it, but not in front of DS... The thing is I believe he has immense potential; just want to make sure, the roadblock in realizing that aren't us. To be just be "invitational" and not "evaluative".  Re his potential, I've a gut feel that he could become one of the best (non-surgical) doctor, because of his memory, observation, attention to details, ability to correlate facts, "sensing" people and ability to connect with them with humor and sensitivity. Yes, he would have his idiosyncrasies more pronounced than someone else, perhaps.

The other breakthrough I got was that - being invitational and being with him, creates an "episodic memory" prior to the fact - the one that he can recall more easily than trying to encode after the event. I think the tools like RDI, Enki etc would be more effective, being in with him.

So would I completely withdraw from all the theorizing and mixing/matching ? Hell no !! :-) but definitely, I strive to reduce the complexity for him and make it simple for him, simple enough for him to enjoy without anxiety - take the complexity away from his presence - he has enough already at the school and otherwise...

Influence of Thought...

I was on travel, when DW sent me a note of note ! :-) I'll get to that a bit later. This was about how to get DS thinking differently (as we had written about making the connections) - as to how we get him from abstract scientific thinking to abstract emotional thinking. Any opening that he provides for us is good here...

My belief is, if you take NT developmental line, its  kind of "linear" - when I say linear its not as linear in mathematical  term, but it has a pre-determined milestones - both mentally and physically... for our kids, its not that linear, its haphazard, to  some extent... 

Now to get to the incident - DS was unwell when I was traveling -  But he gets very disturbed when he is unwell and talks  about it a lot and then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy  (particularly coughing). DW distracts him by playing some of his favourite movies. But yesterday he made a big leap. He had asked DW  - "Why do I get more cough when I talk about cough ? Does cough think  I like him, since I talk about him and stays with me; if I dont talk about him, he will think I dont like him and go away". I know the articulation is not how a NT kid would do - but for me this is his first realization of how mental thinking can influence the physical.  Since he has moved to that point in this developmental vector (when resolved its more true north), I believe we should try and make a link between those various stages, I had written about in  "connections".

We believe this perhaps is where he is moving to abstract/emotional part of thought.

We want to use it to see how we can  encode his learning... Would thinkblocks be of help ?

Connections, again.

I had written about "Making the connections" more than a year ago...

Much water has flown under the bridge and we have hopefully better understanding of the situation now. As DS grows (which is in itself scary) and evolves in his thinking and showing "normal" thinking in certain areas, I believe that our model of "making the connections" have changed a bit. Earlier I had thought the progression was
1) Physical/Factual to (2) Emotions to (3) Abstract to (4) Connections to self.

However, now I believe the order is changed... Its
1) Physical/Factual [senses] to (2) Abstract [thinking] (3) Emotions [feeling] to (4) Experiencing Self...[sync and sink]

The 4th one is tough one to explain. This is something that the whole body feels - its like feeling happy, when one sees a bright sun-shine reflecting off the pool with crisp cool air enveloping you. That is where the body+mind are in sync, I believe. I think this level is required for to be able to develop empathy and sympathy...

Re-Schooling !

DS started school last Thursday (21-Aug-08) in a public school. We were quite apprehensive. We decided to put him in the public school, for two reasons - the whole IEP process looked quite good for us (after having heard horror stories about it) and secondly, it would be a good good break for DW. Also, looking around at private schools here, I was very particularly impressed - they seemed to serve at either end of the spectrum and not someone in the middle. Let us see how the experience goes. One thing we are doing consciously this time, is NOT to ask DS as to how his school was - strictly "no" questions regarding school. Secondly, we have also sensitized him that people outside the house would ask questions about School (and also of things that he does not like) and because they do not know about his thinking and its quite normal for them to ask such questions. So, now DS has learned not to freak out when such questions are asked of him. So the Winner classes seemed to have helped him. He has the idea of "others" thoughts and his own thoughts and can make a distinction between them... Touch wood...

Anyways, in the meantime, his class teacher wrote to us: "... was totally fine last week. He participated in every class, had comments on all the work and actually did a lot of work. He seemed to be having a very good time, but every time I asked him if he was having fun, he quickly changed his expression and said “NO”! I have given him easy work so as not to stress him out..."

We have also requested the teacher not to 'test' DS for the first few weeks, so that his experience and episodic memory of the school is pleasant to start with.

Oh, btw, he liked the bus trip to the school - he likes to read the road names and find out where they are located vis-a-vis directions... He was telling his friend in India over the phone about his bus trip to the school and back...

