AUTISM CHILD BEHAVIOR

I was watching an episode of Penn and Teller's Bullshit about Disabilities. It was about how the ADA causes people with disabilities to be more dependent on others than learning to adjust to life better. The one woman disagreeing with Penn and Teller patrolled parking lots to make sure no one parked in handicap parking spaces without the proper tags. She was really passionate about this because her daughter has severe Autism and is also visually impaired. I really wish the show was more about that but they kind of just breezed over that.
I saw the show maybe two nights ago and I still can't stop thinking about this girl. People with Autism tend to have really strong visual needs because they have aditory procesing disorders. I can't imagine how confused this girl must be. I'm confused, with many questions:

• Do they make socail stories in Braille?
• Is there a textured board or something that she uses for a tactile schedule?
• Is there a special school for her?
• Does anyone understand how to communicate with her?
• Is she completely lost in her world of Autism?
• What is her life like?

Going blind has always been my biggest fear. I never even imagined it in conjunction with Autism. My mind is blown.

Andrew is beginning his Casein free diet and has been taken off of Risperol. What a dramatic change for the worse! He is acting like he did 2 years ago. I had to pull out his kindergarten social stories today. At lunch, he was angry about a number of things including drinking OJ instead of milk. So he poured his juice all over himself and threw his lunch off the table. I watch 3 children at lunch, so it was pretty stressful removing him from the environment so none of the other children got hurt. I was worried that the other 2 were going to wander off. Only the one wandered but she went to the right place. I love independent children :)

Things have been very rough with Andrew lately. He has PDD.NOS. He is in second grade but follows a first grade curriculum which is at times too difficult for him. Yesterday, I follwed him through his day, simply observing and not interacting, to collect data on his progress. It averaged out that he spends only about 56% of the day attending to what is happening the rest of the time is spent being emotional, impulsive or lost in his own head. It was strange to sit there with a stop watch timinghow long he could focus on an activity. I was surprised to see how little of his time in school he actually engages in learning or interacting with others.

Today, he probably spent less than 56% of his time engaged. He stims orally so often that his lips and face around his lips are chapped and bloody. At one point he picked his nose and wiped the boogers on his desk. I made his get up, use a tissue and wash his hands. While he was washing his hands, I used a Clorox towel to wipe his desk clean. In the few seconds it took me to put the towel in the trash, he was back at his seat rubbing the wet desk on his raw mouth! He went to the nurse and she gave him some Vaseline. When I was in charge of Andrew's behavior plan, he had a water bottle to drink from when he needed something to do with his mouth. This year, his teacher decided she wants complete control of him and did away with most of my interventions and replacement behaviors. She believes that just being really strict with him, saying "put your hands down or leave your mouth alone" anytime he touches his mouth, will stop the behavior. She is my supervisor and his Autistic Support teacher so I don't argue. But I am so sad when I see his poor face. I wrote a note home to his parents about my concern for his face, hopefully they agree. The teacher will not be in tomorrow so I think I will bring out te water bottle once again.

Aside from the oral stimming he has been crying and injuring himself for attention. I was afraid he broke his hands today when he slammed both down on the desk. It was such a loud slam and he screamed like crazy after it happened. It is so difficult to ignore attention seeking behaviors like these. After he slammed the desk, he flipped it over and started throwing the contents around the room. I calmly said " throwing tantrums is preschool behavior, second graders clean up their messes, take deep breaths and calm their bodies down, so they can do things with their friends". He used to have tantrums that lasted for hours, but I learned that they can easily be prevented (in his case) by simply saying they cannot happen. He heard me, cleaned up the mess, started to cry, I took some deep breaths, he copied them and calmed himself down. I then smiled at him until he smiled back. This took about 3 or 4 minutes. He gave me angry eyes, I smiled and pointed to my mouth, his teacher smiled and pointed to her mouth. The two of us just kept smiling until he smiled. Then he was able to get up from his desk and join the other children.

Since the red dye #40 and yellow dye #5 have been eliminated from Jane's diet, I have seen very little erratic behavior. Before this diet I would have sheets of ABC charts filled up by the end of the week. Now I have filled up two for the entire month of October! She hasn't screamed nonsense or laid on the floor in a tantrum. It has been a pleasure to be around her. Lately, I have just been prompting her to talk to peers. There is even a girl in her class that came over and put her arm around Jane when the teacher was pairing kids up to let the teacher know to pair them together. I nearly cried. In the past, children would move away from her or tease her. She told me later that that girl is now her best friend and she hopes they can play at each other's houses. Honestly, I never thought she even wanted friends.

Bill Gates has Asperger's, which is a form of Autism. He is one of the most successful people in the United States. I was just watching some videos on Autism and I found this one of Bill gates rocking back and forth in a business meating. Videos of the Miscrosoft moqul, Bill gates, displaying the rocking sterotopy reinforce the idea that self stimmulatory behaviors can exist without impeading a person's success. In school, I see teachers telling kids to put their hands stop or to sit still. Maybe we shouldn't put our focus into trying to make these autistic kids look "normal". You should watch this video, it might give you some new perspective on socially accepted behaviors.


I enjoyed this video of Bill gates because it shows his sense of humor. People tend to think that the autistic have no sense of humor.

Friday was full of excitement. Andrew perseverates on the grills of cars because they look like smiles. He talks to them, yells at them and laughs at them (even if they are not in his sight). I can't imagine having a brain that keeps me stuck on one thing for so long. Its hard for him to learn, do work or talk to friends because he is only thinking about the smiling cars. In the lunchroom, he can see the parking lot filled with happy cars, from his seat so he even had a hard time eating because he was so busy laughing with the cars. After lunch, I took his best friend (does not have autism) and him outside to look at the cars. I asked his best friend to show us the right way to look at cars and to tell us what he was thinking about the cars. Then I asked Andrew if it made sense what his friend was saying, he said yes. For the rest of the afternoon, when he started to get silly about the cars, I would ask him if that was the way his friend would act. That kept him focused for the afternoon. What would you do?

I have had time to work with Andrew again. He has PDD.NOS which is a confusing form of Autism. His language skills are very low and he gets frustrated very easily because it seems that he understands exactly what you are saying to him but he has no idea how to respond. Math is very difficult for him, he figures out the addition problems on his fingers says the answer than immediately forgets what he says. He usually ends up tearing up his paper and screaming. So we have started writing math facts on Popsicle sticks. He pulls a stick out of the container, reads the problem, solves the answer and doesn't have to write it down. We got through 20 math problems today in about 5 minutes, I remember it used to take over an hour for him to write the answer to just one problem. The best solution for him is no worksheets. We then played number games with a giant number grid and he actually had fun with math instead of throwing a tantrum.