6/15/09

I had wanted to mention this a week ago but am pretty sure I forgot. On the last week of school, Tyler and I had gotten to school a bit early one day and he wanted to ride one of the bikes stored by teh classroom. He got on the bike and headed down the hallway and wanted to turn onto the main hallway. Lots of kids were coming in so I wouldn't let him go that way, I turned him around to go back the way he came. Well that did not go over so well, so we had a stand off there in the middle of the hallway. Have I mentioned yet how much I love that school and all the people, they all know exactly what's going on, they've been there before and they do not judge all. The goal was in some way, i.e. riding or pushing, Tyler needed to put his bike back where it belonged. IN order to do this, he needed to stand up which he was refusing to do and he was sobbing. I attempted to ignore him and walk away (about 7 feet) which caused him to stop crying but not get off his knees, as soon as I said "stand up" he went to bang his head so I ran back over to block him from injuring himself but at that point i knew my strategy of keeping my distance would nto work cause he would injure himself which I can't allow. So anyway, his parapro by now was also there and asked if I wanted her to take over and I said no, I placed the demand for him to stand so it was important to me to have him stand before I left. So when he finally did stand, he got lots of hugs and kisses and praise and then together we pushed the bike back into place and walked with the parapro into class and I kissed him good bye (the teacher had also seen the stand off along withe veryone else so they all knew what was going on). So when I got out in the car, it dawned on me that I was wearing a skirt that day and since I was kind of squatting I may very well have been revealing a little too much to everyone so I sent a quick apology to the teacher of which she got a big laugh. Gotta find humor in life right!

We had another stand off this weekend although this one only lasted a few minutes. The school stand off was at least 10. So Tyler is in a habit of throwing down his sippy cup when he's done drinking, wherever it is that he finishes drinking. So he did that this weekend, through it down in the middle of the living area. So I said, give mommy your cup. He got made and kind of through himself down. he'd try to kind of scooch away from me and I'd sit him back up straight and near the cup and say give mommy the cup. Grandma and Dad both agreed that he knew exactly what I was asking of him and was just being stubborn. So long story short, I can be much more stubborn than eithe rof the boys and eventually Tyler did pick up his cup and hand it to mommy, yeah! baby steps:)

Friday night was just me and the boys and we attempted our first bike ride with just one parent. The boys are gettnig good at peddaling now and I felt pretty confident that Ben would listen to my stop requets if he got to far so we tried it (including Clifford). It went really really well. There were only 2 times it got hectic when Iw as trying to help the boys down a hill and pushing both bikes and Clifford was kind of running between everything, other than that, it was great. In fact, there were times that Ben was intentionally riding behind Tyler to let him go first and if he had to stop he would so that he wouldn't pass Tyler. Very cute.

Saturday we went ot the park with grandma and we ran into a Dad who had brought his twins to the park. I knew the boy looked familiar and then I heard the names and realized they used to go the toddler group with Tyler when Ty went to Lenawee County. it was great to see them and good for Steve's mom to see too. Owen if I remember correctly hadn't actually been diagnosed yet when we met him but was likely going to be classified as having high functinoing autism, Grace was neurotypical. so I had kind of bonded with that mom since we had the unique dynamic of having twins with only one having autism. Anyway, Owen and Ben were playing a lot together and Grandma got to see what a high functioning kid with autism looks like compared to Tyler. There is a drastic difference between them, Grandma said she couldn't even tell that anything was going on with Owen.. And in esssence that si really my hope for Tyler that he grows into a little boy that may still have autism but is able to fully functino in society and may just be a bit quirky.

Oh, Grandma taught Tyler how to spell hsi name. Give him an alphabet and ask him to spell his name and he'll point to all the appropriate letters, grandma is very proud of herself and we are too :)

We took the boy swimming on Sunday and that was fun. steve kind of whished Tyler around in the water (it was very cold) and ben played on the steps with a couple of other kids. both of them had a ball. Dad worked on Tyler getting him to make sounds before steve would whoosh him off the steps into the water. Tyler also seemed to really want to stick around us and nto take off running or wandering so my comfort zone is increasing just a bit on letting him get a bit further from me than normal. Slowly but surely we are getting there. Everyone in parent group says it comes, the 6 and 7 year old are just learning the dangers if the road and not to talk to strangers, etc. Just takes them longer to grasp all those concepts, so bear with us as it may seem we are overprotective when we were out and about with TYler but we are just tryign to keep him safe.

Tomorrow is Tyler and my big day at U of M. Wish us luck in that lecture hall with all those people. Hopefully our preparation in doing a practice run will pay off and Tyler will stay regulated and happy. I really love that we are helping out so many kids that don't even know it yet by participating in this training so hopefully all goes well.

Some not so good news on the autism insurance front. The detroit news printed an inaccrurate article in the paper and there are some other issues coming up in regards to mental health parity, so if you haven't alrady, please email your representatives on the importance of these bills.