Many of you regularly read the same special needs parenting blogs that I do, so it won't be a surprise when I say that I found myself stopped in my tracks, wiping away tears, and pumping my fist in the air all at once while reading two of my favorite writers recently.
For those of you who have not yet discovered the wonderful MOM-NOS or Drama Mama at Like a Shark, I direct you to these two stories and implore you to stop whatever you are doing and read them.
Every smile a memory: Cassidy, Dierks, and the transformative power of friendship
ability
These are stories about friendship, and about connection, and believing that amazing things are possible when individuals connect with something they feel passionate about.
Enjoy. Bring kleenex.
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
non sequitur
As Ben runs down our sidewalk
Me: What's wrong? Do you want to run away?
Ben: Yeah.
Me: Why?
Ben: All you need is caffeine
Not on my birthday
Ben: Mommy, it's your very last birthday.
Me: Why?
Ben: Because you're the only one who gets a present.
Ben: Daddy took me to the doctor and the doctor said that one day you went to the doctor and said that you used to take a bath in the morning.
Ben: I have a question for you. What if you open six packages and one suitcase?
Me: I don't know. What?
Ben: It will turn into dollars.
Me: Why?
Ben: Because you forgot to put dollars into it.
Me: Can I have a kiss?
Kiss
Ben: As well as you like!
After waking up in the morning, while still lying in bed
Ben: C'mon. It's under the bed. The table set. There's a cut through the wall.
_______________
I'm alternately baffled and amused by Ben's fascinating use of non sequiturs.
I've been trying to collect them over the past six months or so in order to share them with you. I've been mostly unsuccessful, usually forgetting to write them down, but I did manage to get a few.
We hear these non sequiturs and scrambled syntax pretty often. They linger even as his language skills continue to take leaps.
And Ben still has trouble getting words assembled when he's communicating something fairly novel. Sentences will often come out like this:
"Can you... Can you... Can you... Can you... get a piece of tape for this book? The page is ripped."
Sometimes he has to walk around while he's waiting for the words to come.
I imagine his feet powering gears his brain.
I imagine a spinning icon on his forehead that says "loading...loading...loading."
I'll admit that this post started as one of those, "Isn't he delightful" pieces, but as I assembled this list of quotes, I began to wonder: Is this a specific, clinical phenomenon? Does it have name? Is it common? How is this addressed by speech therapy?
What's your experience with language patterns like these? Do you see them in your child with ASD? Your typical child? Do you have them yourself, if you're on the spectrum?
Send me your thoughts as fodder for a follow-up post on this phenomenon.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
I'm going to my room (post script)
I realized, after corresponding with a few of you about my last post, that I'd left out an important bit of nuance.
We aren't "sending Ben to his room" in the traditional time-out sense. In fact, it's been really important that we don't treat this as a punishment.
Again, thanks to Jordan at Communication Therapy for framing it this way.
We suggest to Ben that he go to his room the way a helpful but deadpan maitre'd at a fancy restaurant would offer a very important, stinky cigar-smoking patron a booth far from other customers.
"Sir, I believe you would be much more comfortable in our private booth."
Prompting Ben to go somewhere else to cool off doesn't focus (overtly) on stopping the behavior, it's just about moving it to another location. So it's a relatively unthreatening proposal.
The result is that the behavior does stop - but this happens because Ben self-regulates rather than responding to threats of punishment (which can just pour gasoline on the fire).
And, more importantly, I think that Ben is starting to grasp the real consequences of his actions: "You hurt people's feelings when you express anger this way."
The focus isn't on the anger, but on the expression of it. (Wow, I feel like I'm channeling Jordan right now.)
That's not to say that we aren't trying to teach better ways of coping to begin with, but once we've passed the point of no return in the rage cycle there's not a lot of learning going on.
Reflecting on this made me recall a recent Slate article on how lowering the emotional intensity with which we respond to our kids' behavior is often the best tactic for changing it.
We aren't "sending Ben to his room" in the traditional time-out sense. In fact, it's been really important that we don't treat this as a punishment.
Again, thanks to Jordan at Communication Therapy for framing it this way.
