Social story: Airplane ride

UPDATE:
The .ppt file has been uploaded to google docs, you can view and download it here:
Airplane Ride Social Story


I made this for the boys before our trip, thought it might be helpful to share.

New experiences, however fun or exciting, can be really stressful for Cuddlebug and Bearhug so the goal of this was to walk through what to expect step-by-step. With flying, I knew there would be a lot of steps involved and wanted to help them transition as smoothly as possible from one area to the next as we went through the process of getting checked in, going through security, finding our gate, waiting, boarding, etc. The fewer surprises the better :).

I put the pages together in powerpoint and then printed them out with each slide taking up half a page. Then I cut the pages and stapled the edges to make little booklets. They didn't actually spend a whole lot of time looking at the booklets but having thought through all the steps helped me to be prepared to talk them through everything as we moved from one step to the next.

















If anyone wants the .ppt file so you can adapt it for your own family just send me a note or leave a comment, I'd be happy to share it.






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Alex Barton Update

As you may remember, Alex Barton was the little boy whose teacher had him "voted out" of his kindergarten class by his peers. He is now an honor student at another school that is obviously doing a much better job of meeting his educational needs.

I saw this on Fox & Friends yesterday, I am really glad to see that he is doing well. And he was cracking me up doing "thumbs up" and big grins (to the cameraman?) while his mom was talking :). What a cutie!








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We're in luck! Thomas clothes in bigger sizes

Just wanted to share this for anyone else who may be in a similar predicament, as well as for my own reference so I don't lose it :).

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I'm pretty sure I have commented before about how Bitty will only wear clothes with Thomas on them. And how we have up until now been unable to find Thomas clothes larger than size 5 (and those are hard enough to come by). His 4T's are getting small, and his size 5's won't be far behind. Just a matter of time...

Well, it looks like we'll be able to delay the inevitable for a few more years, and hopefully by then he will have broadened out his "acceptable clothing" list to include non-Thomas attire.

I found a site called Totally Thomas that carries Thomas shirts up to size Youth Large (12-14). Granted, there's not much selection that big, but there are a couple... and there's a decent selection up to child size 7.

AND there's more... they also carry Thomas underwear up to size 8. How cool is that? I've never seen anything above toddler sizes at the store.

Amazing how something so seemingly mundane has really made my day, but I know ya'll know where I'm coming from! ;)





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Where in the world have we been?

Ok, I guess it hasn't really been that long but it feels like a long time! Here's a hint:



Yep, I took Cuddlebug and Bearhug for their first plane ride... we went to visit my parents for the long weekend. Dh and Bitty stayed home. We aren't quite ready to put Bitty on a plane yet (we don't want to end up on the news for getting kicked off a plane). Maybe when he's 8... we'll see.

Overall, the boys did great, I'm really proud of them! More to come soon, and I'll hopefully get time to catch up on all of your blogs this weekend :).






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SEW & WW: Like Uncle, Like Nephew

When we were kids, my younger brother used to go running to look at airplanes whenever he heard one flying overhead, which was pretty often because we lived on an Air Force Base. If we were inside, he ran for the window :).

That memory came to mind this past weekend when the boys and I were in the garage (with the door open) and we heard an airplane flying by. Bitty perked right up and went running outside to catch a glimpse of the plane:




Click here for more Special Exposure Wednesday. For more Wordless Wednesday, click here or here.





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Potty training update :)

I waited a few days before posting this because I wanted to be sure this time, but I think I can safely say that Bitty is now officially potty-trained :). At age 4 1/2, it took him about a year longer than it took his brothers (they were about 3 1/2, finished potty training not long before Bitty was born), but the process was much less messy with him so I have no complaints. ;)

After he did his #2 business in the potty that one time, we hid the pull-ups. I admit I started to question that strategy when he got really upset and decided to hold it rather than use the potty. He figured out that he could wait until bedtime and use his bedtime pull-up (because he's not always dry at night so we always put a pull-up on at bedtime).

