07/30/10

New Adventures

We have decided to take a break from church for a little while because I need to focus on potty training with Daniel. When I told the kids that we were taking a break however, they were not very happy so we will see we may be going off and on depending on how Daniel does. The potty training is in the works, the good news is that he is sitting on the potty and giving it a try. He has only used it twice but he is trying and that is a huge accomplishment. This is the first time he would even sit on it longer than two seconds. I also wanted to take this time to help him with social skills, both Ariel and Joshua need to work on this as well. The problem is that I am not the most socially skilled person there is but that is mainly with my peers. I get along much better with people younger than me and kids.

I love kids!

Kids I understand, we speak the same language and nothing they say offends me. I get it, they are the most honest people I know and they “learn” how to be not so honest. (Not in all situations but in a lot) So I decided that we needed social curriculum to go along with our school curriculum and places to go to practice our new-found skills. I am learning right along side my kids when it comes to this stuff and applying it to my own social situations. Right now we are trying this one for the kids Community Social Skills and Faces and Emotions. We are waiting on their arrival but I have been watching the clips on their site. I am looking forward to the faces and emotions one because I always fail at that. I cannot read a persons face at all, I can read their mind but not their face! The problem is that people are usually not portraying on their face what they are actually thinking or saying, hence my confusion and lack of face reading skills.

As we focus on this we have opted to try a new place to go for the kids.

A couple from our past church headed up the children’s classes on Weds. nights, I discovered through Facebook, (which is no longer my enemy and I now understand it somewhat) that they were doing the classes at their new church. It was about a month ago that I had been playing vacation bible school songs for the kids and we came across ones that we sang at the past church, Ariel got very sad and asked why they couldn’t go to Rainbows anymore and I thought of the couple and thought well let me find out what it is all about at their new church and see if it will work. We have been going for the past three weeks and it has been very good. They have a Rainbows class which is 3-4 year olds, then the boys and girls are separated, I am not a fan of that but our society seems to think it is best for girls to do girl things and boys to boy things. I think they should do them all, but I have no comprehension of a difference between myself and males we are all equal and I may like some of the things they like and they may like some of the things I like.

The main thing is that we can all learn something from each other and be on level ground.

Anyway, Ariel is in Daisies and Daniel is in Ranger Kids. Ariel is so happy to be in a group of girls her age. David and I both were kind of leery because we know how evil girls can be but it seems to be going ok. It is clear though that she is much like I was as a child, completely care free, giggly, loud, says whatever comes to mind and doesn’t have a real understanding of authority. She is not unruly or disobedient but I can see how her teacher would think she was being that way. I have to let her be there and go through real life stuff but I hate it! I don’t want her to experience anything like I did and I want her to be confident in herself and not lose her care free and joyful self. I am over protective I know but it is so precious I don’t want anything to ruin it for her. Joshua is doing great, the thing about him is that he has what David has, a natural self-confidence. It’s not cocky, though people think that it is, it’s not that.

They naturally challenge anyone who tells them that they have to do it a certain way.

This gene runs in me, as well as Ariel but we are not as confident as they are and will begin to doubt ourselves. Not David and Joshua they doubt everyone else and must be proven wrong. Although, it is not cocky it is just cautious I guess, there is really no clear way to describe it but I have no doubt that Joshua will not put up with stuff and if something is wrong he will tell somebody. Ariel seems to internalize things like I do. I was kind of happy that Daniel would be in a class of just boys that were his age. I am thinking this may help him socially and be able to mimic conversations and see how boys are. His class is 5-7 year olds so there is a lot for him to observe. The first week he did not want to go in but he explored the whole area, we walked around the church building, the forts that the boys are in, and Ariel’s building. He was observing everything and taking it all in.

When we were leaving he told me that he wanted to come back.