We suggest to Ben that he go to his room the way a helpful but deadpan maitre'd at a fancy restaurant would offer a very important, stinky cigar-smoking patron a booth far from other customers.
"Sir, I believe you would be much more comfortable in our private booth."
Prompting Ben to go somewhere else to cool off doesn't focus (overtly) on stopping the behavior, it's just about moving it to another location. So it's a relatively unthreatening proposal.
The result is that the behavior does stop - but this happens because Ben self-regulates rather than responding to threats of punishment (which can just pour gasoline on the fire).
And, more importantly, I think that Ben is starting to grasp the real consequences of his actions: "You hurt people's feelings when you express anger this way."
The focus isn't on the anger, but on the expression of it. (Wow, I feel like I'm channeling Jordan right now.)
That's not to say that we aren't trying to teach better ways of coping to begin with, but once we've passed the point of no return in the rage cycle there's not a lot of learning going on.
Reflecting on this made me recall a recent Slate article on how lowering the emotional intensity with which we respond to our kids' behavior is often the best tactic for changing it.
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Discrete Trials of Frustration (or: Thank you, Wii)
We have a Wii at our house. Wii is this Nintendo video game where you move around like you're really doing stuff and these characters in the game really do what you're doing and, well...
(So, okay. If you are Amish, or have been backpacking for the better part of two years, or are able to be blissfully unaware of popular consumer culture and you don't know what I'm talking about, it's a little hard to explain. You can go here to find out what Wii is.)
Anyway, we have one and Ben really enjoys it.
He likes the standard Wii games that come with the whole console-controller-thingy: like bowling, baseball, golf, and boxing. But he really loves the newer Wii Sports Resort, in which the Wii avatars visit Wu Hu Island, a sort of Wii Club Med. There, you can pick from archery, fencing, wake boarding, ping pong and frisbee, among other activities.
I credit the hours Ben has spent so far with Wii to introducing him - conceptually - to many sports that never would have come across his radar. Familiarity with different sports and games - even if you're never going to actually play them - is a useful sort of social currency.
After all, knowing things like what a pick-up game is in basketball and what it means to be on the fairway versus the bunker in golf gives you just a few more ways to join a conversation.
It's also helping to build real honest-to-goodness hand-eye coordination and gross motor skills.
Ben's ability to hit a softball in the real world increased dramatically after he mastered it in Wii. He went from not even knowing how to stand or hold a bat to actually being able to connect with the ball in the span of about a week.
(I'm sure some occupational therapist post doc is writing a doctoral thesis on Wii at this very moment.)
But there's another benefit to Wii that I did not anticipate, and it's probably the most powerful and most valuable one. It's also the most painful one for Ben.
Wii teaches you how to lose.
Ben has inherited a double dose of the perfection gene and this is amplified by his spectrum traits. One of the chief triggers for him coming unglued is failure: not being successful at something that he really wants to do.
This is a little different than being competitive. He doesn't need beat someone else to be happy, he just wants to be perfect.
But Wii doesn't care if you're a kid. And Wii doesn't care if you're really cute. And Wii doesn't know that you're on the autism spectrum and after all, successive approximations are really what's important, right?
No. If you miss the shot in ping pong, you lose the match. Your avatar hangs his head and the words YOU LOSE flash on screen.
There are plenty of activities - real and virtual - that provide this brutal, inevitable lesson for Ben, but the thing about Wii is it doles out lots of success along with the failure.
Unlike in the real world, Ben can get a strike in bowling and make par on a the golf course, so he's motivated to keep trying.
Wii ends up being a little like discrete trials in applied behavior analysis, a common therapy used with children with autism. You present the person with frequent, repeated opportunities to perform a skill that's just on the edge of their competence. The frequency means that there's lots of positive reinforcement with success, and failures don't have high stakes, because opportunities to try again just keep coming.
At the beginning of the summer, losing Wii games was one of the triggers for the explosive verbal and physical rages that Chris and I wrote about.
I began to think that I wanted to place a moratorium on Wii for awhile, that he just wasn't ready for it, he wasn't equipped with the coping skills he needed and that the frustration was outweighing the fun.
