5/18/09

We discovered something so fun this weekend. There is an alphabet game online that Tyler has played once before (but only for a few mins) and basically you push a letter on the keyboard and then the computer says the letter and it's shown on the screen and then an animal comes up that begins with that letter and the animal makes a sound. Anyway, Saturday night I was looking for something fun for Tyler to do (Tyler has to have scheduled activities/structured in order to get through the day, otherwise he'll just tend to run back and forth). So he played for a few minutes, pushing letters and seeing what comes up on the screen. I wanted a way to interact with him and the game but wanted to try something new. (see video) So as I posted a week or so ago, school said that Tyler read the card that said dog and signed dog without a picture. Well i tested Tyler and the game and asked Tyler to find the hippo instead of where's the H and he pushed H and the hippo came up. I asked him "where's the flamingo" and he'd push F to get the flamingo.. it was soooooo cool!



Talking about progress and recovery makes me realize how far we've come since we started. I've occasionally asked those parents who have recovered children to see video's of their kids when they were young and were still impaired and many of them do not have videos. We realized we only post the great fun things Tyler does, learning wise, but not the other things that make day to day life so difficult at times. We want to capture all that is autism in this blog so that one day we can look back and go wow..... I can't believe that used to be the way things were, look at him now (hopefully). We also got some cards printed out from the autism society of america that basically say thank you for allowing us to enjoy the every day life activities that your family takes for granted, my child has autism, please contact blah blah blah for more info. This will allow us to educate people when we are out in public that may judge us for his behavior or the way we support him, i.e. videos at a restaurant. Keep in mind that we almost NEVER go out in public with one parent and both kids. My aunt mentioned to me this weekend that taking Ben is no problem, but when you add Ben and Tyler together, the dynamics are incredibly different. Tyler requires a significant amount of support before we can go out in public with him with two parents. This weekend, Steve took his mom out to dinner for Mothers day so I was gonna take the boys and the dog for a walk. Tyler loves his bike so I was gonna have Tyler ride his bike (I can help push since he can barely reach pedals) and Ben was gonna walk. When the boys were napping I got all the stuff around, including putting two small hand toys in the back of the bike. If anyone stops to talk to yus along the walk, Tyler loses patience quickly and will melt down if we aren't moving, these toys allow us to keep him content in case someone talks to us or we get delayed for some reasons. Well Tyler didn't even want to go out the door. Let me start over. I had to give Tyler a warning that we were going outside soon, then I had to count him down from the toy he was playing with (5, 4, 3, 2, 1) then say/sign all done. Then go towards door, he started kicking up his feet not to go out. So we get him outside finally (dog going crazy cause he want to walk, Ben asking me why TYler is crying), I sit him on the bike and he's sobbing. So I say ok.... let's try the wagon. We go to the garage, I sit Tyler in the wagon (he's still sobbing an dI don't know why, so hard when he can't tell me), I begged Ben to stay right there with Tyler and dashed inside hoping tyler didn't climb out of hate wagin before I could get back) and I got his book and pen. I ran out, by now he stopped crying so I was able to give him the book and the walk went ok. we got back adn I got Ben out, I unhooked Clifford from the leash and then got Tyler out, Tyler tripped on the wagaon handle and fell onto the cement into the bike that we weren't able to use, so I pick him up, ask Ben if he can come help me pick up the books in teh mean time, I hear clifford growling.. I look over and Cliffor is at the sidewalk growling at another dog and a little girl going by.. lovely.. so ben is annoyed that Tyler is crying again when the only reason Ben went on teh walk is kownig he got to go on swings and slides aftewards, Tyler is sobbing, and the dog is attacking the neighborhood kids.. I run over with Tyler in arm, screaming at the dog, apologizing to the girl and then gather everynoe upand get them inside. I had to get Tyler a lot of stimmy toys (he's learning table, books, piano, etc.) and move them out on the deck so he could calm down (still crying) and I could push ben on the swing, he had waited so patiently. I let Tyler be stimmy on his toys for a good 5 - 7 mins before I approached him to play on the swings (wanted him to play functionally but needed him to calm down and needed to give ben attention too) so eventually it all worked out but that's what it takes just to go on a 15 minute walk around the houe and there are still no guarantees that it will go well as in this case. So we are gonna try to capture more of these types of things on video as well as teh successes.