Climbing Trees

Blog readers probably have seen our love of nature, especially perching ourselves on trees, expressed in various posts over the years.

K was whining a lot in the park yesterday about it being cold, and kept asking to go to the beach. Although it was 9 degrees Celsius yesterday, I figured that's still warmer than -9 degrees Celsius, but still not warm enough to go to the beach! How to explain weather, freezing cold water and all that to an autistic five year old with limited verbal ability?

When I had enough of his whining, I found a tree and put him in it. Because that is what a fed up parent does sometimes.



He likes climbing trees, but he was scared of this one and he was therefore informed that unless he stopped his whining, he was not going to be brought down.

It stopped the whining, but once he was down, he kept asking to go back up!

So we found easier trees for me to perch him in.

Here he is in his third tree and you can see the mix of fear and slowly building confidence. I love catching moments like this on video so I can watch them over and over again, and we can watch and "comment" together. That is one cool episodic memory we built there. I am very pleased.



Oh the little script about hand dryers in the end. K has always had a fear/love relationship with hand dryers. These days all public places are replacing slower hand dryers with those super fast ones that dry your hands in less than a second or something and he is absolutely terrified of those. However sometimes he musters to courage to do it. Scripting "You did the hand dryer" is I suppose his way of congratulating himself for conquering the tree. (Who would know that but a parent?! Another case for never sending your kid to school.)

He was all smiles from here on and even attempted one all on his own. I like how he chose one he could get in and out by himself.



We found a squirrel trying to copy us.



We also found this baby.



She wouldn't stop following us.



But we later discovered she was just after our pancakes. So we decided to keep her.

As for the beach, not only am I a supporter of experiential learning, it is often my only teaching option. So next week I might just take him to the freezing beach and that should hopefully stop him asking me to go there for the rest of this winter.