On the other hand, these frequent outbursts gave us frequent opportunities to try a new strategy for dealing with rage: just letting him be mad, but making him to go to his room and cool down by himself.
The regular frustration that Wii served up like a disappointment batting cage gave Ben lots of opportunities to practice his coping skills, too.
Jordan over at Communication Therapy gave me great coaching on setting this up with something like this: "You can say those words when you're mad, but they hurt our feelings, so if you're going to say them, you have to go in your room where you can't hurt anyone."
At first, retreating to his room was something he did towards the end of the rage cycle, with our (usually physical) prompting.
Then, little by little, Ben would go to his room by himself even earlier in the cycle. Next, it became a regular part of the ritual. Often accompanied by a dramatic door slam and in one case the declaration, "I'm going in my room to (screaming) CALM DOWN!"
Lately when he's upset, Ben often goes to his room and slams the door, with no prompting from us, rather than exploding in a verbal rage or physically acting out.
Usually after five minutes, we hear him happily telling a story with his trains or we peek in to see him engrossed in a book. Sometimes, he even comes out calmly and apologizes.
I think many of you know how amazing this is, what a huge corner I feel we've turned, what a don't-write-about-it-or you'll-jinx-it moment we're in.
Ben's emotional outbursts are still happening and he still has a long way to go to learn the skills that that will let him say, "Oh well - whatever." more often. The period before he goes to his room is not pretty, but it's getting a lot shorter.
And he is learning that he CAN let go of those feelings and not stay hooked. Maybe he is starting to understand that he is the only one who can get himself back to a state of equilibrium.
And I think I have, at least in part, a video game to thank for that.
(So, okay. If you are Amish, or have been backpacking for the better part of two years, or are able to be blissfully unaware of popular consumer culture and you don't know what I'm talking about, it's a little hard to explain. You can go here to find out what Wii is.)
Anyway, we have one and Ben really enjoys it.
He likes the standard Wii games that come with the whole console-controller-thingy: like bowling, baseball, golf, and boxing. But he really loves the newer Wii Sports Resort, in which the Wii avatars visit Wu Hu Island, a sort of Wii Club Med. There, you can pick from archery, fencing, wake boarding, ping pong and frisbee, among other activities.
I credit the hours Ben has spent so far with Wii to introducing him - conceptually - to many sports that never would have come across his radar. Familiarity with different sports and games - even if you're never going to actually play them - is a useful sort of social currency.
After all, knowing things like what a pick-up game is in basketball and what it means to be on the fairway versus the bunker in golf gives you just a few more ways to join a conversation.
It's also helping to build real honest-to-goodness hand-eye coordination and gross motor skills.
Ben's ability to hit a softball in the real world increased dramatically after he mastered it in Wii. He went from not even knowing how to stand or hold a bat to actually being able to connect with the ball in the span of about a week.
(I'm sure some occupational therapist post doc is writing a doctoral thesis on Wii at this very moment.)
But there's another benefit to Wii that I did not anticipate, and it's probably the most powerful and most valuable one. It's also the most painful one for Ben.
Wii teaches you how to lose.
Ben has inherited a double dose of the perfection gene and this is amplified by his spectrum traits. One of the chief triggers for him coming unglued is failure: not being successful at something that he really wants to do.
This is a little different than being competitive. He doesn't need beat someone else to be happy, he just wants to be perfect.
But Wii doesn't care if you're a kid. And Wii doesn't care if you're really cute. And Wii doesn't know that you're on the autism spectrum and after all, successive approximations are really what's important, right?
No. If you miss the shot in ping pong, you lose the match. Your avatar hangs his head and the words YOU LOSE flash on screen.
There are plenty of activities - real and virtual - that provide this brutal, inevitable lesson for Ben, but the thing about Wii is it doles out lots of success along with the failure.
Unlike in the real world, Ben can get a strike in bowling and make par on a the golf course, so he's motivated to keep trying.
Wii ends up being a little like discrete trials in applied behavior analysis, a common therapy used with children with autism. You present the person with frequent, repeated opportunities to perform a skill that's just on the edge of their competence. The frequency means that there's lots of positive reinforcement with success, and failures don't have high stakes, because opportunities to try again just keep coming.
