Dollhouse Disappointment

K has showed interest in doll houses in the past. There was one at the clinic where he used to go and I heard he would ask for it and set up the furniture. I got him one at home, and initially he would let me do extended pretend play with him. People would come to visit the doll house, dinosaurs used the pottee, people had tea and stuff. He doesn't make up his own pretend play, but he watches, copies, shows interest and doesn't run away or gets frustrated. When on his own he would replicate the sequence we did.

But he mostly perseverates on his plastic ToysRus doll house now.

So I got some boxes I found lying outside no frills and decided to make our own doll house (without the bells and sounds).



I did not involve K in the making of it. He does not have the regulation to assist me in a task like this yet and I could not think of any way to scaffold it. We have to wait a few years for that I think. I thought, I will just get him to paint it with me.

Painting the doll house turned out to be a failure. K preferred to just stim with the paintbrush. He is quite clever in his stims he makes them "fit" the activity.

So he would dip the paintbrush in the pot several times and fiddle with it before putting it to the cardboard. Then he would just grind the paintbrush in to the cardboard instead of making any kind of strokes. Hand over hand resulted in protest and screams, or he would just loosen his grip and look away (i.e. put me on extinction).

Anyway, I took lots of breaks and just soldiered on with this activity pretty much all of Saturday and early Sunday morning.

I tried stamps, stencils, different brushes. Nothing worked. The more I tried to control his stim, the worse the interaction became.

I wanted to shake him and say I am not asking you to talk, recite the alphabet, socialize or even look at me or sit. Just make a few bloody strokes with the paintbrush. But at the hospital where he was born, they told us not to shake the baby (or throw a cardboard doll house at him) so yeah.

So I screamed at my husband, took a walk in the bitter cold and had a cappuccino by myself.

Lessons learned:

1. Do not get emotionally invested in or excited about any activity you choose to do with your child. This results in expectations, and possible disappointment. Which results in blame (either directed at yourself, any other random person that may be in the room, or worse at your child).
2. Do not put off getting your eyebrows waxed on the weekend just so you can make a doll house, because when you fail, every time you look in the mirror at your bushy eyebrows, you will feel more disappointment.

Anyway, I am packing the paints away for now. Just like I did with the drums, and the tennis balls and going back to sorting laundry with him, making cookies and other patterned activities.



So we have a cardboard doll house sitting around, if anyone wants one. I installed a rug on the top floor, and I can make it look prettier if there are any interested parties.

Bullies

I know it's not new, but I just saw it.

Biker boy

My son got a tricycle for a present on his 2nd birthday. It was from my sister. For 2 years I pushed the handle of that trike, hoping that one day he will "get" the motion of the pedals and do it by himself.

I pushed him down slopes, gave him verbal instructions, I moved them with my hand and showed him. He would just thrust his body forward but not do the pedaling motion. Nothing happened. He became frustrated. He just sat there, and really the most he did was learn to steer, that too when I got tired of maneuvering the handle and let him fall in to a ditch on the side of the road a few times.

So 3 weeks ago, I decided it was time for the trike to go to craigslist heaven. He had outgrown it and the pushing around thing was just not working. I got him a real bike, with training wheels. I got straps fitted on to the pedals (like an exercise bike in the gym).

When he got on, he didn't know what to do. He kept thrusting his body forward thinking that would do it. It was sad to watch. I considered for a moment returning it. It cost me $150.

NO. I said to myself. He is 4 and yes he has autism, but that does not mean I will continue to compensate. It would have to be hand over foot pedaling for years if I have to.

So down I went on my knees behind the bike and I started pedaling for him with my hands with his feet strapped. It was poorly planned because I had leggings on. I quickly became angry and bruised and emotional at our failure. So I got in the car and screamed at God for cursing me with this ridiculous situation. There were some tears and off I went, with my bewildered child in the backseat, to the nearest Walmart.

Equipped with new knee pads for myself, I returned to the park. After an hour of pedaling for K, I noticed he rode a few inches on his own. His pedaling kept getting stuck on the down part (when you almost have to pull up with one foot and backwards with the other). Who knew there was all this crap to just moving pedals?!

But after much pressure (from me) the boy finally got it. He fell off once. But I was so ecstatic from his accomplishment that I didn't care if he fell.

He must have biked 10 ft in one go on his own that morning and I decided to pull back and give him a break. He got lots of praise and I think now that he didn't need it. He was so pleased with himself.

I gave him two days off. I felt I had really pushed him hard.

He has been riding regularly since then. There is a lot to biking. There are bumps in the pavement, pushing up hill, breaking when you go down hill, not scratching yourself or looking at airplanes when you are pedaling, staying in the pavement boundaries and not veering in to the grass and so much more. There is slowing down and speeding up and using the hand break. I don't know how to teach him these except by letting him do it.

He's got his knee pads, elbow pads and helmet. If he starts staring at the sky, I warn him, but he falls anyway. If he turns too sharp he falls. If he passes over the same bump over and over, he keeps falling.

He has so far taught himself to stop pedaling down hill. If I run ahead and point in the direction where he has to turn in advance, he makes a good wide turn. So its making him think.

He starts singing or stimming on the bike, and he falls. Its a great way to teach him that yeah sometimes when we do repetitive things like driving to work, running, walking, riding a bike, we do go in to our world of self stim (yes we all do it), but that does not mean we shouldn't make an effort to remain mindful of oncoming traffic when driving, traffic lights when crossing the road, bumps and puddles while biking and running.

I can't wait to get on my own bike and ride alongside him. Great RDI activity. Slowly transferring responsibility to him for maintaining his pace in response to mine. Right now he can't even do that when he is walking with us, unless we hold his hand.

But we've come a long way.

Doesn't matter how many hours of therapy you purchase for your kid. Parents are the primary teachers. If they are not spending their time teaching, it is a missed opportunity. No one else, no matter how good they are at their job, can be your child's primary teacher.

The general consensus in the ABA and IBI world is that therapist knows child, knows everything, parents cannot be entrusted to do any real teaching, and really should not even bother.

That is never going to happen in this family.

Here is a video of him from the weekend.



See his mouth parted slightly when he is turning and getting on that bridge? That means K is thinking. I know that because I am his mother. You can see the little smug smile on his face when he is pedalling on the bridge, he knows he did something cool.

I am proud of him, and of myself!

Acceptance

I thought acceptance had various stages. A sort of linear continuum. Denial, overwhelming grief, fight or flight, dialogue, rising above the challenge, failure, bitterness, detachment and maybe finally acceptance.

I am however discovering that, at least in my case, this progression is almost cyclical. There is no time span to this cycle. I am at any given moment immersed in multiple instances of it, each instance at a different level in its progression. Some taking months and years, some lasting a few severe minutes. In this dynamic emotional multiplism I often get lost searching for purpose and meaning.

When things are good, I see possibilities, I raise the bar and belief synchronizes thoughts, plans and actions. It is however in this moment that the world slows down, the mind, for a brief lapse, allows itself to wander the forbidden universe of “what could have been”, a dangerous, dangerous place. For the inevitable return from this place will surely reset all my acceptance cycles back to level zero.