Looking around in Awareness

Let us not look back in anger or forward in fear, but around in awareness. James Thurber

Like many children with autism, Pamela has a hard time knowing where to direct her attention because her brain has a hard time filtering out the insignificant. Back in 1995, she started complaining about bees whenever we did table-work in the kitchen, located next to the front door of our apartment. After careful investigation, I realized that the fluorescent lights in the hallway outside of our apartment were on the blink!

All sorts of sounds bothered her and even terrified her: the car wash, escalators, elevators, vacuum cleaners, etc. Rather than studying the novel sound to look around in awareness and determine if she had any reason to fear, Pamela would flip out! Two rounds of auditory integration training helped somewhat but did not completely eliminate her biggest fears: elevators and popping balloons. Thanks to Toy Story 2, Pamela conquered her elevator phobia at the library in 2004 and even went to a very loud Christian rock concert in 2008. While her sound-based fright is nothing like it once was, she is still learning to overcome her phobias.

Because she is growing more comfortable in her own skin, Pamela is better able to look around in awareness and control her immediate impulse to wig out at something frightening, scary, or just plain annoying. The other day, we were driving around in our commuter car that has power nothing (I mean it, it does not even have a radio!!!!). Pamela suddenly pointed to the AC--the one luxury no car in Carolina can do without--and told me to turn it off! Because she acted calm and neutral, I obeyed her unusual command. Then, she placed her hands in front of the AC vents, so I said, "The AC is off." I suspected something was bothering her so I listened very carefully and noticed one of the windows was slightly rolled down. So, I nonchalantly rolled my window up, and nothing changed. Pamela saw what I did and she rolled hers up and the sound disappeared.

This vignette may seem like nothing, but, to a parent of an autistic person, this was big. While I did not even notice the noise, Pamela was having difficulty filtering out the wind blowing through a slightly cracked window. My brain filters out more noise than hers (perhaps because I grew up with six rowdy siblings), which is one dynamic function of the pre-frontal cortex. Her cortico-limbic network grew wary, while mine was oblivious. Clearly, her attention-filtering algorithms, a dynamic function of the brain, work differently from mine. Of course, Steve reacts to weird car sounds just like Pamela does.

Rather than impulsively react, Pamela studied her surroundings to find a possible source of the novel sound. She decided that investigating that noise was important and she tested out the AC theory by telling me what to do. Her pre-frontal cortex seemed to managing her uncertainty well because she inhibited impulsively reacting and choose to think through what might be happening, which is a second dynamic function of the brain.

When the sound did not go away, Pamela checked out her environment further and referenced my actions. Because she has learned to trust my actions from previous experiences dealing with scary sounds, she stayed calm and continued to think about the meaning of my actions, a third dynamic function of the brain. She understood my window theory and, when my actions made no difference, she tried it with her window and solved the problem.

Chapter 1 of The RDI Book covers five dynamic functions of the brain, the three mentioned in the previous paragraphs and two blogged recently. Pamela has been confronting her fears lately--of her own free will and on her own terms--in ways that relate to the three dynamic functions of the brain mentioned in the book. She is teaching herself to filter out irrelevant information, study the situation, and develop meaning based responses when it comes to her dislike of getting her clothes wet and her mild fear of popping balloons. It all started about a month ago when she became interested in filling balloons with water and dashing them on the brick patio. At first, I had to tie them for her but she can now do it herself.



One day, Pamela could not pop a water balloon no matter how hard she threw it. I said, "What about jumping on it?" Without thinking she stomped on it and the balloon popped, splashing water on her pants. She stood there stunned for a few seconds and then she LAUGHED. Pamela did not even run into the house to change her clothes! Friday a week ago, Steve, Pamela, and I went to the bank on a very rainy day. The rain had stopped and I noticed as we were in the parking lot that Pamela walked in the puddles and carefully splashed water. Last spring, I remember having to be careful where I parked the car because she would take circuitous routes to avoid all puddles!

The new twist is filling air balloons. Twice last week, Pamela handed me an air balloon (that she had tied herself) and asked me to pop it. She squealed and left the room BUT she was smiling, not cringing. Yesterday at the mall, four little girls were carrying BIG balloons filled with air. Pamela squealed a bit at the sight of four ready-to-pop-at-any-moment beasts but had a wide, curious smile on her face. Pamela even drew a face in a pink balloon and named it Wormy!

Un-Becoming Mrs. Bennet

The unprogrammed life is going very well. Pamela has watched Monty Python, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, and The Prince of Egypt and is waiting for an episode of Big Comfy Couch from Netflix, and David is waiting for Sonic the Hedgehog. We spent the past two nights viewing the Pride and Prejudice mini-series.

Mrs. Bennet, the heroine's mother in Pride and Prejudice, was a terrible guide for her girls in emotional regulation. She lets her moods be buffeted by any and all circumstances, swinging rapidly from one extreme to the next, complaining all the while about her "poor nerves." When her youngest daughter does the unthinkable, she locks herself in her bedroom complaining about "such tremblings, such flutterings, all over me—such spasms" that I was waiting for her to say she was getting a thrill up her leg! Mrs. Bennet would give the airport lady a run for her money in a contest. My consultant would suggest Mrs. Bennet is in desperate need of some thinkspace to learn to be calm and neutral!