At the beginning of the summer, losing Wii games was one of the triggers for the explosive verbal and physical rages that Chris and I wrote about.
I began to think that I wanted to place a moratorium on Wii for awhile, that he just wasn't ready for it, he wasn't equipped with the coping skills he needed and that the frustration was outweighing the fun.
On the other hand, these frequent outbursts gave us frequent opportunities to try a new strategy for dealing with rage: just letting him be mad, but making him to go to his room and cool down by himself.
The regular frustration that Wii served up like a disappointment batting cage gave Ben lots of opportunities to practice his coping skills, too.
Jordan over at Communication Therapy gave me great coaching on setting this up with something like this: "You can say those words when you're mad, but they hurt our feelings, so if you're going to say them, you have to go in your room where you can't hurt anyone."
At first, retreating to his room was something he did towards the end of the rage cycle, with our (usually physical) prompting.
Then, little by little, Ben would go to his room by himself even earlier in the cycle. Next, it became a regular part of the ritual. Often accompanied by a dramatic door slam and in one case the declaration, "I'm going in my room to (screaming) CALM DOWN!"
Lately when he's upset, Ben often goes to his room and slams the door, with no prompting from us, rather than exploding in a verbal rage or physically acting out.
Usually after five minutes, we hear him happily telling a story with his trains or we peek in to see him engrossed in a book. Sometimes, he even comes out calmly and apologizes.
I think many of you know how amazing this is, what a huge corner I feel we've turned, what a don't-write-about-it-or you'll-jinx-it moment we're in.
Ben's emotional outbursts are still happening and he still has a long way to go to learn the skills that that will let him say, "Oh well - whatever." more often. The period before he goes to his room is not pretty, but it's getting a lot shorter.
And he is learning that he CAN let go of those feelings and not stay hooked. Maybe he is starting to understand that he is the only one who can get himself back to a state of equilibrium.
And I think I have, at least in part, a video game to thank for that.
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Dispatches from Kindergarten (and a blatant fundraising appeal)
A few weeks ago, Ben started Kindergarten in a big public school. It's the kind of school where there are bells for each period, and students line up on the blacktop before school starts, and everyone has an assigned desk with his or her name on it, and the hallways have shiny linoleum floors.
At Ben's new school, the students call the teachers "Ms." or "Mr." rather than by their first names, and the principal comes to work in a neatly tailored suit every day, even when the temperatures climb into the 80s. Families are encouraged - but not required - to send their children to school in a uniform.
And there's homework.
Toto, I don't think we're in preschool anymore.
I was nervous about the transition into a much more formal, traditional school environment where expectations would be higher and routines would be more rigid.
But Ben is doing great, possibly because of that high degree of structure and predictability.
His teacher and the whole team of professionals that support full inclusion and his IEP goals - with things like a social skills group and extra help with fine motor skills - are excellent.
And like most schools, a parent organization works to raise extra money to pay for things that public funding no longer can: a library and a librarian, a computer lab, and enrichment activities from local arts organizations.
So here's where you come in. You knew this was coming, didn't you?
Ben's first fundraising activity is a walk-a-thon on October 24th. Students will walk laps around the school campus (ten laps for Kindergartners) and donations will go to the school PTA to support a variety of programs and services for the students.
So if you like the blog, if you support public education, and if you're not also shaking down your friends and family to support your kids' school, click on that Donate button over in the right margin and put a couple bucks in our PayPal account that we can pass along to the PTA on behalf of Ben.
Thanks!
At Ben's new school, the students call the teachers "Ms." or "Mr." rather than by their first names, and the principal comes to work in a neatly tailored suit every day, even when the temperatures climb into the 80s. Families are encouraged - but not required - to send their children to school in a uniform.
And there's homework.
Toto, I don't think we're in preschool anymore.
I was nervous about the transition into a much more formal, traditional school environment where expectations would be higher and routines would be more rigid.
But Ben is doing great, possibly because of that high degree of structure and predictability.
His teacher and the whole team of professionals that support full inclusion and his IEP goals - with things like a social skills group and extra help with fine motor skills - are excellent.
