Boring Spelling Tests versus Studied Dictation

Does your child sprint around the house and dance with joy after a spelling test? Mine does!

I was chatting with a friend with a second grader enrolled in school. Her son was frustrated and bored in spelling class. Here is a sample of his word list for last week:

who
what
where
when
why
how
their
there
they're
should
could
would
HOW
BORING
IS
THAT

Spelling (unless you are in a spelling bee) usually occurs while you write real words in real sentences! That is why I love studied dictation: Pamela's "spelling words" are part of a real sentence. She has daily spelling tests and looks forward to them because they are so interesting to her. I will use the poem she mastered this week as an example, City by Langston Hughes. Here is what we do, and you can learn more by getting a copy of Cheri Hedden's presentation on Spelling vs. Studied Dictation:

Day One
I type a poem picked by Pamela, double-spaced in Word. I do alter punctuation and spelling to conform with standard practices if necessary. The first day of a new poem, she copies one sentence (if not too long) hand onto paper as copywork. After copying the sentence, she studies the typed version of it. She gets out a clean sheet of paper, and I read the sentence to her. She writes what she hears in the dictation, and I check it. She used to check for errors, but she gets so excited about how she did she has to run around the house until she finds out.

In the morning, the city spreads its wings, making a song in stone that sings.

This time she made one error! Every time she makes an error in a dictation, I highlight the correct version on the typed sheet and write the date underneath (it makes wonderful documentation). When she studies it the next day, she looks at the sheet and she sees what parts of the poem needs the most attention based on the highlighting.

Day Two
The next day, I wrote a lesson about her error, which was writing spreds. It may look like a worksheet, but this one has meaning and context because the lesson is focused upon learning a word she needs to spell.

After she finishes the lesson, she studies the typed, highlighted version. When ready, she gets out a clean sheet of paper, and I slowly read the dictation. This time she wrote it perfectly!!!

Day Three
The next day, she copies the entire poem (two sentences). Without realizing it, the spelling lesson from the day before dovetailed nicely with the second verse (bed and head):

In the morning, the city spreads its wings, making a song in stone that sings. In the evening, the city goes to bed, hanging lights about its head.

She studies the typed, highlighted version. She pulls out a clean sheet of paper, and I give her another dictation. And another perfect score! Tomorrow she will be ready for a new poem.

Spelling Tests vs. Studied Dictation
Pamela rarely makes the same mistake twice, but occasionally that happens (most often it is punctuation, not spelling). Some new lines in a poem may take longer than a day or two. But, sentence by sentence, verse by verse, we get through entire poems, some as complex as A Pirate Story by Robert Louis Stevenson: it took her a whole month to master it perfectly, line by line. But, she did! We started with one sentence and worked our way up to all three verses. Her last dictation she wrote all the verses at one time--perfectly:

Three of us afloat in the meadow by the swing, three of us abroad in the basket on the lea, winds are in the air. They are blowing in the spring, and waves are on the meadow like the waves there are at sea. Where shall we adventure today that we're afloat? Shall it be to Africa, a-steering of the boat, to Providence, or Babylon or off to Malabar? Hi! But, here's a squadron a-rowing on the sea—cattle on the meadow a-charging with a roar! Quick! And, we'll escape them; they're as mad as they can be. The wicket is the harbor, and the garden is the shore.

This means that she takes "spelling test" every day. What! A spelling test every day? Think about it! There is no big build up to Friday. We spend a total of 15 to 30 minutes in this daily habit: copy, dictate, check, document, and write a lesson. Some days we have no formal spelling lesson or grammar lesson, a reward for a perfect dictation.

I have been using this system since the summer. I do not waste our precious time drilling what she already knows (thus boring her). I target what she needs to know in my lessons. Studied dictation is simple, efficient, respectful of the child. How can you feel like you accomplished anything by just writing a bunch of random words with no meaning or context? It might as well be writing jibberish. Compare that to mastering sentences from a cherished book, the Bible, or an entire poem. Studied dictation wins in a contest against mindless spelling tests every time!

Happy Birthday . . . Grandpa . . . Surprise

Yesterday was Pamela's grandfather's birthday. We wanted to make his day special, so all of us, even Steve, wrote a story about our favorite memory of him. Pamela is not ready for experience stories (page 10), but she can easily whip up a personal description story. She decided to pen hers in cursive since a birthday is a special occasion.

Then we went high-tech! Since reciting poetry is a new skill never seen by her grandfather, I decided to film Pamela reciting one of her favorites by A. A. Milne, The End. I filmed her recitation on my digital camera, and David edited it with Windows Movie Maker and added Narnian music (track 4) as a birthday gift for their grandfather.

If you would like to see our video birthday card, go to my Aut-2B-Home web page (click here). We loved how it turned out, and Pamela giggles with delight whenever she sees it.

Color-Coding and Visual Learners

Because Pamela's syntax is very basic due to her aphasia, we keep her grammar lessons very simple. Whenever she makes a mistake in her studied dictation, I write a lesson on the spot to address the issue. Yesterday, Pamela confused there with they're in the poem A Pirate Story. She recently finished stories with they and their in speech therapy, so I tossed their into the hopper with there and they're. Since it can be confusing talking about they're (or is it there or their?), I color-coded the three homophones, and we referred to them as yellow, pink, and green for clarity. Pamela, like many autistic children, tend to be highly visual and cue into visual patterns. Here is her introduction to homophones that confuse even adults from time to time, especially in emails in which the fingers fly fast. This is only an introduction because, for Pamela to master new syntax, she has to practice it through all three channels (visual, auditory, and kinesthetic) both randomly and sequentially.
One reason why the association method is so effective for Pamela is that they encourage color-coding new syntax. This week, I am emphasizing three unrelated things: the possessive its, combining not with is/are, and subject-verb agreement for is/are. I code each concept with its own unique color. She has already had experience with possessive pronouns, negation, and subject-verb agreement, so three at one time is not confusing. When I introduce a completely new syntax, such as present progressive verb tense, it will be on its own. This is Pamela's copywork for today, which I write first on a dry-erase board, color-coded and in cursive.