Being calm and neutral is critical to set up "a learning environment that optimally balances cognitive challenge and safety" (page 13). Parents and teachers who tremble, flutter, and spasm may end up guiding their children into becoming easily unregulated. Without feeling emotionally safe, their amygdalas go into fight or flight mode and learning stops. Charlotte Mason taught me this a long time ago. In habit training, she explains not to cry out "because she knows that a summons of that kind is exasperating to big or little" (Volume 1, page 123). When we think that everything rests with us, "our endeavours become fussy and restless" (Volume 3, page 27) and "the thing that her children will get from her in these moods is a touch of her nervousness--most catching of complaints. She will find them fractious, rebellious, unmanageable, and will be slow to realise that it is her fault; not the fault of her act but of her state" (Volume 3, page 33).

Ideas are great, but the proof is how we act in real life! The other day, I was fixing Steve's lunch: trail mix, fruit, and heavy salad (he likes this stuff, REALLY). I opened a brand-new jar of heart of palms and a thick layer of green mold covered the top of each one! Steve, the one who usually makes such nasty discoveries, tends to freak out a bit because of his affinity with Monk and loses the opportunity for teachable moments. Calmly and playfully, I carried the jar to Pamela and wrinkled up my nose, "Ew!" Her face mirrored mine and she said, "Yucky!" I said, "The palmitos are covered with green mold." She mirrored my words, "Green. Moldy! Ew!" Then, I added, "Mold will grow on the palmitos if you put the jar back in the cupboard." She said, "Throw in the trash." I asked, "If you open a new jar, do you know where it goes?" She said, "Refrigerator!"

Note to Self: I will not digress about David's account of a failed science experiment that he just found shoved in a drawer, preserved in a plastic bag for TWO YEARS, that ought to be in the dictionary for the word mycotoxin. Calm and Neutral! Deep cleansing breaths, well, not too deep . . .

The vignette with Pamela may seem simple on the surface, but it illustrates two of five dynamic functions of the brain covered in the first chapter of The RDI Book. The first is vertical integration, the interplay between the basal-ganglia (the low-level clerk doing things by the book) and the prefrontal cortex (the CEO telling the clerk when to deviate from the rules). Some rules of putting stuff away that Pamela has stored in her procedural memory are:

• Throw empty temporary containers in the trash.
• Put empty permanent containers in the sink.
• Put something you took out of the refrigerator back in, if it is not empty.
• Put an opened can from the cupboard into the refrigerator, if it is not empty.
• Put an opened jar from the cupboard back into the cupboard, if it is not empty (oil, vinegar, vanilla, etc.)

When we buy heart of palms in a can, Pamela puts it into the refrigerator. If in a jar, she sometimes forgets because she lumps it in with bottled stuff. Come to think of it, Pamela occasionally puts newly opened ketchup, mayonnaise, pickles, and mustard back in the cupboard too.

Pamela's clerk was following standard operating procedure, and the interaction we had about the mold was to draw her CEO's attention to a problem. When I slowed down and spotlighted what happened to the palmitos, I tried to help Pamela encode an episodic memory for future events. The next time I find any open jars in the cupboard, I will remind her of the palmitos and give her CEO a chance to consider putting them in the refrigerator.

We were also tapping into a second dynamic function of the brain, lateral integration (which folks in RDI circles call broadband communication). Our face-to-face interaction included facial expression (wrinkled nose and disgusted look), auditory non-verbal (how we exaggerated our pronunciation of "Ewwwwwww!" and "Yuuuuuuck!"), gestures (pointing at the mold), and posture (both leaning into the jar) and blended into one message: nasty things happen when palmitos are not refrigerated. Lateral integration allows us to tap into our intuition and to integrate our perspective with that of others, emotions, and ideas.

Later that day, I struggled to unscrew the cable connection, which was not secured into the wall at all. Simple mechanic things befuddle me and test my ability to remain calm and neutral. Pamela grew antsy while I struggled to unscrew the cable and showed signs of escalating anxiety. I turned to her several times and smiled broadly to reassure her. I spoke in a bright voice to update her on my progress. Because of her edginess, I did not further stress her out by spotlighting my problem solving techniques: using a rubber jar opener to grip the nut with a back-up option of unscrewing the electrical plate. Her feeling of safety was too low for me to place anymore cognitive challenges on her.

Steve and I believe the decision to kiss cable good-bye is sound. Our church's Wednesday night Bible study on Philippians 1:21-22 ("For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain. If I am to go on living in the body, this will mean fruitful labor for me. Yet what shall I choose? I do not know!"). The pastor asked what things of this world get in the way of living in Christ. When someone mentioned television, he brought up a good point: the purpose of television is not to report the news (usually bad) nor entertain. Its real goal is to sell stuff because advertising pays for the programming.

Later that night, while we were watching Lizzie and Mr. D'Arcy engage in verbal combat, Pamela walked into the television room with her homemade guitar (three rubber bands on a plastic plate) and verbally riffed "Smoke on the Water."

Pulling the Plug on Cable Television

When we moved to a remote island near the Aleutians in 2001, we gave up cable. Although the island was wired for cable, the house we rented was not. Even going through 9/11 and the Columbia shuttle explosion--which was hard because one of the astronauts and I were in the same company at the boat school and company-mates are like family--did not convince us we were missing anything. We still had Internet! When we moved to Minnesota in 2003, we chose not to have cable installed and did the same for the house we rented in Carolina.