But it wasn't long before he got tired of having to wait and decided the potty wasn't so bad after all. That, and he decided our offers of chocolate made the effort worth it, even though that didn't work before.

So whenever he went, he'd come running running to tell us,

"You di' gwayjah poop-ah-da-paw-yee, you geh CHWOCWIT" (you did a great job pooping in the potty, you get chocolate."

That's quite a sentence, huh? He can do that when he's repeating something he's heard, and of course he was telling us what he expected us to say, hehe.

We did, in fact, reiterate what a great job he did and offer him a little chocolate (he's partial to the "red" chocolate, the plain Nestle mini's that come in a red wrapper).

In fact, for a little while there I thought he'd figured out how to "game the system" because he'd do a little bit of #2 in the potty, ask for a chocolate, and then do a little more and want another chocolate... like he was trying to spread out his business to maximize the chocolate, lol.

Anyway, I noticed that today he didn't ask for any chocolate, so I guess it's becoming "old hat" for him now :). He WAS pretty impressed with himself for waking up dry this morning though, and we haven't made a big deal out of that yet. His conversation with himself (heard while I was half-asleep because it was the crack of dawn) went something like this:

"Iss 'Bitty' weh o' dwy? 'Bitty' iss dwy!"
(yells loudly) "GWAY-JAH 'BITTY'!!!"

He is his own best cheerleader, it's so cute to see him cheering himself on :). Obviously he's internalizing what he hears, both from us and from his teachers at school, and it's great that he recognizes on his own when he did something good.

Anyway, so the next step, as he already decided on his own, is to work on staying dry all night. He still likes a cup of chocolate milk to help him relax at bedtime though so we're not going to push that one for now. It's not entirely realistic to expect him to stay dry at night until he's ready to give up the bedtime drink. Another goal for another day - for now I'm just enjoying the newfound freedom from pull-ups during the day :).





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Kreativ Blogger

Kajoli of Floortime Lite Mama was kind enough to nominate me for the Kreativ Blogger award. If you haven't read her blog, go check it out! She has an adorable little boy whose progress I love to read about, and she shares a lot of great insights and inspiring thoughts along the way :). Thanks, Kajoli!

For those of you who don’t know how these shameless bits of linky love work, here are the rules:

• You must thank the person who has given you the award.
• Copy the logo and place it on your blog.
• Link to the person who has nominated you for the award.
• Name 7 things about yourself that people might find interesting.
• Nominate 7 other Kreativ Bloggers.
• Post links to the 7 blogs you nominate.
• Leave a comment on which of the blogs to let them know they have been nominated.

7 things about me that you may find interesting

1. I am a pack-rat but don't always have time to really get organized, so I have lots of stacks of papers and things. I make it a point to keep them out of sight for the most part (in closets, boxes, and drawers), because dh will throw away anything left out (don't get me started on the things he has thrown away because it "looked like trash")

2. I have enjoyed photography since I was a teenager, but am really getting into it since I got my cool new camera a few months ago :)

3. I stopped taking quite as many pictures during holidays though because I started to realize I was spending more time capturing the events than participating in them and missing out on a lot of the fun.

4. It has taken me 2 weeks to fill out 4 questionnaires that the school sent home for Cuddlebug and Bearhug (2 each, part of updating their evaluations).

5. Those questionnaires drive me nuts because I spend way too much time overthinking the nuanced differences between answering "never," "sometimes," "often," or "always." What if it's really rare but it's not quite "never"? Or where do you draw the line between "sometimes" and "often"? ugh.

5. Speaking of forms, sometimes I wonder if people think it's weird when they see 3 boxes checked in the "ethnicity" question. I'm 1/2 Hispanic and dh is 1/4 Asian (Japanese), which makes the boys 1/4 Hispanic, 1/8 Asian, and 5/8 Caucasian. I always feel like if I don't check all 3 boxes I'm somehow denying part of their heritage, so I do.