Perplexing Pronouns

One sign of autism in verbal children is handling pronouns incorrectly. When Pamela was in the stage of repeating everything she heard (immediate echolalia), she would say, “Do you want cookies?” when she wanted cookies. Toddlers have echolalia as a normal part of language development, so it makes sense that autistic children parrot phrases. Because echolalia lasts much longer and occurs at a much older age in spectrum children, people worry about it. In Pamela’s case, I was excited she could say anything because she was non-verbal at age three!

As her grasp of language improved, she found pronouns so confusing she avoided them. She found it easier to speak in the third person, even about herself, much like some of our politicians. At this point in her development (from age seven and beyond), she would say, “Pamela want cookie.”

Pamela slowly started using pronouns and mixed them up in various ways, applying it to humans, reversing you and I, confusing he and she, avoiding we and they, etc. The most perplexing problem to overcome was distinguishing between first person, I, and second person, you. To observe this in action, one must pay close attention during one-on-one interactions with another person (usually, the child and parent) and one-on-one interactions between two other people (the parents or parent and siblings). Research shows that second-born children master I and you pronouns much more quickly than the firstborn does.

When Pamela mixes up her pronouns in conversation, I physically prompt her to sign them while she says them for an added visual cue: I, me, my, you, and your. I think the association method will offer the final solution in the long run because this form of mastering language introduces structure very slowly. The process of learning pronouns unfolds gradually (see page 10):

Repetitive Questions and Sentences: the only pronoun used in sentences is I and the only pronoun used in questions is you. These two pronouns are always in the nominative case (subject) to avoid confusion. Pamela learned to use proper names without the confusion of third person pronouns. Because she learned both questions and sentences, she practiced describing herself as I and the second person as you and hearing another person describe himself as I and Pamela as you. Because I always goes in sentences and you always goes in questions, her accuracy is much higher, boosting her confidence.

Animal Stories: Pamela continued to practice I and you only, solidifying her grasp of two and only two pronouns.

Inanimate Object Stories: The very next pronoun introduced is it, applied to all inanimate objects, but only in the nominative case (subject). At this point, Pamela showed great confidence in using I and you in the sentences and questions taught.

Personal Description Stories: By the time we made it to third person pronouns, Pamela felt secure in I and you. She spent one week applying he in the nominative case of a sentence and a second week on questions with he and did the same schedule for she. Then we devoted two more weeks using his in sentences and questions and two more with her. I introduced they and their at the same time, first in sentences and then in questions, because she seemed secure in applying possessive pronouns. By the time I added the possessive my into sentences only, Pamela understood the pattern and picked up the possessive form of the first person pronoun I quickly.

This week we are concentrating on the possessive your in questions only and Pamela is flying through the seven steps of her speech therapy. For every day, I have written stories about a different person: Monday (Mom—me), Tuesday (David—her brother), Wednesday (Opa—her grandfather), Thursday (Oma—her grandmother), and Friday (Dad—my husband). To emphasize who is supposed to be speaking, I have asked the person to read the sentences in response to questions asked by Pamela in the story. We follow that up with three rounds of questions in the following pattern: (1) Pamela asks; the second person answers; (2) the second person asks; Pamela answers; (3) Pamela asks; the second person answers; the second person asks; Pamela answers; Pamela asks. . .

To emphasize the concept of two people talking (Pamela and another person) in all of her written work (copywork, written narration, and dictation), she must label two columns to designate who is asking the questions and who is answering them. For this week, above the questions I wrote, “Pamela is talking” and above the sentences, “__________ is talking.”

This is more complicated than it seems because included in the mix is verb agreement between I/you/he/she/they and the verbs do/does, is/are, can, has/have, sees/see, and wants/want. Not to mention verb agreement having nothing to do with a possessive pronoun my/your/his/her/their and having everything to do with the noun in the subject!

I still need to introduce its and, because she is already aware of the contraction it's, I will probably spend the next week or two covering both words. You may notice I am ignoring we and our and other forms of first, second, and third person nouns. One thing I have learned from the association method is Pamela needs to be secure in what she has learned before adding more nuances! She is better off moving onto a fresh, completely unrelated concept like prepositions or present progressive language (is/are __________ing) than plowing into pronouns in greater detail. Constant review and generalization of previously mastered material in daily conversations allows her to solidify new concepts before plunging in further.

Time will tell how well Pamela generalizes keeping her pronouns straight in conversations. Right now, I am full of hope!

The Proper Care and Feeding of Sea Lawyers

I graduated from the United States Naval Academy many moons ago, and one of the first lessons I learned the very first summer was never to make excuses about anything, even legitimate excuses. When we messed up and an upperclassman asked why (a hypothetical question, obviously), the only acceptable answer was, “No excuse, Sir (or Ma’m)!” They honestly did not care about the reason and, if we issued an excuse, they yelled at us twice as hard (once for making a mistake and twice for voicing excuses).

