The Other Sensation

So, this is a post about M. She is not the star of this blog, but she is no less important than her big brother, E.

Husband-face and I are beginning to wonder if she is 'gifted.' I use the inverted commas here because I am quite embarrassed that I may be wrong and she is just a bit of a smarty pants. I am conscious of sounding too boastful, but I don't think I am wrong in saying she is kind of remarkable.

She is about to turn 2. Her birthday is on the 17th of January. My pregnancy with her was mostly enjoyable. She was planned and we found ourselves staring in disbelief at a positive pregnancy test less than 2 weeks after we decided we would start trying for a second child.

She was an alert baby. She was the noisy baby on the ward, screaming her head off at just a few hours old. I laughed. I had to, or I would have burst in to tears! But oh my, how I loved her anyway. She cried a lot. She always wanted to bear weight on her legs from only a week or two old, and would scream if we didn't hold her up to do so. She screamed in the car. She screamed at night. She just.. Screamed! We medicated her for reflux to some relief, but then, we found out she had hip dysplasia and she was put in to a pavlik harness which greatly restricted her movement. She screamed louder and longer than ever before. She HATED that thing, as did we all. I fell in to quite a deep depression during that time. I loved her so much and she was so uncomfortable. She wanted desperately to sit up, to be able to move about and explore on her tummy, but she was only allowed this after 2 or so months in the harness, and even then, for only an hour or so a week. We were 'reassured' by the doctors that babies got used to the harness, but she never did. The day we were told we could take it off was a wonderful day! We were told, however, to expect her to reach physical milestones later than average. She had missed the average age to roll over, but took to that quite happily once she was free at around 6 months of age.

Next, she crawled, but not for long. She was still always happiest when she was bearing weight on her legs, and standing. She skipped cruising furniture entirely and went straight to walking at 9 months old. She was a happier, much more relaxed little person.

At over 12 months old, she was diagnosed with a tongue tie. I had questioned this several times when she was a newborn as we have always had difficulties breastfeeding. I was 'reassured' that her tongue was fine. We a still on the waiting list to have her tongue snipped, which must now be done under a general anaesthetic due to her age. Our estimated surgery date is July 2013, which will be 13 months after our consultation with the surgeon. We started to worry that her tonight tie was effecting her speech as she never seemed to say much. She seemed always to be happy, but quiet. She said 'Mum' and 'Dad' and a few other babbly bits and bobs. I started asking other Mothers I knew if I should be concerned. She clearly understood us, though. Before she turned one, she began nodding and shaking her head to indicate yes or no. Husband face and I were always very grateful that it was "so easy to figure out what she wanted." Her body language and the noises she made were always very easy for us to interpret. And then the language started. Like a rocket. Like a punch in the face.

At this age, it is typical for children to be starting to put two words together. It is called a "two word utterance", e.g. "Daddy drink", "Mummy ball." It should all be about nouns, and Proper nouns. Maybe one or two verbs.
But M has long surpassed that stage and perhaps even skipped it. I can't remember. She now speaks in complex and compound sentences, e.g. "I want to go for a swim, but I don't want to wear sunscreen!" She uses lots of wonderful adjectives, like 'horrible', 'ridiculous' and 'humongous!' She is like a language sponge. If we use a word once, she has added it to her lexicon and will start using it, too. We some times have to interpret for others what she is saying, however, but those who know her best can almost always understand her. She asks "why?" a lot, which is a language thing (practicing the give and take of conversation), but she is also curious. "What are you doing?" she asks. What happened? Why are you doing that? What is that for?
She sings. She sings Twinkle Twinkle and Humpty Dumpty. She sings "Dave likes to wear dirty underwear!", A sing-songy insult from the film, Alvin and the Chipmunks. She loves certain TV shows and will even watch the cartoons her older brother loves and are much different to Dora and Peppa Pig. She makes up her own songs. She sings "Wipe my bum cracker, bum cracker, bum cracker, bum!" when she has pooed. Her favourite shape is a triangle, though she cannot draw one, she knows most of her colours. Her favourite is pink. She says numbers, mostly out of order, but today she counted "8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15", counting her jumps on the trampoline. She shook my breast the other day before I fed her, and I asked what she was doing. She said she was making a milk shake, with a big silly chuckle at how funny she was.

