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To stim or not to stim
One of the first things I noticed when J was a toddler was the quirky behaviour. J liked to play games–spinning games. He liked to spin coasters, spin plastic plates, any sort of disc he could find, he would bring the disc to me and beg me to spin it. He LOVED it. He’d giggle and beg for more. He would also do this thing when we were outside, and run to the corner of our little town home in Illinois, tilt and close one eye, staring down the corner of the side of the house and run back. He’d run back and forth, giggling the whole time. I had…
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The Virtues of Algebra
J’s academic strength has always been math. It has been his “language”—the one he has always understood the best ever since he was a toddler. Math is predictable, math is rote calculation, math is fact families. It’s predictable. 3X4 always equals 12. He has always been phenomenal at it. And then came Algebra in middle school math, and all of a sudden, J was no longer good at math. This type of math requires decisions. You need to look at an equation and decide what like terms need to be combined. You need to be able to look at the equation and figure out how to get x by itself.…
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There’s no place like home
As a little girl, my parents, sister, and I would pack into the ’88 Toyota Camry (a luxury car compared to our early 80’s Chevrolet Citation) and drive 2 days across Canada (or the “American Way”–hovering just under the 49th parallel) to get to Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario to visit my grandparents and two sets of aunts, uncles, and cousins for a few weeks. My sister and I enjoyed every moment of it (even the middle of Saskatchewan/North Dakota parts–and who would ever guess that one day I’d end up living in North Dakota?). We couldn’t get enough enough of our cousins and grandparents. After all, we only saw them…
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Road trippin’
For the last two weeks, our little Beck family has travelled through South Dakota, Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, Idaho, and Montana. A lot of states and a lot of hours in the car together. It’s really been two types of trips–a “one-big-grandparents-and-cousins-on-both-sides-of-the-family” kind of trip and a “little nuclear family” trip. A decent part of the trip been a J, W, Steve, and Sarah. The total hour of time spent in the car tallied up to around 32 hours. That’s a decent chunk of confined family time. Everyone asked us how the “road trip” time together went. My kids have always been great road trippers. W always finds something to occupy…
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Band of brothers
“We few, we happy few, we band of brothers; For he to-day that sheds his blood with me Shall be my brother;” Sometimes I feel like this little bit of King Henry’s St Crispin’s Day Speech (Shakespeare’s Henry V) could be an epigraph for the story of this little Beck family. Not that any of us will ever be household names. Or fight in an epic war front. No one will be revering us for bravery every year. But living with autism has definitely made our family become a “band of brothers.” It really does feel like we’re this small group of people experiencing life in the trenches in a…
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A North American citizen
It’s been really interesting being around J lately. We’ve spent an entire, intensive month relearning how to “read.” In a lot of ways, it’s like watching a baby or toddler discover things for the first time–there’s this genuine thrill of discovering something new. And it’s as if everything is new–like alien from a different planet discovering earth type of new. It’s thrilling and demoralizing at the same time (because I feel like we’re THAT far behind again when I realize how much he hasn’t picked up the “first time around”). Reading is really the impetus for this discovery experience. The way we’ve been reteaching J how to read requires him…
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Calling grandma for backup
June 8, I got my first, real, spontaneous “word picture” from J. It’s a skill we’ve been really working on over the past month (so much so that my mum has been living with us in Fargo for all of June to help us with it). J and I went out for a run and I asked him where he wanted to go. His first answer? “Back yesterday.” That’s the typical sort of answer I get from J when I ask him a question. 5 word sentence maximum, always vague. Then I rephrased the question. “J, I just can’t see that. You’re going to have to use your words to…
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On “manliness”
While driving home Saturday afternoon, J asked me what it meant to be “manly.” I’m not exactly sure what triggered the thought or why exactly it was on his mind. He’s been asking a lot lately about random vocabulary. But it was an interesting time and place for that question. He was the only male in the car. My mum (who is here in Fargo for a month), W, and I were all headed back from running errands and so three females proceeded to try to explain to J the meaning of this very subjective word. I’ve thought about this word a lot over the years–partly because I’m raising a…
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The heart wants what it wants
It’s been one week and we’re doing better than I thought. Of course, Monday afternoon was hard–heart-wrenching hard. After coming to terms with saying goodbye to Fred over those last few days, the kids were ready (or as ready as they could be). W had requested to keep his collar, while J requested to keep Fred’s leash and water/food dishes (for the next dog he insisted). Steve came home early Monday afternoon and the four of us went to the park to spend our last hour with Fred together and it really was a special time. I was as mindful as I could be–trying to be present with my kids, with…
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Saying goodbye
This post was supposed to be about saying goodbye to middle school and all of the mixed emotions that come from that. But it’s not. I’ll write that one next week. This post is about saying goodbye to Fred. It’s funny isn’t it? Wouldn’t it be nice if life would let you just deal with one emotional event at a time, so you could really process it without anything else going on and just really use your emotional reserves for that one event instead of blubbering over a bunch of different emotional events at the same time? The last day of school and Fred’s downturn happened on the same day.…