Occasionally, a plebe (freshmen) would have the habit of inventing excuses for everything and would earn the privilege of placing a placard on the door to his room with his name followed by “Attorney at Sea”. Such a sign was like cutting yourself in shark-infested waters: any firstie in a foul mood would pop in and “chat” long enough for said sea lawyer to dream up an excuse. The firstie could then flame all over the attorney at sea. In the vernacular, a sea lawyer is someone who attempts to shirk responsibility through trivial technicalities, so it appears this word has migrated into the public sphere.

Sometimes autistic children, who face so many challenges caused by their sensory system and highly attune radar for detail, can fall into the habit of making excuses. Pamela is like the little engine that could: she has such courage to try and try until she masters something. When a listmate on Aut-2B-Home asked about handling kids who come up with excuses for everything, my sea lawyer in training (my neurotypical son) has given me plenty of experience. Here are my guidelines for the proper care and feeding of sea lawyers:

Address each excuse seriously at first. If a child complains about having too much light, that may be legitimate because autistic people have highly sensitive sensory systems. Turn off the overhead lights, pull down the blinds or close the curtains, or replace the 100-watt bulb with a 40-watt one. If a child is cold, get some socks or a jacket or move to the couch and cuddle up with a blanket. Seriously handle excuses involving sensory issues.

Address each excuse seriously with unpopular answers. When a child runs out of real reasons and starts making excuses, think of true solutions guaranteed to be unpopular with your child. Here are some of my all-time favorite conversations with my little attorney at sea:

• Sea Lawyer: "I'm too tired to do math."
• Mom: "Gee, I'm sorry about that! I guess from now on I'll have to set an earlier bedtime for you because your body needs the rest."
• SL: "Uh. . . never mind. . . My head hurts."
• Mom: "Gee, I'm sorry. Why don't you lie down. You've probably had too much screen time, so no more electronics other than radio for today."
• SL: "Oh, I was just kidding. . . I'm just too stupid to learn math."
• Mom: "I'm not giving up on you. I was stupid too. Let me see if I can explain it another way. Please be patient with me while I think this through." Then we do the math, using another tactic.

Toss in some humor to cut through the tension. When your sea lawyer comes up with far-fetched dillies, give him a dose of humor. Some autistic children do understand humor. However, this will not work with highly literal and highly sensitive children.

• SL: "I can't find any pencil lead."
• Mom, who knows there IS pencil lead and attorney at sea has not bothered to look for it. "Get the knife. You'll have to write this sheet in blood."

Make the sea lawyer turn around an excuse and write it as a positive comment five times. At some point, it is obvious the sea lawyer is pushing my buttons to get out of his work. He hates writing, so having to write anything five times causes him to think before he speaks.

• SL in a whiny voice: “I can’t learn this stuff.”
• Mom: “That’s enough. Turn over your sheet and write this five times: ‘I can learn this stuff with enough practice.’”

Use excuse making to sharpen wits. Some sea lawyers may really be attorneys in the making and enjoy a rigorous debate. When my sea lawyer is in a good mood and working steadily, I humor him by seeing how far the one-upmanship goes before someone “wins”:

• SL after only two problems: “If you don’t let me stop now, I’m going to crumple up my paper.”
• Mom: “Well, I’m going to throw it in the trash and make you start over.”
• SL: “Well, I’m going to tell everyone that you make me work too hard.”
• Mom: “Then, I’m going to show everyone your crumpled up paper and see if they agree.”

This verbal exchange goes on until someone runs out of ideas, and, as long as the lively banter stays warm and affectionate and the sea lawyer keeps working, then the mother of the sea lawyer does not mind a test of wits.

Be reasonable and give the sea lawyer a break. Sometimes the attorney at sea has been working diligently, putting forth a good effort. If the work is not finished, give him a break after he reaches a designated problem and have him finish it later.

Show why doing the work is important to his personal goals. My son plans to attend college and major in history (the farthest thing removed from math). To enter the college of his choice, he must excel in algebra so that he can score high on the SAT or other entrance exams. Whether he likes it or not, he must master high-level math to reach his personal goals.

Show why doing the work prevents negative consequences. My son hates when people treat him shabbily. I tell him that if he cannot handle basic math in life, crooks might take advantage of him and swindle him. He might bounce checks and develop a bad credit history.

Illustrate how annoying excuses are when his interests are at stake. I talk about how no one is going to want to help a person who makes a bunch of excuses. People find it frustrating and depressing to be around someone moaning and groaning all the time. From time to time, I might act like him so he can see how silly it appears.

• Mom (in whiny voice): "David, I can't wash your clothes. My feet hurt. You can get by with dirty underwear, right? I'm sure nobody will notice the smell. I’m tired!"

Show why doing things right benefits the sea lawyer. A perfect example happened last night. He took an algebra test and just wrote answers, showing hardly any work, because he “knew” the answers. He earned a D, but I promised to write a make-up test if he promised to show his work. He took the second test and circled the wrong answer on four out of fifteen questions! I studied his work, and he had calculated his answers correctly but carelessly circled the wrong answer! I used this opportunity to demonstrate how, as teacher I could in good conscious mark these correct after he circled the right answers because he had shown his work completely and, without a doubt, how he had done the math correctly. I showed him his scratch paper and compared it to the answers he circled. I kept my tone very light, and we chuckled about how ditzy he was. He saw clearly how showing his work earned him an A, instead of another D. Then I reminded him that SAT is multiple-choice for math, and the computer has no sympathy for students with teenheimers.