And like most schools, a parent organization works to raise extra money to pay for things that public funding no longer can: a library and a librarian, a computer lab, and enrichment activities from local arts organizations.
So here's where you come in. You knew this was coming, didn't you?
Ben's first fundraising activity is a walk-a-thon on October 24th. Students will walk laps around the school campus (ten laps for Kindergartners) and donations will go to the school PTA to support a variety of programs and services for the students.
So if you like the blog, if you support public education, and if you're not also shaking down your friends and family to support your kids' school, click on that Donate button over in the right margin and put a couple bucks in our PayPal account that we can pass along to the PTA on behalf of Ben.
Thanks!
Monday, September 14, 2009
How to watch TV
Here's a primer on TV viewing from Ben (as imagined by me)
___________________
First of all, let's get one thing straight. When I say "TV" I mean DVDs of movies or other shows you can get from NetFlix, the video store, the library or the bookstore. Also shows that my dad downloads for me on the big computer.
I do not understand why anyone would watch just whatever is "on" at the moment or anything that doesn't have scene selection. I have some movies and shows on VHS cassette, as opposed to DVD. These do not have scene selection, and they are not optimal.
First, when you start your movie, go to the DVD menu and turn on captions. Movies make so much more sense when you can read what the characters are saying. This will also help you memorize the movie, of course, or at least the funny parts.
Compare the movie to the sneak peek
Watch the trailers, or sneak peeks, at the beginning of movies and memorize them.
Ask your mom or dad to get the movies in the sneak peeks from NetFlix or the video store. When you get a new movie, scan through the movie or use scene selection to confirm that every scene from the sneak peek is, in fact, in the movie.
You can also recreate the sneak peek this way on your own. Be forewarned that you will discover, for example, that some scenes from the beginning of the sneak peek are actually in the middle or at the end of the movie.
You may also discover that the footage in the sneak peeks is sometimes different than the actual movie and this may be very upsetting.
Read-along narration
I recommend choosing movies that have been adapted into a Read-Along storybook. Read-Along* storybooks, which come with an audio CD, have narration that explains what's going on, which is helpful because sometimes it's hard to tell.
Get the book, start the movie, and read the narrator parts from the book as you watch the movie. Sometimes, it's hard to fit the entire narrator line in before the character talks, so you have to practice these parts many, many, many times to make sure your timing is perfect.
(And if you don't know the difference between narration and dialogue then you must be, like, eighteen months old or something.)
Make up your own narration
Some movies don't have Read-Along books or even Read Aloud books** to go with them. I know this is hard to believe, but it's true.
For these movies, you just have to make up your own narration. Make sure you stand right in front of the screen and describe what's happening in the movie. You may not be able to do this until you've seen the movie several times, but that's okay.
Punctuate your lines with something like "suddenly" or "meanwhile" and use a very dramatic tone of voice. This is very effective.
Match the frame
For movies that have books to go with them, see if you can find the exact frame of the movie they've used on each page of the book. This will require you to watch the movie almost frame by frame, but once you practice your remote control technique, you'll be able to do it.
I'll warn you that it's very frustrating when you find out that the picture in the book is different or doesn't even exist in the movie to begin with. VERY frustrating.
I should note that this technique also works if you have the View Master of the movie. Once you become really advanced, see if you can compare the frame of the movie, the picture in the book and the View Master to look for inconsistencies and discrepancies.
Important!
All of these techniques require that you are all by yourself. I can't stress this point enough.
No one else can be in the room while you are watching movies.
These activities require an enormous amount of concentration and you can't allow some well-meaning adult to make some comment or ask you a question about the movie like "Oh, what is he doing now?" or "Why do you think Mulan is sad?" to make you lose your focus.
Occasionally, my mom and dad have something called "Movie Nights" where they invite my cousins or one of my friends over to my house and make me watch a movie with them without scene selection and without the remote control.
This is NOT ideal, but I'm willing to put up with it since there is always popcorn and right after everybody leaves, they let me have the remote again.