We changed our mind when we bought a house here in Carolina and two years of the programmed drivel offered by cable, satellite, etc. is not worth what we pay per month. We realized that less is more when it comes to channels because we end up doing the same thing every night: watching Fox News and then reruns of Monk or King of the Hill, which are both in their last season. The last straw was when BBC America pulled reruns of Top Gear (which I find funny even though I am not a motorhead).

I think we have way too much legislation on the books and I do not favor regulations that require a la carte choices for cable or satellite subscribers. I would rather the marketplace drive this, and we are voting for a la carte with our feet. When the cable representative asked me if they could do anything to win us back, I told him flatly, "If you have a list of people interested in a la carte choices, put us on that. You can call back when that option is available." The guy laughed, as did I. But, the idea is not as crazy as you think, for others have done the same.

Believe it or not, Steve and David are both all for it, but we expected the hard customer to be Pamela who delights in flipping through channels, changing the colors on the guide, and watching everything from the shopping networks to the weather channel. We made this decision about two months ago, and I had no idea how to broach the subject. Occasionally, I would lightly tell her things like "I don't like cable" or "I don't need cable anymore." Occasionally, I would tell her we were taking a break for a few hours and we turned off the DVR completely. We halted our campaign over Easter because Steve's parents were in town, and we knew having something to watch at night would put them at ease. Steve reminded me to renew the anti-cable campaign last week, and I was struggling to find a way to become unplugged.

Pamela must have overheard our conversations and came up to me last Friday with a most startling question, "What will we get rid of?" I lightly said, "Cable television!" Without blinking an eye, she said, "Yes!" She asked me about it off and on over the weekend, and today I finally made the call. Tomorrow, we return the box and it is finished. Between the library, Netflix, and our own collection of DVDs, we will have plenty to watch in the evenings. Or, we will read books, do our hobbies, use the computer, or enjoy the silence . . .

The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness! (Matthew 6:22-23)

Happy Mother's Day Eve!

This morning I burst out in a sweat, taking care of laundry, ironing a shirt for a Mother's Day banquet, and cooking a package of bacon to put together a brunch box for Pamela to take to said banquet (Van's gf/cf mini-waffles with syrup and vegan butter, lemon soy yogurt, and bacon). Steve, of course, remarked that, if I did not procrastinate so much . . . then again, David and I spent the evening in Sumter and did not arrive home until 11:45 last night! That's my excuse, and I'm not backing down!

Pamela, my mother and I dressed up somewhat for the banquet. My mother is awesome and it seems like God gave us completely different attributes: I sing and learned to play the piano and recorder; she does not sing and learned to play the harmonica, violin, and accordion. She is an awesome cook and gardener, and I have a black thumb in both venues. She loves to sew and makes the most gorgeous quilts, but sewing makes me cry in frustration. We both knit and crochet, feed the birds, read living books and love the smell of laundry hung outdoors, and we both love the Lord. Her mother was such an awesome woman, that we got her story published in the anthology, My Mom Is My Hero in a chapter called "My Mietze." (In case you don't believe me, my mother spent her childhood escaping bombs in eastern Germany, Russians advancing toward their border, and deathly conditions in a Danish refugee camp during World War II.)



The women of my church put together a wonderful program with the theme of mothers being a light for their children. They decorated all of the tables with oil lamps! The foods was delicious, the music inspiring, and the message a reminder of how much God has taught me since becoming a mother through this journey with autism: the importance of relationships both vertical (with God) and horizontal (with people) which form the shape of a cross, the need to stay in the word and in prayer, referencing God when I feel uncertain, and the joy of friendship with fellow believers (and are surprising hard to find at times).



When we arrived home, Steve surprised me with some lovely presents! If you haven't figured it out already, I avidly watch birds. The latest caper that cracked me up was the brown thrasher taking a bath. After watching it madly splash away, I figured out why they are called thrashers! Later I snapped a shot of a fat mourning dove and an elusive blue jay who is much shyer than I expected and skittish around cameras.






And, what thoughtful gift did Steve buy for Mother's Day?

Well, it wasn't flowers!

It was not chocolate (which is always appreciated) either!

He bought a gorgeous seed tube and a bluebird box! And, yes, I am Snoopy dancing!


My favorite portrait of motherhood is by someone who was never a mother herself: Charlotte Mason.

It is not for nothing that the old painters, however diverse their ideas in other matters, all fixed upon one quality as proper to the pattern Mother. The Madonna, no matter out of whose canvas she looks at you, is always serene. This is a great truth, and we should do well to hang our walls with the Madonnas of all the early Masters if the lesson, taught through the eye, would reach with calming influence to the heart. Is this a hard saying for mothers in these anxious and troubled days? It may be hard, but it is not unsympathetic. If mothers could learn to do for themselves what they do for their children when these are overdone, we should have happier households. Let the mother go out to play! If she would only have courage to let everything go when life becomes too tense, and just take a day, or half a day, out in the fields, or with a favourite book, or in a picture gallery looking long and well at just two or three pictures, or in bed, without the children, life would go on far more happily for both children and parents. The mother would be able to hold herself in 'wise passiveness,' and would not fret her children by continual interference, even of hand or eye––she would let them be. (Volume 3, page 34)

NOW, GO OUT AND PLAY!