Write social stories if talking does not help. You can illustrate most of these ideas in social stories, which are worth writing when conversations do not help.

Low-Tech Happy New Year Tip!

This low-tech tip is great for working on narration skills or speech therapy. Like typical children, Pamela falls in a rut with word choices. If asked how she feels, she usually answers, “Happy” or “Sad.” When describing the emotions of a character in a book, she picks the same words: happy, sad, angry, or afraid. To build up her vocabulary and help determine how new emotion words match with ones she already understands, I put new words on paper plates. Whenever we discover them in the books we read, I write them on the edges of the plate in the proper quarter. If Pamela falls back on the same old words during a narration, I pull out the plate to suggest alternatives. The picture is a bit blurry, but you get the idea. Words for happy include cheerful, giddy, and joyful; sad: gloomy, depressed, mournful; angry: irate, wrathful, furious; and afraid: frightened, terrified, scared.She has the same issue with people words and verbs. If asked, “Who does __________ see?” her response was almost always, “________ sees people.” Whenever we run into new kinds of people in books, I write them on our people plate. The people plate helps her pick words that are more appropriate if all that pops in her head is people. The image is a tad blurry, but along the rim are words like parents, children, farmers, sailors, knights, teachers, doctors, etc.

We are broadening her use of verbs too. If asked, “What can __________ do?” she usually says, “_________ can go.” I recently started a new subject-verb plate where I document what verbs are often associated with what nouns. She already knows these associations, but needs hints about more specific words than go.

High-Tech Happy New Year Tip!

Happy New Year! Click here for a cute card to ring in another year!

Yesterday on my email list Aut-2B-Home, people discussed how affected they and/or their children are by graphic images on the Internet. Still photos of Saddam Hussein with a noose around his neck part of their webmail sign-in page disturb them. Ads with scantily clad women often plague online sites for checking email (*ahem* Hotmail and Earthlink). I shared a high-tech tip for avoiding visual images that helps enough people to make it worthwhile to post here.

About ten years ago, I was struggling to keep a very old computer alive. It contained such a small amount of space that accessing a web page full of graphics would crash the computer. Frames, which were the latest Internet phenomenon at the time, gave the poor thing the blue screen of death! I solved my problem by turning off the graphics! I was able to surf the Internet and see only the images I absolutely needed by turning them on individually.

H is how to turn off Internet images in Firefox:

Click Tools, then Options, then Content.
There is a box to check off "Load images automatically". Click until you see no checkmark.
Click Ok.
If you want to see an image, right click the box for the broken image and click "View image".

Here is how to turn off Internet images in Explorer:

Click Tools, then Internet Options, then Advanced.
In the box that pops open, scroll down until you see the section called Multimedia and click until you see no checkmarks in two boxes:
"Play videos in web pages"
"Show pictures"
Click Apply.
If you want to see an image, right click the box for the broken image and click "Show image".

Keep these instructions and do the same to restore automatic loading of images, except make sure you see checkmarks in the boxes indicated.

Hyperfocus in Action!

People with autism and/or ADD describe themselves as having the ability to hyperfocus, or an intense form of concentration that blocks out everything else. High-functioning people use it to their advantage to excel in the workplace, which is why they often become computer programmers.

This morning we ate breakfast at a fast-food restaurant on the way home. Steve always buys a newspaper when we eat out and we all read our favorite sections. Pamela enjoys reading the television guide, even though we have no programmed television at home (not even rabbit ears). The beauty and order of a lovely schedule engages her full attention.

David spilled his drink all over the table. Steve, David, and I reacted immediately, jumping up, grabbing napkins, and sopping up the mess. Pamela, enraptured by the television schedule, ignores the whole thing. To avoid having a sticky mess all over her beloved newspapers, we stood her up and she stayed there, glued to the newspaper. Pamela remained in that position long enough for us to wipe the spill and take this photograph!

Hyperfocus can be a good thing when you find a way to nurture it and develop it into a niche skill desired by employers. It can be a bad thing when it totally blocks out other learning or communication with people. The key is moderation, which is the exact opposite of hyperfocus!

GF/CF Diet on the Road

With just a little planning ahead, Pamela is able to stick to her GF/CF diet wherever we go. She has not had a major diet violation in years because she understands the importance of her diet. However, when she did, symptoms of exposure to gluten/casein included extreme irritability, loss of bladder control, spaciness, rashes on her arms, and difficulty speaking. Staying on her diet enables us all to travel with fewer mishaps.

Before we left home, I shopped for very specific things that are hard to find on the road. For breakfast, I brought two boxes of GF/CF cereal (Amazon Frosted Flakes and Mesa Sunrise) and three packs of single-serving, shelf-stable soymilk in case our room lacked a refrigerator. I packed snacks, wrapped individual to carry in a hip pouch while walking around in the park: Crispy Rice Berry Bar, Apple Breakfast Bars, Soda Crackers, Sesame Pretzel Rings, and Jennie's Chocolate Macaroons.

You can also investigate in advance what foods are safe at the big-chain fast-food restaurants you might visit on the road. You can find some information at the GF/CF diet website, but you can also contact the company directly. We attend a youth prayer breakfast every Tuesday morning, so I emailed Hardees and asked for information about allergens. They sent me a huge PDF file with everything I needed to know! McDonald's has information about food allergens online.