Oh, btw^2, DW does not know what to do with all the time she has in her hands !! :-)

Mirror stories... (1)

I had written about the Mirror stories earlier. Here are some that we wrote that made DS bring out his own version of Mirror stories (Bala the bus, the helpful one and Bicky the ball, the sad one).

Mani the Mountain (the patient one)

Mani, the huge mountain (near Simla) has been alive for a long time, many thousand years. He was large, strong and importantly, very patient. He had a strong inner strength that helped him to live through all the troubles patiently, knowing it would be better at the end. Many times, he has buffeted with strong rains, heavy snow and hot sun. But Mani was strong and patient. He was burdened with lot of trees, buildings, people but he was patiently carrying them. People bore holes through him to build tunnels. During heavy rains, part of his skin fell in a land-slide. But Mani stayed patient relying on his physical and mental strength. Whatever happened to him, he continued to remain patient and calm, since he knew his inside very solid and very well grounded.

Vasavi, the waves (the angry one)

Vasavi was the daughter of the sea. She had a brother, named Vasan. When young, Vasavi lived with her father, the ocean, farther into the ocean. As she grew up, Vasavi became curious and wanted to go near the shore and she did so. As she peeked at the shore far-away, she found a nice fruit that was very tasty. She saw a mango tree at the shore and she flowed towards the shore. As she reached the shore, she found that she could not reach the mango tree. Then she stepped back and rushed to the shore with a great cry (sssshhhhhhhhhhhhhssshhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh) and she found that she still could not reach the tree. Since then she has been trying, greatly angry at times and rushing in more strongly as tides and sometimes Tsunamis, but her anger wasn’t taking her close to the tree and to reach the mango. She still tries to do that to this very day angrily.

Vinoo the wind (the mischievous one)

Vinoo was the wind. He was the cool one. Depending on his mood, he blows hard or gently. But mostly he is the mischievous one. He like to play small jokes on people and have fun and laughter. Sometimes he would blow so hard that people would stay indoors and hold on tight to their things. Sometimes he would stop blowing, that people would start sweating and start complaining. Vinoo would hear all this and have fun. Sometimes, when he blows, he would move their things from one place to another. He had particularly more fun when he would blow papers from someone’s hand suprising them with a sudden gust. As people would reach the paper, he would let go another gust and move the paper to a bit more. After indulging in some mischief like this, he would finally let people have the paper.

Mirror stories...

Thanks to Harvest Mom's (and Enki backgrounder), we have some understanding of mirror stories. The intent of it being tell a story (on nature) and let the story be the trigger for reflection; and not have the story be prescriptive (like a social story)...

I've modeled my concept of mirror stories around the above and wrote about:
Mani, the mountain (the patient one)
Vasavi, the waves (the angry one)
Saami, the sands (the lazy one)
Manju, the (mango) tree (the kind one)
Vinoo, the wind (the mischievous one)

Since these are made-up, i'm trying to correlate these with certain things that he likes and has good episodic memory on... (like Mountains would be Simla; Waves would beach in Chennai, Mauritius etc)

I did Mani, the mountain and Vasavi the waves yesterday again - end of the day setting, most relaxed etc...

DS came back with his own last night - Bala the Bus (eventually, Bala the bus, the helpful): the essence was Bala, the bus (he has gotten the alliterative concept :) ) is a bus that goes from here to there; in his story, a car breaks down and the bus comes along and take the people in the car... at this point in time, we named it as "Bala, the bus, the helpful one".

My question, since last night has been, if mirror stories are reflective in nature, does his story on Bala, mean one of the two ?

1) He is seeing himself as Bala the bus who wants to help others or
2) he is the car and when he breaks down he is expecting Bala, the bus to come and help him ?

If he thinks he is the car... then may be he is scared/lost... not knowing what to do...

I plan to enact Bala, the bus with TBs and lets see what comes out of it; I'm also wondering if its a good idea (in the RDI approach) to encode this in some-way - that if he is the car, he should look for Bala...

Perspective Taking and Flexible Thinking...

I've been thinking hard as DS is growing up. He amazes us with certain way of thinking and acceptance and extreme flexibility and sometimes in an exact opposite way, that is quite frustrating. For instance, we had a guest, a distant relative of ours staying with us today. DS has a set routine in the morning - he wakes to two tamil songs and keeps his piece of paper and brings out his "Chuck" (favourite pillow outside the room). Today, since the guest was at home, he forewent all these things very voluntarily, since he did not want the guest to wonder!! So, looks like DS has an understanding of what is appropriate and what is inappropriate in changing cirumstances.