Seeds of Dynamic Learning

Suppose you were going to teach your child to wash her hands. The typical way would be to head to the sink and wash hands together, step-by-step, side-by-side, or do it hand over hand. In the autism world, we often get more elaborate by making a picture schedule with PECS or putting together a series of ABA cards for each step (if you are skeptical, go here). When a child has a particular problem with this ritual, we might even write a social story to address the issue. For older children, we often type up a list of steps or organize highly structured tasks, often done independently through work boxes.

The reason for the static teaching styles given above is usually challenges with executive functioning: "a set of mental processes that helps us connect past experience with present action." Rather than fill in the developmental gaps needed to learn how to code and rely on episodic memory, it is more expedient to compensate by relying on strengths (visual processing, pattern recognition, and enjoyment of routines). When you are living autism 24/7 by homeschooling, working with large groups of autistic children in the school system, or facing challenging circumstances, I can completely understand the very real need to set up a system that works on automatic pilot. Where I get concerned is when nearly all teaching is done in a static fashion.

We do not always learn life skills statically. Two weeks ago, David, my sixteen-year-old neurotypical giant, wanted to make macaroni and cheese. I asked if he needed help with his first attempt, but he declined. The first batch was horrible, and we gave it to the dog. I asked him what he thought happened, and he said they were too chewy and did not cook long enough. I asked what he could do to prevent that problem in the future. He decided to taste test before pouring off the water. When he was making his second batch a few days later, I noticed he did not boil the water first. I told him that noodles turn out better if you boil the water first. This time, the mac and cheese was edible, but not perfect. A few days later, his third time, the texture of the noodles was spot-on, but the cheese sauce was too thick and he told me he needed to add more milk. His fourth try, made yesterday, was PERFECT.

The new RDI book (sample chapter here) started turning my wheels on the difference between static and dynamic learning. Dr. Gutstein, author of the book, based RDI on the theory that the autistic brain is underconnected (even genetic research is starting to support this theory). He proposes that neural connectivity depends on dynamic learning through experiences with the caveat that the optimal learning environment must strike a balance between continuity (sameness, familiarity, predictability) and flexibility (being challenged to adapt to novel and uncertain situations). In short, challenge the child without instigating meltdowns!

Every chapter ends with a series of questions that require dynamic thinking. My brain has been working overtime to answer questions like "If you were to construct an educational program that enhanced dynamic neural integration, what would it look like?" I reflected quite a bit on a quote he pulled from the 21st Century Learning Alliance, "The brain learns best when it is trying to 'make sense'. When it is building on what it already knows. When it is working in complex, situated circumstances. When it accepts the significance of what it is doing. When it is exercising in highly challenging, but low threat environments." As I ponder this, I am already seeing how a Charlotte Mason education enhances dynamic neural integration, but I will blog that later.

Before I left for Minnesota, Pamela told me she had planted an apple seed. She watered it for a few days, but nothing grew. This is the first year Pamela has shown an interest in gardening, so I bought some supplies. Pamela seemed to know a great deal about planting seeds, so rather than showing her what to do, I decided to let her show me what she knew. I played dumb occasionally so Pamela would have more opportunities to guide me. I think I need to find more opportunities like this where Pamela gets to think on her feet.

The Skunk and Arctic Animals

For about a month, Pamela and I have been narrating episodes of her life with the hopes of coding coherent memories with meaning and feeling. Life has been so hectic, I have not had much time to blog it. Sometimes, we watch a video of the activity and talk about it before doing the narration (when we made laundry soap). Sometimes, we sequence and review pictures.

A few weeks back, we visited the bookstore at the mall to spend Pamela's Easter money. Later, I asked Pamela to tell what happened like a story ,but she did not know exactly what I meant and fell back on her power words, which Word analyzed as 19 words with 3.1 words per chunk (those aren't exactly sentences):

Skunk in a room. The skunk was great. The animals were great. The book was good. CD David. Pay.

I thought she might catch on if we fell back on the question-and-answer syntax we practiced in the association method. I asked Pamela a question and she answered in a complete sentence. Stringing all of her questions together constructed sentences that Word analyzed as 25 words with 4.1 words per sentence:

I saw skunk first. I saw animals, too. I saw a book. I saw some CD's. I saw some cards, too. I do check out.

I realized that, when I framed the questions for the sentences above, I was doing all of the thinking and this is nothing more than me getting Pamela to think in a prompt-response format, a static measure of her understanding. My goal for her is to come up with something dynamic, the product of Pamela contemplating the highs and lows, unique moments, lessons learned, feelings (good, bad, and ugly). To scaffold this, I came up with a process for reviewing pictures:

* I either take pictures of items or I export and print pictures from the original digital recording.

* I print a filmstrip graphic organizer to frame the selection of the six most meaningful pictures.

* I try to have on hand more than six pictures so that Pamela has to pick out the most important details for her oral narration.

* I also wrote words on cut-up index cards to help Pamela with transitions: first, next, then, and then, after that, and finally.

* Pamela and I take turns selecting six pictures and narrating the episode to spotlight how people recall different moments from the same event.

* Sometimes, I alter her filmstrip only slightly or narrate what she picked in my own words to spotlight that people can tell the same story differently.



The following video shows how we worked on this together.



My goal was for Pamela to narrate the visit to the bookstore coherently with complete sentences. Before she retells the episode, I put away all pictures so she can rely on pure memory. Her final narration of the story in the video below shows how well we succeeded, 42 words at 6.0 words per sentence:

First, I saw some toys. Next, I saw a skunk. Then, the skunk had a tail. And then, I saw some books. And then, I sat in the floor. And that, I saw some pens. I saw some toys and a book.