_____________________
*Do not confuse Read Along storybooks with Read Aloud storybooks. Read Aloud storybooks are fine, but they often have words that are different from the movie. Also, don't even try this with Golden Books, which are completely different and therefore useless.
I have recently discovered Junior Novelizations of movies which actually describe everything in the movie and have just about every line of dialog!
I will be investigating these further in the future. Another advantage to these is that it allows you to recreate the ENTIRE movie in the backseat of the car!
** I also highly recommend the entire Scholastic Video Collection with adaptations of all my favorite books. Watching the videos and reading the books at the same time has been one of my favorite activities for a long time now.
___________________
First of all, let's get one thing straight. When I say "TV" I mean DVDs of movies or other shows you can get from NetFlix, the video store, the library or the bookstore. Also shows that my dad downloads for me on the big computer.
I do not understand why anyone would watch just whatever is "on" at the moment or anything that doesn't have scene selection. I have some movies and shows on VHS cassette, as opposed to DVD. These do not have scene selection, and they are not optimal.
First, when you start your movie, go to the DVD menu and turn on captions. Movies make so much more sense when you can read what the characters are saying. This will also help you memorize the movie, of course, or at least the funny parts.
Compare the movie to the sneak peek
Watch the trailers, or sneak peeks, at the beginning of movies and memorize them.
Ask your mom or dad to get the movies in the sneak peeks from NetFlix or the video store. When you get a new movie, scan through the movie or use scene selection to confirm that every scene from the sneak peek is, in fact, in the movie.
You can also recreate the sneak peek this way on your own. Be forewarned that you will discover, for example, that some scenes from the beginning of the sneak peek are actually in the middle or at the end of the movie.
You may also discover that the footage in the sneak peeks is sometimes different than the actual movie and this may be very upsetting.
Read-along narration
I recommend choosing movies that have been adapted into a Read-Along storybook. Read-Along* storybooks, which come with an audio CD, have narration that explains what's going on, which is helpful because sometimes it's hard to tell.
Get the book, start the movie, and read the narrator parts from the book as you watch the movie. Sometimes, it's hard to fit the entire narrator line in before the character talks, so you have to practice these parts many, many, many times to make sure your timing is perfect.
(And if you don't know the difference between narration and dialogue then you must be, like, eighteen months old or something.)
Make up your own narration
Some movies don't have Read-Along books or even Read Aloud books** to go with them. I know this is hard to believe, but it's true.
For these movies, you just have to make up your own narration. Make sure you stand right in front of the screen and describe what's happening in the movie. You may not be able to do this until you've seen the movie several times, but that's okay.
Punctuate your lines with something like "suddenly" or "meanwhile" and use a very dramatic tone of voice. This is very effective.
Match the frame
For movies that have books to go with them, see if you can find the exact frame of the movie they've used on each page of the book. This will require you to watch the movie almost frame by frame, but once you practice your remote control technique, you'll be able to do it.
I'll warn you that it's very frustrating when you find out that the picture in the book is different or doesn't even exist in the movie to begin with. VERY frustrating.
I should note that this technique also works if you have the View Master of the movie. Once you become really advanced, see if you can compare the frame of the movie, the picture in the book and the View Master to look for inconsistencies and discrepancies.
Important!
All of these techniques require that you are all by yourself. I can't stress this point enough.
No one else can be in the room while you are watching movies.
These activities require an enormous amount of concentration and you can't allow some well-meaning adult to make some comment or ask you a question about the movie like "Oh, what is he doing now?" or "Why do you think Mulan is sad?" to make you lose your focus.
Occasionally, my mom and dad have something called "Movie Nights" where they invite my cousins or one of my friends over to my house and make me watch a movie with them without scene selection and without the remote control.
This is NOT ideal, but I'm willing to put up with it since there is always popcorn and right after everybody leaves, they let me have the remote again.
_____________________
*Do not confuse Read Along storybooks with Read Aloud storybooks. Read Aloud storybooks are fine, but they often have words that are different from the movie. Also, don't even try this with Golden Books, which are completely different and therefore useless.
I have recently discovered Junior Novelizations of movies which actually describe everything in the movie and have just about every line of dialog!