Anyways, since the 3rd RDA was done, we have been thinking about what is really required that would aid his independent living later on. I figure, there are two arms to it - one on the skills side and the other on the thinking side of it (loosely, Skills and functions). I've a belief that once the thinking side develops, the skills side would come.

I decided to do a mindmap of deriving it down further on how it could be broken down. The green-leaf indicates the action (RDI-Labs and encoding?) that would be required. There is another discussion we are having with a friend of ours, who is pretty much a pioneer in "thinking" in this area... How would Think-blocks help here ? (please click on the picture to see it better)

Of Winner and Unforced Errors !

Title has to be keeping in spirit of the Wimbledon finals :) - its been a roller-coaster ride for us. Some ups and some downs

Had enrolled DS at the Michelle Garcia Winner Center for Social Thinking for summer classes. Fortunately, DS got enrolled in what we've heard to be a tough list to get in to. This was one planned input that we were looking while we moved here - structured social thinking. So, we were glad that he got into it. A week later or so, we were asked if we were be ready to enroll him for the individual classes too. Even though it was expensive, we said ok, as a safe-guard. The first day at the group class, DS was disruptive enough to be asked that he moved out of the group program. Fortunately we had him in the individual class. And later on got an additional class in lieu of group. So, although not our best choice, it could have been worse. DS has been going to the individual Social Thinking class. Lets see how it helps.

After all the searches here for private schooling, we were not totally convinced of several private schooling that we saw. In the US, it looked like there are facilities to address children on the severe side of the spectrum and on the lighter side of the spectrum, but not for someone who is in the middle ! So, we went to the public school and the charter school. After several months of IEP process, we got our IEP done. The IEP proposes the special day class, with speech therapy (for speech semantics, we were told), OT assessment, full-day aid etc. We are told that its a good thing. DS doesn't want to go to school here - we need to figure out how to make this work; we are not sure if a full-day class is good for DS. We do want to focus on other things for him. So thats on wait and seel and then re-assess the progress he is making at school here in 3m time. If not, the alternative would be is to switch back to home-schooling.

On the charter school, the directory of Special ed, called me up and said that public school IEP is quite good and they cannot offer something similar to that. So thats done.

The other down we were facing, till about 2weeks ago, was DS behaviour was getting worse - he seemed more irritable and quick on the trigger. We racked our brains to find out what had been different from before when he was more calmer to now. We could not really put a finger on anything. We decided to do something (thats explained in the next para). As with many other signs :), we were in the pool with another dad-son. The dad was talking to me about another pool in the vicinity - and he said it was an organic pool ! That kind of triggered something in my head... So we started him on probiotics immediately after the pool session...

We are also trying to simplify things for DS - sometimes we believe there are so many things to be done, that we start doing all of them that we do none of them very well - I also think that ends up stressing the DS's system. So, it was time to step back and re-evaluate. We have decided through this summer, we would only focus on 3 main things - do the Math (which DS does not like at all - basically the math, that would support his independent living), RDI and physical activities (swimming, navel radiation etc).

Not sure if its the pro-biotic or simplifying things have helped him - he seemed to have calmed a bit more now; also have started asking as to why he cannot do a few things - like cooking or cutting or ...

We have another 5 weeks to go, before the school starts and we need to break the news about school to DS. Will update how that goes !!!

Sign from Above - II

I wrote about the sign from above about 3-4 months.

Sometime ago, on travel, I was driving about 80 miles from the airport to the destination. Pretty much flat-lands with nice scenery on the rear view and up ahead. Somehow, it made me think of our life with DS. There are some great days of hope and there are some days of despair - always goes back to the fact how would DS do when he grows up and how independent he could or would be. So when we (or I) think about the latter, its always one that of trepidation and fear of unknown on what future would hold. So, i thought aloud, at such times, there is nothing much one could do, but just say a prayer...

...So that incident was over; as I was dressing up in an hotel room the next day, I was thinking about the previous day incident/mind-set. As I was thinking about this, this song was played on the radio... This is a song I always identified with and that was even before DS was born. I kind of thought that was my credo... Here is that song:

I wont back down - Tom Petty

Well I wont back down, no I wont back down
You can stand me up at the gates of hell
But I wont back down

Gonna stand my ground, wont be turned around
And Ill keep this world from draggin me down
Gonna stand my ground and I wont back down

Hey baby, there aint no easy way out
Hey I will stand my ground
And I wont back down.

Well I know whats right, I got just one life
In a world that keeps on pushin me around
But Ill stand my ground and I wont back down

Hey baby there aint no easy way out
Hey I will stand my ground
And I wont back down
No, I wont back down

Another sign from above... (or mere coincidence - the concept I was explaining to DS today!)