Tonight, I pointed at about 12 icons on the laptop, all identical. All episodes of Ben and Holly's Little Kingdom, a favourite television program. I named the titles for her and pointed, "Daisy and Poppy", "The Egg" etc. She remembered over half of the titles and which icon corresponded with which episode.

So, perhaps she is gifted. Perhaps she is not. Either way, she is quite special, but also becoming increasingly bored with the monotony of home life. I have withdrawn her from day care and don't wish to send her until she is old enough to go to a Not For Profit preschool. With one child who struggles when life is not 100% predictable, and one who craves adventures and action and new ideas, I can see we may be in for a few more bumpy years.

Now, anybody want to take M for me for a few days? My brain is drained!

Bad Days

There are so many days when I think "there can't possibly be anything wrong with E! He does not have autism!"

And then there are days like today, when his whole world falls apart, over and over and over and over again.

Fingers crossed for a better tomorrow

Roll On 2013

Long time, no post!

Things are going well here. We survived Christmas with the in-laws. We ended up leaving early as E was unhappy with all the people he didn't really know dropping by, but we spent a few days with his grandparents before Christmas and he was fabulous.

I am being firm. I am being loving. I am trying not to be anxious that preschool starts in a few weeks. We are being explicit about the fact we are meeting his needs. Eg "we are so glad we could take you out today, E. We are so glad we could make you this sandwich!" We are meeting your needs! Look! It is insanely helpful. Insane. The difference in him is staggering. And then I think that is increasing his confidence so much that he is so brave with other kids and is actually engaging with them in play.

His concentration seems to be getting better too now that we are really encouraging him to release the energy he has. We get him out on his bike or scooter, kicking a soccer ball or splashing in the shallows of my parent's pool. I have started reading a chapter book to him and M every night instead of our usual picture books that he has never really been that interested in. M falls asleep and E listens on, intrigued, then talks about what happened all the next day. We are just finishing George's Marvelous Medicine by Roald Dahl and he is eager to choose another book to read next!

The future is looking bright. Finally, we seem to be getting the hang of him. It is not perfect. His concrete thinking is often very frustrating, and his need for sameness seems to be getting worse. He has become a real stickler for the "rules" which may sound like a good thing, but can be very distressing for him when M, particularly, is breaking a rule. He was crying and rocking today, curled up in a ball, because M had her arms out of her car seat straps and wouldn't put them back in. But we are coping with those moments as they arise and hopefully he will start to interact with our psychologist and learn how to be "OK" with those sorts of things.

So that is us, for now :)

Change, & Funny Words

I am coping better with E's distress when I leave him now or can't do something for him. I have started to think about it like this: E is a kid that does not like change. It upsets him a lot when things don't go the way they usually do, and when people do things they don't usually do. This is why he flips out when I go out on my own, or do anything on my own, because he is used to having me around. I am not abandoning him or ignoring his needs. It is just hard for him because it is different. The more I do it, the less different it will be become, and he will gradually be less and less distressed by it. It is not my fault.

So I just keep telling myself that when I am feeling close to caving, and it helps so much. I need to feel like it is not my fault, which gives me the strength I need to just do it.

And it is working for him. I spent yesterday afternoon pampering myself and christmas shopping while the kids stayed home with husband face. He was so upset that I was leaving, but he had a great afternoon with his Dad and I came home to a happy house. Then, he was mucking around in the big bed at bed time, so we said, if you do it again, you have to go in your own bed. No negotiations. So he starts doing somersaults and husband face takes him to his own bed. He was screaming and crying, kicking the walls and his Dad. But he fell asleep. And for the first time in his 4.5 years of life, when he woke up (as he does many times during the night) he called for his Dad and not for me. I am so excited and happy about this that I am awake at 6am and nobody else is!