We have reviewed pictures to narrate a variety of activities. I introduced the idea of using days of the week for Steve's parents' visit at Easter. To practice thinking meaning, I pulled together several episodes in which Pamela found things including the toys she bought at the bookstore and the missing cheese. We even narrated planting seeds, which I promise I will blog this week, by sequencing and reviewing pictures.

On Wednesday, they went to Zaxby's. On Thursday, they played some cards. On Friday, they went to the grill. On Saturday, I saw a health food store. Sunday, they went to the church. On Monday, they went back to Louisiana.

Saturday, they found the cheese. Thursday, David helped the blanket. They helped the skunk. Then, I founds some toys and book. Finally, I did a great job.

On Wednesday, Mommy had a bag. I got the scissors. They opened his bags. They put the dirt on the pot. They put the seed in the dirt. They watered in the dirt.

On impulse, I bought a a cute little DK game called Silly Sentences. I did not do anything formal here. We just put together sentences, some serious and some silly. Pamela felt a little overcome with joy when I started to put together, "A crocodile ate a clock" because she thought of the Tick-Tock croc from Peter Pan. She covered her ears, hummed, and replaced clock with flower. Our goal was the pure delight of putting together words, so I left it as is. Pamela thought of the sentences that reminded us of her favorite book by Eric Carle, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, and fairy tale princesses. I put in some silly adjectives as a preview to including more descriptive words in her narrations down the road.

Laundry Soap Results

Ten days ago, Pamela and I made our own dry laundry detergent from a very simple recipe. I washed the first load with 1/4 cup of detergent and was amazed at how well it cleaned the coffee stain from the table cloth. Since then, I have gradually decreased the amount to one tablespoon. Today, I washed two loads of clothes, some of which were stinky from hanging out at Striped Bass Festival in eighty-degree weather. I smelled the sweatiest clothes from Saturday and caught a whiff of nothing but the fresh air in which I dried the clothes outdoors. Once we attempt the ultimate test (washing Steve's running clothes), I will post the results!



Besides getting the laundry clean with fewer chemicals, we got a lot of mileage out of the activity. While making the detergent, we measured dry ingredients, added, shared the experienced through declarative language, attended jointly, worked on life skills, added a vocabulary word, and practiced nonverbal communication. Last Tuesday, I gave Pamela some ratio problems in which she calculated the cost of each ingredient in the recipe to calculate the costs of 2.25 cups of laundry cost and finally got the cost of doing one load of laundry, assuming 1/8 cup of soap per load: 7.3 cents. Through experimentation, I now know that we can get by with 1/16 cup of soap (or 1 Tablespoon), which is only 3.65 cents per load. With her eye for patterns and her orderly mind, Pamela is brilliant at doing ratios by the way! We also uncovered a gap in her learning which I will fill in down the road: rounding.



Now that Pamela has enough syntax to speak in complete sentences (thanks to the association method), she is working on being able to narrate orally an episode of her life coherently, reflecting on feeling and meaning. One way we do this is by watching a video of the event and making declarative comments while we watch. At first, Pamela struggled because she wanted to get by with power words, rather than full sentences. Because personal pronouns I and you are so confusing, I scaffolded our use of them by pointing and introduced we, which we have not addressed in the association method yet, because Pamela tends to replace we with they in sentences. Pamela did not remember the new vocabulary word grate from the activity, so I heavily spotlighted it while we watched the video. At first, I scaffolded her need for longer processing times by pausing the video. Once she felt competent, I stopped using the remote controller.

The video of us watching and talking about making soap shows how to work on language without heavy doses of prompting, praising, and drilling.


In the video below, Pamela narrates the episode in one shot. She even attached a feeling to the experience: "it was yucky"! I used that as an opportunity to explore other yucky things for her and told her what I found yucky (plastic bags). I came up with meaning for her (even though things are yucky, we can still try).



I typed Pamela's final narration in Word, which reported that it contained 42 words, 5.2 words per sentence, at a 0.7 Flesch-Kincaid Reading Level. Not only that, Pamela sequenced her sentences well, included the two vocabulary words I spotlighted (we and grate) and attached feeling to her narration:

First, we had the soap. Second, we grate the soap. Third, we had the Borax. We poured into the bowl. We put the cup into the box. Then, we helped the baking soda. Then, they stirred the baking soda. It was yucky.

Great American Frontier Show

The kids and I have read through Ambleside Online's Years 1 through 6--almost, for Pamela, that is. When we started doing Relationship Development Intervention, I slowed down her academics so we could spend more time on filling in developmental gaps holding her back in many areas. In spite of a very busy eighteen-hour period, Pamela managed to enjoy a trip down memory lane, recalling our favorite AO books, at the Striped Bass Festival's Great American Frontier Show (whose owners recently moved from New York to Lynchburg, South Carolina).

On Friday night, Pamela and I joined some friends for a middle school production of High School Musical and hit McDonald's for a post-show snack. I am not sure how well Pamela followed the plot of a show we have never seen because it revolved around cliques, prima donnas, underdogs, and back-stabbers, something foreign to her experience. She enjoyed the show and singing her favorite i-Tunes in the car. I loved chatting with my friend Carmen, a fellow mom facing autism, and her adorable daughter. I guess we will find out Pamela's take on the popular Disney show this week when Pamela and I narrate what we did this weekend!

