Coping with Autism

I'm starting a new job in the fall and I've been frantically trying to keep up with my political blog, my writing and the boys while preparing for the job. I'll be teaching at my daughter's school (it's a private school although I am required to apply for certification) and working on my writing still. I will try to keep up with my blogs.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the term, "stimming" refers to self-stimulation and it's what children with autism do to keep themselves calm. For Peter, in the past he has run back and forth or spun in circles repeatedly. For some children, it's playing with string or turning the wheels of a toy car so that the wheels spin repeatedly. Peter's latest stimming technique is door opening and closing. Over and over and over and over. . . well, you get the idea. Nathan, fortunately, doesn't stim to the same obnoxious degree as his brother. Nathan likes to line things up or he'll hand-flap when he's excited. Peter has to physically involve himself in his stimming and the doors are the latest in what I am sure will be a life-long issue.

Today, Nathan's private speech therapist finished her annual evaluation of him. On the evaluation scale, the bottom range of normal is 85. Nathan scored a 72! This is a far cry from two years ago when they couldn't even complete the test because he wouldn't respond. Maybe in a year, he'll be doing so well they'll discharge him from Speech therapy!

I completely forgot to mention that I spoke with Dr. Tye's office about Nathan's head. He does not have synostosis of the sagittal suture. When I was reading up on synostosis, I found out that it can be genetic in nature so, being paranoid at this point in time, I checked Nathan's head. I found that he also has a ridge up his forehead indicating early closure of the metopic suture. So I took him to his doctor who ordered X-rays and you can see the ridge leading to the anterior fontanelle but I couldn't tell past that point what was going on. (It didn't help that Nathan was uncooperative during the X-rays). The X-rays were sent to Dr. Tye (who at this point must be an expert in wiggly-child X-rays) who assured me that Nathan did not have closure of the sagittal suture like Peter does. Whew! Talk about relief! Worrying about Peter is enough.

Tomorrow, Peter and Nathan are finished with school for the year. As I mentioned in a previous post, Peter will be mainstreamed (gulp) into kindergarten next year. Nathan will likely be placed in a "reverse" class (his teacher has made this recommendation but the school system is completely restructuring the special education classes so I'm not sure where he will be placed). A reverse class sounds like what it is-- it is a class that transitions or reverses a child out of the special ed program and into a regular classroom setting. Nathan will likely always have little "quirks" but he is doing a thousands times better than he was two years ago. He's still behind his peers developmentally in several areas but he's catching up very nicely. Peter is still behind as well but he too is doing much, much better. He finally starting to starting to say things in the first person-- instead of "Do you want more milk?" He has started to consistently say, &