I will be investigating these further in the future. Another advantage to these is that it allows you to recreate the ENTIRE movie in the backseat of the car!
** I also highly recommend the entire Scholastic Video Collection with adaptations of all my favorite books. Watching the videos and reading the books at the same time has been one of my favorite activities for a long time now.
Monday, August 31, 2009
End of the Summer
And I had a dream, it blows the autumn through my head,
It felt like the first day of school,
but I was going to the moon instead,
And I walked down the hall
with the notebook they got for me,
My dad led me through the house,
my mom drank instant coffee,
And I knew that I would crash,
but I didn't want to tell them,
There are just some moments when your family makes sense,
They just make sense.
So I raised up my arms, and my mother puts the sweater on,
We walked out on the dark and frozen grass,
the end of summer.
It's the end of summer,
When you send your children to the moon.
Dar Williams, The End of the Summer
We made it through the summer that was packed with new experiences and big changes and came out just fine.
But along the way, I kept steeling myself, preparing for worst-case scenarios that never materialized. This is my twisted strategy for ensuring I'll either be 1) happy to be wrong or 2) disappointed, but smug - but never, ever taken by surprise.
Ben made it through mainstream summer camp and swimming lessons at his pre-school without the help of an aide, even changing into his swim suit and dressing himself each day, usually coming home with an inside-out and backwards shirt to prove it.
He took to swimming like, yes, a fish, and even swam fearlessly in the ocean for the first time during a trip to San Diego.
Ben attended two weeks of "Itty Bitty Arts Camp" run by an extraordinary organization called Glitter and Razz here in Oakland.
While Glitter and Razz's theater camps are not designed for kids with special needs per se, they have good reputation for, well, speaking French (or at least French-Canadian.)
The weekend before he told us he didn't want to go, and I assumed that Chris would have to be with him each day, cajoling him to participate and bargaining with him every five minutes to stay for just a little while longer.
But the first morning, he skipped into class and told the first teacher he met, "I was nervous, but now I'm okay." and proceeded to tell Chris, "You can go home now."
And despite the fact that his participation in group activities was a little spotty without an aide to guide him, he seemed to enjoy the experience, going gladly each day and performing in the Friday afternoon plays each week.
I appreciated the fact that no one at Glitter and Razz seemed to mind too much when Ben decided that he just needed to lie down on the stage or walk in circles, completely take over the narration, or provide unscripted foreshadowing.
"Don't worry! You're going to be saved later by an airplane!" Ben shouted from offstage to a character who had just been captured by an evil dog.
Ben, as a warrior, confronts the ice snake and saves the princesses
This was also a summer of saying "good-bye" and big, scary changes.
Ben was processing his departure from the two schools he had attended for the last three years in direct and less direct ways.
"Are we ever going to go back to Growing Light and Tilden again?" he asked, as the finality was hitting him late this summer.
"Maybe someday, just to visit." we told him.
And one night, he cried and cried, but in a controlled having-a-good-cry way that's unusual for him.
He kept putting his beloved Monkey in the garbage can and saying:
"I'll miss you so much. I love you so much. But now it's time to say goodbye."
Monkey didn't actually stay in the garbage permanently, but I think it was Ben's way of working through his sadness - through a kind of performance - about all the goodbyes that were happening.
And last night, when I reminded him that we wouldn't be hanging out with him at Kindergarten, but dropping him off, he started to cry again.
"I don't want to go to Kindergarten."
"What do you think will happen at Kindergarten?"
"I'm worried the classroom will be too noisy...I'm worried the classroom will be too busy...I'm worried the classroom will be too scary."
He cried for a long time, but he was able to listen and process with me and something must have seeped in, or he was able to work through a lot of his anxiety because this morning, he didn't fuss or stall or cry one bit.
We all got in the car and headed to the moon.
I mean Kindergarten.
And when we got there, Ben checked out the books in the classroom and must have decided it was okay.
We started to leave and as I was heading out the door, I blew him a kiss and he jumped up.
"Wait!" he yelled.
Uh oh, I thought. Here it comes.
"I forgot to hug you!"
And we hugged, and Chris and I left and walked together across the blacktop, across the surface of the moon, and headed home.
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