Saturday morning, Pamela offered to join me at the finish line of the 10K run to cheer Steve to the end. Somehow, Steve took a wrong turn and ending up finishing the 5K instead. From what I gather, he was not the only one! His pacing was all wrong for the 5K, so he leisurely stopped to reward Pamela with a peck on the cheek before heading off to get his time. Then, we headed over to our seats (lawn chairs we had strategically placed in a neighbor's yard) to watch the ninety-minute-long parade.

To Pamela, the best of the best of Striped Bass Festival 2009 was the frontier show. We paid a dollar admission each to see the timber wolves (The Call of the Wild), black bears (Gentle Ben and The Bears of Blue River), and cougars (Pa's story about Grandpa in Little House in the Big Woods Book). We did not have a very good view of the show involving these animals, but what I could see by snapping pictures from above the crowd was fascinating.

Pamela loved the petting zoo, getting a little frustrated at the ram who would not eat ("Aw . . . Come on!") and loving the critter who did eat from her hand. Behind the lambs, sheep, rams, and goats were four big creatures on display. Pamela tied memories of books to every single one of them: Texas longhorn (Little House on the Prairie), camel (How the Camel Got Its Hump and Noah's Ark), bison (Tree in the Trail), and donkey (Brighty: Of the Grand Canyon).

Our view of the horses and trick riding was fantastic and memories of our favorite horse books by Marguerite Henry (King of the Wind and Justin Morgan Had a Horse), Little Britches and his trick riding in The Home Ranch, and Pa's and Farmer Boy's teams came to mind! She even remembered the name of Justin Morgan's horse (Bub) from the book we read four years ago. Pamela giggled her way through the warm-up as you can see in the video and photo montage I put together, which we plan to narrate this week.



While the dairy display intrigued her, Pamela was too exhausted to stick around for the milking demonstration at two o'clock. We have learned to respect Pamela's very real need for down time. "Less is more," a crossroad where RDI meets Charlotte Mason, is how we avoid sensory shutdown. We happily headed home and then I sneaked off to the library used book sale where I had the find of a lifetime: seven Tolkien books in practically new condition for only $3.50!

Oh, by the way, have I ever told you I was a geek?

Making Laundry Soap

Since Pamela is working on ratios in math right now, I have been looking for concrete activities to practice these skills. Everyone is either going green or looking to save a few bucks, and the Internet is full of recipes for cheap, green cleaning products. Not only did we make the soap, we measured how many cups of each ingredient per purchase so that we can calculate the unit cost on Monday and do some comparison pricing.

Pamela and I tried this recipe for making dry laundry soap, and we have a load of laundry soaking in 1/4 cup of this concoction. I cannot attest to the quality of the mixture at present:

1 bar of grated soap (I chose Ivory)
1 cup of Borax
1 cup of baking soda

When I studied the video, I realized how many objectives we covered during this activity: measuring dry ingredients, adding, experience sharing, joint attention, life skills, vocabulary, and nonverbal communication. The highlight for me was a ten-second nonverbal conversation between Pamela and me:


I was surfing the net for any good links about nonverbal communication and autism, and a passage explaining the DSM-IV criteria from the book Autism: Understanding the Disorder helped me glimpse the big picture about the strides Pamela is making:

The first criterion [under reciprocal social interaction] is "marked impairment in the use of multiple nonverbal behaviors such as eye-to-eye gaze, facial expression, body postures, and gestures to regulate social interaction." In the area of eye to eye gaze, a person with autism may avoid eye contact or, conversely, may stare so intently into the eyes of his listeners as to make them uncomfortable. With regard to facial expression, a person with autism may display a flat, blunted affect or alternatively may show an inappropriate amount or intensity of laughter or distress. Body postures or gestures may lack nonverbal enhancements such as head nodding, pointing, or the shrugging of shoulders. (pages 21-22)

Let me catalog all of the awesome actions Pamela took to regulate our communication: Pamela turned her head to look where I held my gaze and assumed I wanted her to write something. She picked up the pencil with her right hand, switched it to her left hand, and momentarily leaned in to write. She shifted her gaze to watch me pick up the cup of baking soda. She pointed to the box of baking soda with her right hand, quickly glanced at me, and nodded and raised her eyebrows. She watched me shake my head and grab the baking soda, and she followed my movement with her eye gaze. When I put the box on the table, looked down on it and pointed to it, she glanced at me again, pointed to the cup, nodded, and raised her eyebrows again. She waited for my reaction and, when I pointed to her and then her paper, she turned her attention back to her paper.

And ALL of that took place in about ten seconds!

Who Moved My Cheese?

Last Saturday, we drove our periodic, 2.5-hour round-trip pilgrimage to Earth Fare for Pamela's specialty gluten-free, casein-free foods. We breezed through the produce and wine section, hitting the gf/cf soy and rice cheese. Disaster happened--somebody moved her cheese, but Pamela did not panic. Since I happened to have my camera (what I really need is a headcam or TIVO in my eyeballs), I filmed how we both handled anxiety. You see, in public settings, I often experience anxiety trying to scaffold Pamela enough to prevent her from melting down. I end up overcompensating by doing a tad too much thinking for her in fear of inadvertently pushing her over her frustration threshold. On top of that, I was manning the camera, trying to focus it on Pamela, while guiding her and hopefully avoiding bumping into a stranger.