Pamela enjoyed her second day at Universal Studios, this time Universal Studios Florida. Today Pamela explored the movie-related attractions with her brother and three cousins. She rode Shrek 4D Motion Simulator, Jimmy Neutron's Nicktoon Blast which wreaked havoc on my tendency toward motion sickness, TWISTER...Ride It Out which thrilled David (wanna-be storm-chaser), Terminator 2:3-D—I thought Arnold broke his leg, MEN IN BLACK Alien Attack, Jaws which was Pamela's favorite ride, and Earthquake. We tried to ride E.T. Adventure, but it broke on and off during the day. Pamela balked at Revenge of the Mummy, and I was glad to skip that one myself! She loved the Jaws ride so much she did not mind riding it again after sunset. The ride is much more eerie in the dark, and we all enjoyed the repeat.

We attended three of the four live shows. Pamela enjoyed the Horror Make-Up Show once she saw that the blood was fake (ketchup) and the people were safe. Some autistic children might be too literal and concrete for this show, and I could have done without the montage of movie clips earning a PG-13 Rating! I am not sure how much Pamela enjoyed the Blues Brothers, but the rest of the family had a blast. In hindsight, I wish we had substituted Lucy—A Tribute for the Beetlejuice's Graveyard Revue, which contained more adult humor than I liked and deserved the PG-13 Rating and, of course, the teens of the male persuasion loved it.

Diet aside, the thing that made this whole trip possible was the Express Plus Pass, which allowed us to bypass long lines. We waited fifteen minutes at most. We saw rides with waits as long as one hundred minutes! For an autistic person, this pass is a must!

If you would like to read our lessons learned from this trip, click here and here!

Trifecta at Islands of Adventure

Pamela plus her dad, brother, and I spent the day at Universal’s Islands of Adventures in Orlando with her cousins and their cousins. Pamela enjoyed a trifecta of heavenly bliss with her interests, sensory integration, and imagination on hyperdrive! We have been so busy moving to a new house and cleaning the old house that I had no time to investigate what the park had to offer. Fortunately, Pamela’s cousins in the Seuss hats knew the park backward, forward, and upside-down. They managed to balance going between rides and shows for all and rides only the daredevils would ride.

Seuss Landing stimulated Pamela’s interests to the maximum. She has adored Dr. Seuss books and cartoons for years. She has four DVDs with her favorite cartoons, The Hoober-Bloob Highway being number one and The Lorax a close second. When we first entered Seuss Landing, Pamela could not look up. Seeing Seussian imagery in 3D living color overwhelmed her with joy, and she could only sneak glances here and there and everywhere. She tends to have a flat affect as pictured here with her brother and youngest cousin, waiting for the wild ones to ride Dueling Dragons. Her face only brightens with extreme emotion. Her expression standing under a cherished truffula tree shows her stunned by bliss. A shot with the Lorax was too much for her to handle, so we skipped it.

We left Seuss Landing in search of other rides, and she still had not lost her childlike joy on her second trip to Seuss Landing. Surrounded by her favorite books delighted Pamela so much we had to make five attempts to encourage her to leave before she succeeded. We rode two rides, The High in the Sky Seuss Trolley Train Ride! and The Cat In The Hat, and an enchanted smile blanketed her face the entire time. She thought she was living inside of her favorite books. One thing that drives an autistic person is their interests, and Pamela felt like she had taken a trip to the moon.

Autistic people have difficulty integrating all their senses. Sometimes, those like Donna Williams can only manage video or audio input, not both at the same time. Others have very sensitive senses, such as hearing and touch. The reason why some auties cover their ears is that the noise is too loud, much like bionic hearing one can never adjust. The reason why some auties avoid being held and touched is that their skin perceives it as pain. Every autistic person has varying degrees of avoiding (hypersensitivity) and craving (hyposensitivity) certain sensations. When an autistic person faces too much sensory input for too long, she might meltdown (throw a massive tantrum) and shutdown (stare blankly into space). The secret to preventing sensory overload in Pamela is pictured to the left!

Let me explain! You may have studied five senses in health and science classes, but two more are sometimes affected in autism: proprioreception (page 8) and vestibular. Proprioreception is sensing movement in your joints: if you close your eyes and move your arms in the air, you are able to know where they are in space without seeing them. Oliver Sacks describes how challenging life would be with impaired proprioreception in The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. One woman relearned how to walk after a virus damaged this sensory system by watching what her legs did. One lapse in attention would cause her to topple. Kids who crave proprioreception are ones who bang on things, crash into things, and fling their bodies on top of everything.

Vestibular sensation is the key to keeping Pamela cool. In the inner ear is liquid that tells your body whether things are stable or rocking and rolling. If you ride a merry-go-round and start to feel dizzy, your vestibular system is overwhelmed by all the movement. Some people with autism, like Pamela, have no post-rotary nystagmus (meaning they can spin without getting dizzy). Those who spin or spin objects crave vestibular. When spun, they feel joyful. Stimulating Pamela’s vestibular system has been one of my tools in calming Pamela. When she was young and in a situation that frustrated her, I would watch for signs of distress. We would leave the room to spin! I would grasp her underneath her arms and around her chest, lift her, and spin in circles with her feet off the ground. I did this until her body relaxed (or my nystagmus stopped me). When the tension left her body and her muscles melted, I knew she was ready to meet any challenge. Rides like Doctor Doom's Fear Fall and stimulated her vestibular system and Pamela loved every minute of it. Stimulating her vestibular system allowed her to tolerate a very long day, walking all over the park and waiting for her cousins to ride the daredevil rollercoasters.