Moving on to something else..
E has a wonderful vocabulary and great expressive language, but he says some words wrong. He can't seem to help it and doesn't seem to recognize that he is using the wrong word in place of another, even after we have corrected him.
For example, he says
"lion" instead of "line"
"wizard teeth" instead of "wisdom teeth"
"crutz" instead of "crotch"
"eject shop" instead of "reject shop"
He also says "gravy yard" instead of "graveyard." We passed a graveyard in the car the other day, and he was asking what the tombstones were. I was trying to explain without freaking him out, and M pipes up "Don't want gravy on chips! Want sauce! Tomato sauce!" and E was like... 'Wtf? Why is she talking about sauce and gravy when I am talking about a graveyard?' So I was trying to explain that he says "gravy" instead of "grave" and he just had no idea what I was talking about. And she is yelling "want chips now! No gravy!" Fark it was flipping hilarious, but maybe you just had to be there ;)

Doctor, Doctor!

We saw our pediatrician today for the second time. He had us fill in an evaluation that I now cannot remember the name of! Gr! Something about identifying developmental delays I suppose. So he looked at that while we were there but did not comment much. I am hoping he will CC us the letter he sends to our GP as he did last time. We also showed him the results of E's speech assessment, which said she did not test his receptive language ability (only expressive) due to time constraints and non-compliance, so he said that may be worth revisiting further down the track.
He seemed concerned mainly with E's sleep. He has nightmares, night terrors and terrible separation anxiety throughout the night. We told him that we had followed up on his advice to contact Redbank House who I have mentioned before. They deal with child and adolescent mental health "stuff." They can't see us until March, but he says that is actually quite a short wait so that's good. He said they should be able to help more with the sleep stuff.
He said obviously we should just keep treating it as "high functioning autism" and follow the recommended guidelines for early intervention which we are doing.
He bought up medication again but agreed with us that it is not 100% in E's best interest to go down that path (yet.)
He also asked if we wanted to do blood tests for genetic testing, looking for abnormalities on the genome that may show that there it is a genetic factor. He said it is helpful from an academic point of view, but considering E's anxiety, would likely cause him extreme stress (yes indeed it would!!!!!!), and it isn't going to help us in treating him. So we have that on the back burner for now. Autism is in my family so there probably is a genetic factor, but like he said, not worth the stress of looking at that now.

So that was that and we see him again in 6 months. I think husbandface was slightly disheartened, but I didn't expect much more than what we got out of the appointment. E was less distressed than he was during the initial consultation so if nothing else, we have at least proven to him that it wasn't as bad as he had been imagining for 2 months.

In other news, E is back on the sticker chart wagon! Hooray! He placed the last sticker last night and after careful consideration, decided he would like an alarm clock for his reward. Just what every 4 year old wants?
I thought we would be looking for ages, but he spotted one he loved in the first shop we went to. To be fair, it is kind of awesome!

The Sweetest Things

I was tidying E's room earlier tonight and opened one of his little cupboards. I took a photo of what I found. The top shelf has all the deodorants and perfumes from the whole house. He loves smelly stuff and loves smelling nice. The second shelf has photo albums, mainly baby photos of E. The third shelf has buttons and clasps and whatnot from a special button box of mine that used to belong to my Nan. I didn't realise he had taken the photo albums or the buttons, but to see them treated with such care makes me want to weep. So sweet. I just shut the cupboard and didn't say anything. I don't mind if he wants to hold on to them.

Moving On

We have decided to stop seeing our OT and start seeing someone with more experience. Unfortunately, we don't have an assessment with this more experienced OT until February. So for now, we are just seeing the psychologist, and have a follow up appointment with the pediatrician next week.

Things have been going reasonably well. E is coping really well with my newfound firmness. I had him doing jobs to earn the money to buy the little toy he wanted, and we have taken down our Christmas tree after our warning were ignored and he would not stop messing around with it. As anticipated, the reward charts have lost their impact, but we are keeping it up, hoping he will regain some enthusiasm.