Pamela felt worried about the cheese but managed to stay calm and neutral while she picked out soy yogurt and pudding. I asked Pamela if she wanted to try the coconut yogurt (a new product) but she dismissed it for being different. I picked up two for Steve and I (vanilla and mango)--WOW, they tasted fabulously awesome! Pamela grabbed a can of whipped soy cream before looking on the other side of the cheese section. I knew she was starting to fluster mildly because she had difficulty spotting the buttery sticks and said, "I'm a detective!" I suggested she could keep looking or ask for help. She chose the former, and we breezed our way through the meat and refrigerated stuff. Pamela exclaimed loudly, "Looked everywhere." That is when I suggested we ask a storeworker, and, having exhausted all other options, she agreed.


Because Pamela stayed cool under pressure, I thought this moment perfect to spotlight for our work on connecting feelings and meaning to episodic memory. While Pamela had no problems with figuring out feelings, she needed major guiding to derive meaning. When asked for meaning, she talks about emotions. She did think of "searching everywhere" as one strategy when you cannot find something but had a hard time thinking of borrowing the perspective of a person she does not know. Even though she remembered the storeworker when she retold the story, Pamela could not remember the woman's role when thinking about meaning. My strategies were:

• Give an example of learning from a situation (touching a hot stove).
• Bring to mind people in the story, so she might learn to think about referencing workers at a store.
• Focused on what people knew when Pamela suggested anyone other than the storeworker: I did not know where the cheese was. David did not know. Grandpa did not know.
• Help her think of the situation as a story with main characters who all had roles.
• Stop the action when she was feeling overwhelmed.
• Generalize from the woman to a storeworker.

I remembered a book Steve bought called Who Moved My Cheese? by Dr. Spencer Johnson and read it for a lark. The story includes two simplistic mice and two complex little people in a maze who face unexpected change when their cheese disappears. This very short allegory reveals how to handle change successfully. After I finished reading it in about an hour, I thought, "Where's the beef?" While I will jot down all of the insights on handling change before I post it at Paperbackswap, I had deeper questions like "Who is the cheesemaker?" "Did the cheesemaker post wall notes on finding cheese that never runs out?" "Is there more to life than cheese?" "Is there a true cheese that will provide joy in even cheeseless circumstances?" "Can the cheesemaker guide them to the true cheese?" "Is there life after the maze?"

Maybe the Chesterton book is working overtime in my brain!

Carolina Wordless Wednesday: Road Sign

Video Killed the Radio Star

Mary treasured all these things, pondering them in her heart. . . Luke 2:19

The Treasure
On the way to a restaurant where I scarfed down some decadent shrimp and grits for Good Friday dinner, the ride in the car was one of those things to treasure and ponder in my heart. I was sitting in the back seat with Pamela, and she started singing Video Killed the Radio Star. One of the new things Pamela has started doing lately is singing for the fun of it! Sometimes, she sings the whole song on her own, but at other times, we echo back and forth (one person taking lead and the other doing the backup vocals). Even though the words are a bit garbled, she delivers the intonation, pitch, and rhythm with spot-on accuracy. This time, she pretended to hold a microphone whenever she sang the male part and then pulled away the mike for the back-up vocals. She even did the instruments in between the vocals. Watching Pamela sing for the sheer joy of it was absolutely priceless!

Today, on the way to the health food store with their grandparents and brother, David recorded Pamela singing for about a minute. On the way home, she sang more songs using an empty single-serving bottle of soy milk as her mike but we were enjoying her singing too much to spoil it by recording her. She sang bits and pieces from "The Hallelujah Chorus," "One-Hundred Bottles of Beer on the Wall," "Over the Meadow and Through the Woods," "Tequilla," "Next Thing You Know (Thirteen)," and "Made to Love"--talk about eclectic:


The Pondering
Singing is dear to my heart because I have been involved in some sort of music, off and on, most of my adult life. From early on, I recognized Pamela's accurate pitch and pleasant voice and pushed her into musical activities. I figured that she had enough ability to get her through rough spots socially. Once we delved into RDI, I understood my mistake of being too instrumental about singing with Pamela. She had skill and ability but completely missed out of the joy of music, what RDI calls experience sharing, which one consultant describes as follows:

Experience sharing involves sharing a part of oneself with a partner. It is the reason we desire and enjoy the company of others. Gutstein concluded that what he had been working on with his patients was an instrumental style of development, and what was being left out was experience sharing. With this understanding Gutstein began to understand autism as a range of neurological disorders that children are born with, which collectively interfere with the type of information processing that makes Experience Sharing so simple for the rest of us. Autistic people are not able to link their own feelings and experiences to the continuing stream of emotional information that surrounds them. This limits both their capacity to perceive others' emotions, and to enjoy and participate with others in a meaningful way, as well as their ability to, think creatively and flexibly.

About eighteen months ago, I let Pamela drop out of all formal music activities and decided to let development and desire dictate when and if to go back to them. She had to work too hard in such settings and never felt completely competent, even though people kindly encouraged her. Lately, her dynamic singing voice has emerged: she sings often for no reason at all. I just love listening to her music waft through the house. Hearing her sing in the car today gave me a preview of what might be in store for her future and I eagerly await it.