The final element stimulated by this park was Pamela’s imagination. Yes, some autistic people do have an imagination, tapping into their ability to associate minute details that are related. While riding a log chute ride that splashed us plenty (Dudley Do-Right's Ripsaw Falls), Pamela screamed with delight and announced, “Just like Narnia!” She was recalling the frozen river scene in the movie, The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, and imagining riding alongside Peter, Susan, and Lucy. During the The Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man ride and the Poseidon’s Fury show, the balls of fire and special effects reminded her of the Gameboy Advanced game, Mario and Luigi Superstar Saga. She compared the setting of The Eighth Voyage of Sinbad to the two Pirates of the Caribbean movies. Her imagination was on hyperdrive during shows and rides.

Universal’s Islands of Adventures theme park had the worst conditions for a person with autism: waves and waves of people and plenty of noise. Purchasing an express pass prevented the frustration of waiting too long. However, the trifecta of interests, sensory integration, and imagination helped keep her happy and calm during our long and busy day.

Seven Steps to New Syntax

I found a monograph that summarizes the Association Method. Apraxia-Kids has less detailed summary of this language therapy originally developed for the deaf. Several schools in the United States feature this program: Pennsylvania, Mississippi, Arkansas, Napa, CA, and San Francisco, CA.

We are covering pronouns (except we) right now, which puts Pamela on the seventh level of instruction out of fourteen (page 343). I do not follow all seven steps (page 17) exactly as described in the manual. I added a Charlotte Mason twist in what we call our steps to make it consistent with what we do in language arts. Every speech therapy lesson, which usually lasts about thirty to forty-five minutes, includes the following:

• Read aloud – Pamela reads aloud a typed story (cursive, color-coded) in her therapy book with the new syntax for the week (reading).
• Recitation – I read a sentence from the story. Pamela repeats it while seeing the page (associating) and without seeing the page (recall of spoken language).
• Copywork – Pamela copies a story I wrote on the dry erase board in cursive (written memory for the language structure).
• Written Narration – Pamela writes her own story applying the new syntax in print (written memory for the language structure).
• Dictation – I say a sentence, and Pamela writes it on paper in print (identification of selected language through audition alone).
• Oral Narration – Pamela practices the new syntax during her daily conversations, usually about perseverative topics (saying).

I try to do speech therapy every school day and generalize the new syntax in our daily conversations. If Pamela does not automatically apply the new syntax, I remind her to use her therapy sentences and questions. If the new syntax kicks in, then I know she is ready to move on to the next language structure. If it does not, that tells me we need to linger another week and practice the new syntax.

Getting in the Christmas Spirit

Even though Pamela is considered disabled in the eyes of the world, her diffability—a term coined several years ago by a nine-year-old homeschooler with Asperger Syndrome on my email list Aut-2B-Home—does not prevent her from serving others in need. Yesterday, we participated in two mission projects sponsored by our church’s youth group. First, the youth purchased toys and clothing for two needy families who would otherwise go without any presents this year. They raised the money for their mission and ski trip fund last month with donations from a Rock-a-Thon in which people sponsored them to rock in rocking chairs all night. Second, they wrapped the gifts and decorated them with ribbons. As gift-wrapping is not Pamela’s forte, she filled out gift tags for fifteen presents. Then we all delivered the gifts to the families who live not far from the church.

The second project involved visiting a local retirement home for the disabled and elderly who would otherwise be homeless. The youth sang Christmas carols and handed out bags full of cookies baked by some boys in this year’s confirmation class. Pamela enjoyed singing carols as we strolled down the halls. Because her great-grandparents lived in nursing homes before they died, she envisioned it as helping people like them.

If you peeked into our house, you would not believe we have one drop of the Christmas spirit by commercial standards. Right now the only hints of Christmas are Pamela's advent calendar and a flower arrangement. Our less than perfectly decorated house would please the small-hearted Grinch! Why is our house so bleak? Our lease expires on December 31, and we are planning to visit family out of town between the 26th and 30th. Translation—we must vacate the premises by by Christmas Day. All the rooms are packed up, except for essentials and Pamela's room. I will box up her books and treasures today! Our dressers are already gone, and we are living out of suitcases. Martha Stewart would have a meltdown in our house right now, and Ebenezer Scrooge would marvel at our thrift!

Pamela has adored How the Grinch Stole Christmas (book and DVD) ever since she was a little girl. She grew to love A Christmas Carol through the Disney video which has her favorite voice actor Will Ryan. When we lived in St. Cloud, Minnesota, a church production of the musical The Gospel According to Scrooge thrilled her to no end! As each angel arrived on the scene, her excitement increased. She loved it so much we purchased a videotape of the production for Christmas. Last year, we read Dickens' A Christmas Carol and gave Pamela Focus on the Family's Radio Theater production of A Christmas Carol, available at a rock-bottom price at CBD. I think these two stories are her all-time Christmas favorites because she understands the real meaning of Christmas. She knows that what keeps our hearts growing like the Grinch's and helps us share like Scrooge is Jesus.

We keep Christmas by keeping Christ is in our heart, not by hustle and bustle of making wish lists, decorations, and festivities. Helping the needy, reminding people of the birth of Christ in music, etc. reflect the Christmas spirit much more than shopping for ourselves, decorating, and going through the motions of looking Christmasy on the outside with nothing on the inside.

I/My Stories

This week we started the next phase of personal description stories from the Association Method. We followed up stories with they/their sentences and questions from last week with stories about Pamela with I/my. She is already familiar with combining I with can/have/see/saw/want. This week we introduced I with do/am and my in the subject of a sentence. I copied five digitized photos of Pamela at different ages into Word and wrote stories from her perspective at each age. Pamela is well versed with calendars, and she often picks topics about what she was doing on different dates in her life. We have been doing stories like these for years.

