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Working With the Handwriting Enigma
Through the last few months of school, I’ve been itching to work on J’s handwriting problems. With school going on, I couldn’t squeeze in the time or afford another homework battle when we had so many other things to do. Ever since he was three years old, J’s worked with an OT on his fine and gross motor skills. At three years old, he had already started Handwriting Without Tears (http://www.hwtears.com/hwt). He loves handwriting. He’s the only kid his age that I know who actually chooses cursive over printing. In fact, when I have my college students write in-class assignments, every single assignment comes back to me printed. Printed. Apparently kids these…
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Rites of Passage, Milestones, and Lawnmowers
I have a love hate relationship with rites of passage and milestones. Most of the time I hate them. They remind me of how “behind” J is, or how he’s just not like every other kid his age. I remember going to playgroups watching some babies walk and talk at ten months, their mothers proudly boasting their prodigy child’s accomplishments and then going home thinking, “My baby’s smart too. I know it. He’s just not doing those things right now.” Milestones, physical abilities, rites of passage. They’re all really big things. Some parents hold their children back in school so their kids can have an almost full year advantage over…
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Room 404 and the Women’s World Cup
We’ll start with room 404, because everyone loves a good hotel story. There’s something about being transient, staying overnight in a strange room where other people have slept just hours before you. Newsmagazines like 20/20 like to go in and investigate with black lights all of the horrors that lie in the bed sheets, walls, and bathrooms. For some reason we like to be thrilled and terrified by hotel rooms. Growing up, my family had a lot of road trips, and the highlight of every road trip for me and my sister was staying in motels. We loved the creepiness of them. We loved to freak each other out with the “did you…
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Bringing Autism to a Rock Concert
I should start off by saying that there probably isn’t one right way of doing this. In fact, initially, we weren’t sure if there was any real way of doing this. If you do the math, taking J to see Imagine Dragons looked like this: autism + travel 3 hours to Winnipeg + alternative rock concert late at night = pure insanity So we decided to go ahead and buy 4 tickets despite of all that. YOLO, right? We were banking on a few things. This was Imagine Dragons. J is absolutely obsessed with Imagine Dragons, so there was a chance it might work. And J is fresh off his first year of middle…
