Back To School

Just a quick update, and apologies for slacking. I’ve taken a break from label gazing and am focusing on…living life. Which is a good thing!

At age 5 and a half, Brad is doing well.

On the speech front, he was recently evaluated and is testing in the average range for vocabulary, language organization, syntax, direction following, paragraph comprehension and question comprehension. All good! His deficits are in the domain of “narrative formulation skills.” Even there, he is okay when questions are structured, but when questions are open, he struggles. Also, not surprisingly, his speech is characterized as idiosyncratic. As for pragmatics, he excels at “topic initiation” but fails at “topic maintenance”. Love the SLP jargon. Big picture though, he is communicating, and it’s mostly in the average range. I’m so proud of his progress.

Now onto the fun stuff: he’s off to kindie in a few weeks. Can you believe it? He’ll be in the public school in a regular classroom, with an aide. Not a private aide – that I’m aware of anyway. He’ll get pull outs for speech and some sort of social group. I haven’t had the first meeting yet with the school, so I’m not really sure of the details at this point. I’m afraid for him, socially, but that’s my problem, not his. His special ed team says he’s ready.

As Bradley’s speech has improved, his personality has continued to emerge. He really is a joy to parent. Of course I’m biased but he really is very sweet, smiley and well behaved. He continues to be quirky, but that’s what makes him who he is. We appreciate his unique perspective.

Academically, he’s reading up a storm. I marvel at this ability, especially because he’s so far ahead of where his brother was at this age. However, his reading ability is way ahead of his comprehension – which is either good news or bad news, depending on how you look at it.

Anyway, sorry again for the slackage and best wishes to all.

Update

Hey all,

Sorry for the infrequent updates.

Brad is doing well. Progress continues to be slow but steady. It's like we had a language explosion from age two through 2.5 years, but from 2.5 through 4.5, it's been really slow language-wise. Just trying to be completely honest.

That having been said, and without further ado: we had our IEP meeting last week, and it's official: Brad's going to kindie next year. Full on mainstream, only he will be in a class with an aid. Not his private aid, but a teacher's aid. Accommodations include wait time and prompting and the like.

And private speech therapy continues to hum along. Same type of inference/"how do we solve the problem" drills.

On the social/friendship front, not a whole lot going on there. But he had a blind date - a playdate where the mom didn't know Brad has a dx - and it went okay. That was just two days ago. I might try to fix him up again. The suitor is the little brother of one of Jeremy's friends, and he's age-matched and in the same school district. I think he's a good catch.

So that's what we're up to. Hope everyone in the blogosphere is doing well. I will try to post a video soon.

One Person Book Club Revived

Once upon a time, I was new to the world of autism. I was very calm and deliberate back then. (Not.) Anyway, I charted my reading adventures under the tag One Person Book Club.

Here, I will list some of the other books I have read, but don't particularly recommend, along with a relatively new title I recommend highly.

First, the books I've kicked over the past few years that I can't recommend without qualification:

Quirky Kids - A decent basic reference for parents, but for me, normatively, it was too focused on remediation.

Smart Moves, The Dominance Factor, Brain Gym - These are OT-themed books. The skeptic in me can't recommend them without qualification - not evidence based enough. ("It worked for Johnny! That's all we know.") But they are interesting, and if lateralization and the mind/body connection are areas of interest for you, you might enjoy these books.

And now for a book just published in May of this year that's a must-read for parents, particularly if your child is hyperlexic: Autism and Talent. Where so much of the research and so many of the parent resources are focused on deficits and remediation, this book focuses on talent, and in doing so, sheds light on the nature of autism itself.

The introduction is available for free online here. The book includes contributions from Simon Baron-Cohen and his research team, Temple Grandin, Laurent Mottron et al, whose research team includes netizen Michelle Dawson, and Allan Snyder (whose research the Eide Neurolearning Blog discussed here).

And to be clear, I recommend this book both from an intellectual perspective (interesting read!) and from a personal, parenting perspective. This book gave me a glimpse under the hood, and I'm not referring to talent (because to do so with a 4 year old is a little silly). I'm referring to the bias to local processing and the differences in sensory discrimination and processing. The entire book is evidence-based theorizing by some of the world's most respected researchers, but it's written in non-technical speak, so the every-mom or every-dad can understand. It also includes information (and, I think, messages) specifically directed towards us parents, as to how to develop talents. (Hint: regarding talent as maladaptive is not encouraging to the subject!)

Gone fishin.

I hope everyone is having a nice summer. Breaking news on our end: Brad is swimming!

A Lie Becomes the Truth (Alternative Title: "What Happened?!?")

Lo and behold, lie #3 - older sib speaks for younger sib - has become the truth.

By way of background, Jeremy is 22 months older than Bradley, and Jeremy is about as typical as they come in terms of childhood development. I knew Jeremy would be a great big brother to Brad. He's nurturing and caring, and likes to lead in play. Jeremy is also a good peer model, with good social skills and language. What I didn't call is what a great friend Brad would be for Jeremy. Jeremy always seeks out Brad to play. It's not a one-way street, at all. They're like two peas in a pod, and I couldn't be happier.

They often play together, sometimes unattended, and inevitably there's some sort of conflict. After all, they are ages 4 and 6, so play requires some referee-ing.

Into the room I barge.

"What happened?!?"

The problem: Jeremy does all the talking. Perhaps I'm facing Jeremy instead of Brad when I demand an explanation. Perhaps I'm at fault here too.

I've noticed this a lot lately. Sometimes Jeremy reports aches and pains to me, on behalf of Brad. And sometimes, Brad needs help (wiping) in the potty, and rather than holler, Jeremy will come get me.

Now that this revelation has dawned on me, I'm going to make a conscience effort to elicit speech from Brad and tell Jeremy to shush when he goes into spokes-brother mode.

I'm not sure what else to do by way of remediation here. But at least now I know what lie #3 is all about.