Pamela has sufficiently mastered the new syntax to move onto you/your questions. Usually, I write questions to go with each story, which we cover the following week. At that point, Pamela will read the questions, and I will answer them. In the Association Method, children learn new syntax in sentences first and then learn how to apply the syntax in questions. Thus, when asked a newly mastered question, children can answer it with confidence. They can also grow more sophisticated in asking questions.

Because of the different between first and second person perspective, I have altered this process slightly. Normally, I do not introduce questions until Pamela masters the new syntax in sentences. This week, I have read the questions, and Pamela has read the answers. Next week, I will have to write completely new questions that she will read and completely new answers that another person will read. To make the difference in perspective even more obvious, I plan to write each of the five stories about a different person in the family and have that person read to Pamela: Monday (me), Tuesday (Steve), Wednesday (David), Thursday (Oma), and Friday (Opa).

Here is one story we covered this week:

Who are you?

I am Pamela.

What are you?

I am a girl.

How many years old are you?

I am nine-years old.

What kind of sweater do you have?

I have a striped sweater.

What color is your turtleneck shirt?

My turtleneck shirt is pink.

What is your town?

My town is West Newton.

What color is your house?

My house is blue.

What do you have?

I have a pool and swingset.

What can you do?

I can swim and swing.

What is your school?

I do not have any school.

What kind of school do you have?

I have a home school.

Where can you go?

I can go to co-op classes.

Do you have friends? Yes,

I have friends.

Who are they?

They are Kevin, Shannon, Logan, and Gregory.

What is their town?

Their town is Mt. Pleasant.

Do they have a dog? Yes,

They have a dog.

What is her name?

Her name is Hershey.

Do you have a dog? Yes,

I have a dog.

What color fur does your dog have?

My dog has black fur.

Who is your dog?

My dog is Pepper.

What can your dog do?

My dog can chase his tail.

Is your dog friendly or mean?

My dog is friendly.

Do you have any cats? No,

I do not have any cats.

The Glories of a Random Number Generator

I have created four extra sheets about decimals to supplement Pamela’s math book so far. She seems to have a weak grasp of various complexities, but I hope to solidify her understanding through extra practice. Because she is a concrete-sequential learner, she does not mind rows of problems that look similar (unlike my concrete-random son). Yesterday’s spreadsheet in Excel reminded me of a high-tech tip that can make life easier when trying to think of random problems with the same structure on a sheet. When forced to do so, I fall into a rut. Pamela has an eagle eye for patterns, and I have to vary them enough for her not to guess a pattern and miss the actual concept presented. This is why I adore the concept of a random number generator, which I learned about while getting my master’s degree in operations research!

In this case, I needed to select between 1 and 99 coins. Excel has a random number generator that picks numbers between 0 and 1. If you multiply the random number by 99 and round up, you will get a random selection of numbers between 1 and 99. Once I get the formula right, I simply copy it down the column and it will generate different numbers in every cell! Here is the statement in Excel that worked:

=ROUNDUP(RAND()*99,0)

Because I wanted to make sure she had multiple chances to work with 1 to 9 coins, I copied the following formula into several of the cells to force randomly generated, single- digit numbers:

=ROUNDUP(RAND()*9,0)

In the next column, I needed to alternate between pennies and dimes from one problem to another. I set up a logical statement that puts in the word dimes when the random number is less than .5 and pennies for all other numbers. Here is what worked:

=IF(RAND()<0.5,"dimes","pennies")

Here is what these three formulas produced in ten rows of problems:

12 pennies
6 dimes
97 pennies
66 pennies
5 dimes
51 dimes
1 dimes
4 pennies
9 dimes
26 dimes

I just LOVE technology!

Christmas Concert

The City on a Hill concert turned out GREAT yesterday! We have been practicing this collection of contemporary Christmas music since Thanksgiving. The youth/"young" adult choir consisted of mainly teenaged girls including Pamela plus David (the only teenaged boy) and two men and three women to even out the parts and take on some of the solos. (Personally, I question the use of "young"--all but one of the adult singers were parents of the teenagers). The girls at center stage performed simple choreography during most of the songs, and one, a trained dancer, added an elegant touch to two of the songs by improvising her solo dances. The PowerPoint slide show on the DVD track gave our concert an extra visual boost.

We performed two songs at the two morning services to give the congregation a teaser. We attended our final dressed rehearsal at 330 in which we ran the thirty-minute program twice before our performance at 530. Such a schedule can easily overwhelm Pamela, so she sang with the choir at one service and skipped the rehearsals. That accommodation kept her fresh for the performance, and she did a wonderful job!

The last song had a little bit of choreography for the entire cast. I worried because we had only ten days notice for Pamela to learn these simple moves: step right and left while snapping during parts of the song and arm raises during other parts (first right, then left, and both down in front). Because she cannot snap, Pamela flicked her fingers and had no problems with the arm raises. Occasionally she danced ahead of the tempo, but I danced next to her and nudged her to slow her pace.

I had a solo and had been fighting laryngitis last week. My voice was not completely back on the low notes. Fortunately, it worked because the first verse of Great Light of the World about being afraid and alone--my slightly crackly lower range fit the mood. My upper range was back to normal, and I was able to soar during the chorus with its hopeful lyrics. By the time the second verse, which had a more confident message, the mucus had cleared out of my throat and I could belt it more.