6. I LOVE angel food cake :). And red velvet cake, yummeh. Ok, I love pretty much any kind of cake :P

7. I found out the hard way when I went to college that when it snows all the time it's no big deal and nothing closes. What good is snow without snow days? I was glad to move back to warmer regions :).


And I actually wrote this post a couple of weeks ago and had to save it for later to come back and make a list of 7 blogs to pass the award along to... but here we are two weeks later and I really haven't had time to do that yet so in the interest of getting this posted sometime before Halloween I decided to open it up for whoever among my readers would like to participate. If you do, please leave your link in the comments, I'd love to read your 7 things and get to know you a little better!





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It's official

It's the first Monday of the month again (time flies!) and I didn't forget this month, but I didn't have time to put a video together. With everything going on it's getting tough to keep up with it so I've decided to officially discontinue Mondays in Motion for the time being.

Thanks to all who have participated over the last year or so that it's been going :).





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October is Sensory Awareness Month (Updated)

October is Sensory Awareness Month, so I decided to share a few resources relating to Sensory Processing Disorder. As I have mentioned before, our boys each have SPD along with autism, although it is possible to have one without the other.

Resources:
Sensory Processing Disorder - Tons of info on SPD including a long list of things to watch for
SPD Foundation
SPD Foundation checklist

Update:
Cale at Spectrum Siblings has posted some links to his past posts relating to Sensory Processing Disorder. His posts are insightful with personal experience as someone with autism who also has a brother with autism and works with children on the spectrum as well.





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"I am me and I have autism"

There's a new video out from Autism Speaks called "I am Autism." I'm not going to embed it, but you can see it here.

The video has stirred up quite a furor among the autism community, so you may have already seen it. I first saw it a little over a week ago when it was posted to one of the mailing lists I'm on. I'll be honest - I didn't like it. I really didn't like it. I don't like how it portrays "autism" as some kind of malevolent entity actively and purposefully trying to destroy our families, our children, our marriages, our lives. As if "autism" was the devil incarnate. That's how the voice makes it sound. The second part of the video talks about how the love of parents / families is stronger than autism, which is fine, but again, it's presented as the families fighting against some sort of evil entity.

I wasn't going to post about it - after all, much has already been said both for and against the video. And although I didn't like the message of the video (as I interpret it), I don't begrudge those who interpreted it differently and felt that this video spoke to them.

My main reason for posting on it is that I wanted to share this response that was posted to the same mailing list where I first saw the video. The woman who wrote it is a musician who has autism, and I really appreciated her perspective. The last part is especially beautiful. I share it with her permission.

"I have encountered many road blocks that are thrown in my path, many thrown by not just those who think I can't, but by those who are afraid I can (maybe better than they). It is true that autism makes for very frustrating days but not just because I struggle to speak. Often times it is because many don't listen to what the quiet in me has to say.

What about this "wall I live behind" does it need broken down? No, I just need people to be brave enough to climb the wall and see me. This wall is my protection from a world that is widely judgmental of the odd, but if you take the time you might see the world through my eyes. I understand that this gets harder to see in those where autism is louder than our personality traits but just like anything that requires faith in this life, you just have to believe that a vibrant personality lives inside those with autism ... and in those brief moments when personality and autism sing together in harmony, you the normal will learn from autism.

No matter how "well-adjusted" I am seem or how many social rules I have learned, I am still lonely and sad. Why? I learned to play by the rules I was taught was normal, so why am I so lonely? It is because social rules are nothing but a script of hollow actions for most of us with autism. We learn the rules because it looks better to the NT world and often gets us more of what we want. Yet the essential need is left empty because when people look at me, they see autism that ate me up and robbed me from my potential.

Listen to me play my song to you through my special interest and you will no longer be convinced I am the one in need of a cure. With autism, I can dance everyday even when there is no music playing. With autism, I can shut the world out and hear only the trees and the sky and the earth. With autism, I care about the world so much that pretending seems mean when I know I can be truthful. I am not autism. I am me and I have autism."

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