Tag Archives: vacation

A Lesson

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Today was my first opportunity to really teach my son.  Not the things that every parent teaches their kids, like manners, humility, and putting both the lid and the seat up to pee.  Nope. Today I gave my son his first real baritone lesson.  And it was eye-opening.

I think every parent has some understanding of the cognitive abilities of their own children.  I should say every parent who is involved in their child’s life to the point where they have regular conversations, and enjoy doing things together.  Let’s face it — that statement just disqualified a lot of parents.  But intelligence is harder to gauge for us special needs parents.  Our kids don’t often test well, and we have to take the word of the people who spend their days with them at school, and hope we can trust they know what they are doing.  We do some homework during the regular school year, but his teachers send home assignments on which he will have success, to lessen the negative connotation of “homework”, a BRILLIANT idea, I might add.  So even homework does not give me a clear picture of what we’re dealing with inside that big noggin of his.

This afternoon, I got a better understanding.  As his teacher, I saw a talented kid who picked concepts up amazingly quickly, but needed almost constant redirection to focus on the lesson.  It seemed that once he learned a concept, it was pretty much solid, too.  We worked for about 20-30 minutes, and then he was done, but he had learned the concepts so quickly, and so well, that there was no reason to extend the lesson.  Ideally, every kid would have this type individualization, and they would achieve amazing things.

I know that many of us in the special needs community have this nagging concern that is always in the backs of our minds, and oft repeated to us by well-meaning friends and family members: “But what will you/he do when he is done with school?”

To others, I say, “I can’t dwell too much on the future.  I really have to take it day by day.”

To myself, I often say, “I have no freakin’ clue, and that scares the crap out of me.”

But today, after that lesson, I started seeing some answers to that question.  Hopeful ones.

My teacher taught me well today.

A Bedtime (Social) Story

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Evidence of The Boy’s rebellion from the night before.

As I was writing my post last night, a storm was brewing.  Not outside.  Inside my son’s head.  See, we just returned from three weeks in North Carolina, where he gets to spend some nights at Grammy’s house, and get ridiculously spoiled.  She is very proud of herself that she has instituted “bedtime”, and “lights out” at her house when he is there (as well she should be), but I’m pretty sure he is faking her out on the “lights out” part of it.  Sneaky little…

At our house, The Boy has to relinquish his iPad (and yes, it’s his, and yes, that’s a completely ‘nother post) for “lights out”, so that I can put it in my room “to charge” (wink, wink).  Because if he has it, he will be on it until he passes out, which results in a not-so-conducive morning routine, to say the least.  The boy needs sleep, and he has had problems getting to sleep for the past few years.

Needless to say, after returning from vacation, and getting away with all and sundry at Grammy’s house, he is having a bit of a, um, “transition” back to our house rules (translated: he’s being a holy terror on this point).

Last night, he screamed and cried (“But I’ll be BORED!!”), wouldn’t get into bed, and even went so far as to zip up his suitcase (which still has unpacked clothes in it from trip – so sue me), take it out to the side door entry, and announce that he was moving, and not living here anymore.  In the past, he has gotten as far as sitting on the step outside of the side door, at which point I think he realized that he didn’t have anywhere to go.  Actually leaving the house makes me nervous, as he used to be a bolter – one who would take off at a moment’s notice, and just RUN.  I cannot run (without huffing and puffing and showing the world how insanely out of shape I am), and so I have that fear.  That he will walk out the door and be gone.  So while I do my best to ignore the behavior that he is employing to get my attention, I can only ignore it so far.

Luckily, last night, he did not actually go outside.  Did I mention that this is all occurring at like midnight?  OK, more like 10:30pm, but it FELT like midnight.

At some point, I asked him if we needed a social story.  This is something that I have used with him to a pretty amazing degree of success.  It amazes me because he is such a logical kid, that a social story seems as if I am dumbing concepts down for him, but it works!  It helps that he has a love affair with PowerPoint, which is the program we use to write them quickly (he saved the 88 PowerPoints he made at school this year on a flash drive…), and it also helps to have him help write it (or at least pick out the pictures).  As we wrote this one on bedtime together, I could feel his breathing slowing next to me, and almost hear his brain working.

When we were finished, we read it together, and he went to bed.  Notice I didn’t say “went to sleep”, but I’m always OK with babysteps.

Have you used social stories?  Have you written your own?  How did it work out?