Great Light of the World required one more accomodation for Pamela. Our side of the stage had three stools for another singer, me, and Pamela, who sat closest to the audience. After I moved up front to sing my solo, everyone in the cast held a candle and lit it. We discovered during rehearsal on Thursday that Pamela panicked if anyone on the three stools lights a candle. Because of my position up front, I was not able to talk her through this and soothe her. We came up with an easy solution: the singer on the stools near us moved to center stage with the choreography teenagers and walked with them bearing lit candles to form a semicircle behind me. Pamela stayed calm with this minor adjustment. The night of the show Pamela showed no anxiety because we found another way to accommodate to her needs that did not detract from the performance. In fact, this alternation made the production run more smoothly because the singer on our side of the stage sang the next solo and reached her mark more quickly!

We all agreed that we peaked during the performance. It turned out better than expected—short, sweet, fun to sing (and hear--I hope). Our audience had more people than chairs, and so many people congratulated Pamela on how well she did! Steve had tears in his eyes because he remembers the little girl who once shrieked her way through circle time and flopped on the floor in large crowds. As always, her bright smile made up for any awkward moves!

Slow and Steady Wins the Race

It is easy to fall into the trap of chasing the cure for autism. When I read The Sound of a Miracle years ago, I set up Pamela for auditory integration training the following summer. While Pamela benefited from AIT in observable and quantifiable ways, it was no miracle for her! Over the years I have read many books that offer the magic bullet and, when tried, the pie-in-the-sky miracle vanishes like a mirage: Let Me Hear Your Voice and ABA, Son Rise and Options, Unraveling the Mystery of Autism and Pervasive Developmental Disorder and Special Diets, etc. What is left are several steps forward in Pamela's development. Nothing we have ever tried inspired a Helen Keller at the water pump moment, but many things did yield slow and steady progress.

We left the emotional rollercoaster of cure chasing long ago and now seek improvement in quality of life. We have done our best to implement therapies that seem to have the most bangs for the buck, based upon Pamela's unique profile. The last thing we want to do is turn our lives upside down chasing the latest cure, only to be disappointed and embittered. We have learned to be pleased with the slow march of progress Pamela has made over the years, which accumulate to small miracles. From week to week, we appreciate the little wonders revealed whenever Pamela conquers a new skill. We do not crash and burn emotionally when a therapy fails to produce the miracle cure, but we do savor those tiny sparks of joy when we see improvement.

Here is a sample of the small bundles of joy I witnessed this week:

• Pamela learned all her choreography for the last song of our Christmas program City on a Hill and stays on beat most of the time. This is a miracle for a child who flipped out at circle time as a preschooler.
• Pamela mastered recitation another poem this week, which has the most complex language and punctuation to date. This is a miracle because, up until this year, all attempts to memorize poetry ended in failure except for Mother Goose rhymes!
• Pamela took her first baby steps in conquering decimals with the help of dollars, dimes, and pennies. This is a miracle for she took several years to master simple addition and subtraction.
• Pamela mastered new syntax for questions and sentences with their and they combined with can/have/do/are. This is a miracle because up until three years ago she has never been able to make predictable and measurable gains in grammar. As I prepared next week’s I/my personal description stories (to be followed by you/your questions), the questions in the first story startled me! Eight years ago, I used to drill Pamela to memorize this same list of questions in Teach Me Language through visual cuing and verbal repeating. I did not realize that, because of her syntactic aphasia, I was asking her to do a task that she has only been able to master after three years of applying a truly multi-sensory method of teaching language.

Pause, Rewind, or Eject?

One of the benefits of homeschooling is being able to adjust the pace of learning to the child. This is especially true for an autistic child. Today, we came across one of those bumps in the road to mastering decimals. Making Math Meaningful occasionally takes a leap of logic too large for Pamela to navigate, and today she bumped into one. The book went from activities like the one I described last week to comparing two decimals (a greater than, less than, or equal symbol). She did not immediately grasp concepts like 12 being the same as 12.0 or 12 being different from 12.3.

Pamela has taught me three different strategies when this happens:

• Pause – Stop the activity. Get a fresh sheet of paper and possibly concrete objects and re-teach the concept in a different way. If she seems completely confused, then it is time to rewind.
• Rewind – Go back to what she knows thoroughly, rerun the ideas covered since until we see where she stops understanding. Get a fresh sheet of paper and possibly concrete objects and re-teach all missing concepts in a different way. If we have covered a concept in a myriad of ways to no avail, it is time to eject. A sure sign of this is when she has developed the habit of frustration and screams every time I pull out the activity!
  
• Eject – Pull out other activities and goals for that subject and work on them. Table what is confusing her for some time. Sometimes, she is not developmentally ready and needs more time before she can master a concept. A great example of this is how we took an entire year off writing to develop her pre-writing skills!

Today we paused, and I covered what I could in the spur of the moment. Later, I typed up a sheet in Excel to add a few more steps to the teaching process that were not included in the book. My concrete objects for tomorrow’s sheet will be dollars and coins. I have fake paper dollars and coins for teaching money concepts, and I will drag them out to teach comparison of decimals. Since Pamela understands money, I plan to set up each side of the equation with one-dollar bills and dimes. I think it will be easier for her to fill in the equation properly. Then she follow my example and pull out the proper number of bills and coins for each side. When she shows an understanding, she can work independently.

If she gets it, our normal progression is to fade from objects to drawing them on paper. In time, she will fade to thinking rather than drawing. If she does not get it, I may have to fall back on my strategies and rewind.