For many years I wouldn’t let Beth touch the dvds and cds because she had no respect for things, scratching them or breaking them when using them for things other than what they’re meant for. She never understood why if she broke something we couldn’t just replace it, still doesn’t in a way. I even had to cut a dvd off of her finger once cos she had pulled it down right over her knuckle!
Over the last year though she’s starting to understand better and she rubs the dvds before putting them in the player, and always puts them back in the case. The problem is that she puts them into the wrong cases! She was looking for Ice Age 3 yesterday. I asked her to look for the case. Her response “but Shrek is in the Ice Age 3 case.” “Where is Ice Age 3 then, in the Shrek case?” I asked. “No, Ice Age 3 is in the High School Musical 3 case.” Der Mum! I should have known. And on it went, HSM3 was in the Powerpuff Girls case, you get where I’m going here? What she does is to go up to the dvd player with the case with the right movie in it. She’ll then take the old one out and put it in the case that she’s taken the new one out of. She knows exactly where all of them are because she’s put them there in the first place. It all makes perfect sense to her, just not to anybody else in the house! I think it all goes back to the sense that she thinks we can all read her mind so we should know where they are. She’s rather scornful when we don’t get that Shrek clearly wouldn’t be in the Shrek case. After all, why would it be when she had watched Ice Age 3 beforehand. How dumb am I! I think it’s time to buy one of those big cases where you take them all out of their hard cases and put them all together. It sure would save a lot of room too.
I’ve noticed over the last few days that Beth’s language has been better, she’s been using more words to get her point across. For example if she doesn’t want something else to eat, instead of just saying no she’ll say something like “not just at the moment thanks” or “No thankyou, I don’t want anything else.” She even pre-empts what you’re going to ask such as on our pizza night on Thursday. She saw that I was going to ask if she wanted anything else so she jumped in with “I don’t want any more chips, or pizza, or drink thankyou.”
This confidence with words has also brought with it a bit of an attitude. When Paul went to check on her last night in her room she looked at him and asked “What do you want?” When he said he wanted to say goodnight she answered with “You can go now then.” Now for those of you who know Beth you know that she’s not a mean girl or usually a rude girl. She wasn’t saying it to be horrible, she just wanted to be left alone. I’m sure that most of you who are reading are doing so because you know somebody yourself who has autism. They just say what they mean. You have to have a thick skin to be a parent to an autistic child because they can be blunt and downright hurtful. This doesn’t mean that they don’t care or want to hurt your feelings, it’s just the way they are. It can be quite embarassing at times but also quite hilarious. At times I feel like if I don’t laugh then I’ll burst out crying so laughter has to be the best option. I’ve done the other and believe me, it’s hard to stop.
I’ve had an email from a lady called Brita who asked me to put a link here for her program called Fast Forward. I have heard of this which is a type of Early Intervention Program. They are doing a seminar called Building Brains for Learning and can be accessed by people with or without FaHCSIA funding. I told her I would be happy to do this, anything that I can help get out there that would be of benefit to families such as ours is a no brainer. I was also happy to get an email from an obviously professional organisation that I had heard of. This means that people that I don’t know are reading my blog! Yay! So here it is (hope it works!)
http://www.fastforword.com.au/Content_Common/pg-Fast-ForWord-and-Autism.seo
and here is a link to their seminars page