For You have been my help, and in the shadow of Your wings I sing for joy. . . Psalms 63:7

MinneSOta--Or What I Have Been Doing Instead of Blogging

Things got really busy after my sister Pam left town. The next day (April 2), David--pictured in what we call the Purple Haze underground tunnel at the airport in Detroit--and I flew to MinneSOta and returned home Sunday night (April 5). I spent the next two-and-a-half days recovering and doing spring cleaning because Steve's parents hit town Wednesday (April 8) and are staying here with us through Monday (April 13).

I met my friend Renee Thursday night, who kindly whisked David off to St. Cloud, where we lived for two cold, but awesome years. I had a quiet night at a very nice hotel with everything from lavender spray for the linens to guarantee a good-night sleep to a white noise CD and a Select Comfort bed--my sleep number is 35 by the way. I slept so well that I almost believe the advertising!

David spent Friday kicking back with his friend Stuart (Renee's son), while Renee, Lisa (another St. Cloud friend), and I attended the MACHE conference, where I made two Charlotte Mason presentations. How did a gal from Carolina end up in MinneSOta? Well . . .

At last June's Charlotte Mason conference, I met a lovely couple from Minnesota who had asked me to speak at the Mache conference: one topic for general audiences on Charlotte Mason and the other topic for special needs parents. I ended up condensing what I presented at last years' CM Conference into two presentations:

The Transforming Power of Relationships and Ideas – Learn how to individualize teaching for your "individual" child through Charlotte Mason’s ideas on narration, thought-life, changing thoughts, fostering problem solving, warm relationships, and imagination. It will include slice-of-life examples drawn from teaching her own typical and atypical children on subjects such as handwriting, language arts, mathematics, art, and life skills. (Excellent for parents of children who struggle to learn.) Handouts are available, and audio should be already available soon (MACHE 2009 St. Paul). Video clips used are as follows:
Talking about Glue
The First Lord's Prayer
The Second Lord's Prayer
Christmas Present
Problem Solving
Goofy Girl Narrates
Program Princess

My Child Is a Person, Not a Disability – Learn how to provide the child with special needs with the right amount of support – without smothering him – by adapting to his developmental level, building mutual trust, framing real-life activities around objectives, and tweaking the amount of support. It will expand Charlotte Mason’s ideas from the previous workshop for parents with special kids. Handouts are available, and audio should be already available soon (MACHE 2009 St. Paul). Video clips used are as follows:
Calm Day
Mental Math
Program Princess

The folks at MACHE were kind enough to schedule both of my presentations on Friday, freeing me up to spend Friday night through Sunday morning in St. Cloud. David and I spent the evening with Eileen and her husband Tom. Unfortunately, the greasy lunch I ate at a landmark spot in St. Paul (Mickey's Diner) did not sit well with me! On the drive to St. Cloud, a killer headache and nausea descended upon me. I could hardly tolerate the crackers and juice Eileen offered me as we caught up on our lives. I figured a good night sleep would restore me back to health. DID NOT! Eileen invited me on a quick trip to the brand new Coburns and I thought I would be okay. WAS NOT. I could barely keep up with her when I suddenly felt flush and dizzy and headed to the front of the store in case I needed a fast exit. When we got back to her place, I sat down on the couch and leaned my head back. Suddenly, a tsunami of nausea hit me, and I ran to the bathroom. It was awful and awesome at the same time. As soon as I hurled, I felt like myself again and managed to choke down a piece of dry toast and Advil. All systems were normal for the rest of the day!

David and I met our friends Heidi and Maxim at the brand-spanking new Great River Regional Library. Heidi gave us the grand tour, and we were very impressed with the coffee shop, the book sorting machine, and the used bookstore. The children's section is larger than the library we have in our rural town in Carolina! The elevator and multiple meeting rooms (with jam-packed schedules) are see-through. We recognized some familiar faces from the many days we spent at the old library, which is nothing but a shell, waiting to be demolished during Minnesota's construction season.


Then, we headed over to the deli where Heidi's daughter works and ate a delicious lunch--my first real meal in over twenty-four hours! Another family of friends showed up and David and I basked in the joy of friendship. We got all caught up on the goings on in St. Cloud before we headed off to to take pictures of our favorite haunts for Pamela. The road construction was absolutely AWFUL--especially the bridge that Minnesota shut down after their whirlwind inspection tour after the I-35W bridge in Minneapolis fell in 2007.



David and I headed back to Renee's Saturday night and spent the evening hanging out with her family. Several things surprised me about St. Cloud. I thought I would be colder, which leads me to conclude that surviving a cold winter in a poorly insulated house is not much different from living in Minnesota! I had forgotten how much I enjoyed meandering conversations with people who read books (I came home with a book on Chesterton), feed birds in their yard, walk everywhere, talk about their faith, etc. Everything looked dull and brown, compared to the glorious colors of the dogwoods, azaleas, wisteria, daffodils, irises, and other things blooming where we live right now.

I showed two of my friends recent video of Pamela, and they helped me understand how far she has come in the past four years! One friend told me the thing she remembered most vividly about Pamela was how she got in these perseverative conversations, and my friend had no idea what she was talking about. It was really hard to engage with her. She saw the videos and marveled at how the stim talk is nearly gone and how well Pamela engages with us, especially the referencing and joint attention. My other friend was ticked to death at all of Pamela's newfound facial expressions and gestures. She could not believe how much Pamela has improved in her ability to communicate through nonverbals!

Overall, we had a blast in MinneSOta! If it weren't so cold there, I would move back in a heartbeat!