During the night and the next day Daniel told me about the stuff that was going on there. He told me about the boys running and playing kick ball, the big fans that the church has all around the buildings, the huge locus we found (that was so cool, he was huge and had awesome colors on his belly) and the window air conditioners that he studied the majority of the time we were at the forts. He did take it all in and the next week we went. He didn’t want to go in class so David and I played with him outside and it was good but at the end he decided that he wanted to go into the fort and check it out. We went in and then looked at the other classes and their forts. This week he went to class, we stayed with him.

The first part the leader had the boys go outside and play.

We went to the basketball courts and the boys got to run around. The only issue I really have is that the attitude around here is “We are men and do men things and girls go do girl things”. I have been around it enough to not care at all and if I want to play with the boys I will. I played chase and kept an eye on the boys because the older ones had some aggressive tendencies but over all it was good. Daniel jumped right in the midst of them and was dribbling his hand with a pretend basketball. But what he was actually fixated on was the court lines and he was running them with his pretend ball. The other boys thought he was playing just like them, I guess that was good. At one time he began hitting the basketball pole because it makes an echo sound that he figured out last week and a couple of the boys came over and asked what he was doing. They soon discovered the fun of making echo noises as well, a few minutes later Daniel ran over to us and was smiling.

None of the boys gave Daniel strange looks but they could tell that something was different from them.

Daniel sat on my lap in class and then moved back and forth between me and David. The boys Daniel’s age were perfectly fine with this and they seemed to have that longing for mommy look themselves. I felt for them and wanted to take them all in my arms and huddle together but it is a man cave and that is not allowed. Over all we are pleased and it seems good for right now. The leader usually has his wife with him and I met her last week, she seems to bring in that balance that is needed in there so it’s not all manly and there is some nurturing going on too. I like that a couple is leading the group. They have been very understanding and accepting of Daniel and for now it exposes all of us to something new. The other thing I like about the group is that it is structured much like Boy Scouts so they will be doing outdoors stuff, it is learning survival skills and how to take care of yourself and they go camping and canoeing, things like that.

I think these are good things for Daniel to learn and see how he does with it all.

We are planning on staying with him for a while, at least until he feels comfortable and is able to communicate to the leader. He can earn badges and this may be a good thing for his self confidence and independence. We are currently taking them to Lowe’s every other week, they have Build and Grow classes and they build items and earn a certificate and badge when they complete it. They all seem to enjoy this and are proud of their accomplishments. We will take it week by week and see how things go. If he doesn’t feel up to going to class that is ok, he then has alone time with David and myself, which he does not get often and Ariel and Joshua get their much-needed social time as well. So far it seems to be a win win situation.

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07/30/10

Peanuts and Straws

I am so excited. It has been about 8 months or a bit longer since Daniel gave up the bottle. Well gave up is a bit of a lax saying but I will use that. In my post The Bottle-My Nemesis it explains how much we had to work to get off the bottle. During all of this time I have been trying to teach Daniel how to drink from a real straw. He has not been able to comprehend how to suck up, the only thing he has been doing for all of these months is blowing bubbles. Now blowing bubbles in itself is very good and I have praised him for this accomplishment but since his sensory issues have not made it possible for him to drink from a normal cup, we have had to continue the Honey Bear cup. (I put the link of where we found them so you could see a picture.) The Honey Bear cup is squeezable and allows the child to be in control of the amount of fluid that they retrieve into their mouth. The straw is a flexible clear plastic tubing like instrument. It looks much like the tubing for ice makers on refrigerators. The secret is ensuring to keep the seal between the straw and the hole on the lid.

So what caused Daniel to finally be able to drink from a regular straw?

I cannot answer that question. He makes huge strides all of the sudden and they always come after several weeks of not so good times. Yes, indeed since the first of July Daniel has been having some rough days and he has gotten very frustrated on several occasions. Now when he starts to have a rough time I just continue to remind myself that he always has a big breakthrough with something after wards. The reason I have to remind myself is because when he starts to do behavior that he has done in the past I get a little scared. I see all of his progress and then to have him seem to go backwards for a time puts a little doubt in my mind. It’s my own issue, it throws me. I do the same thing with everyone, with David if he is slightly out of character, I begin to ask questions. What is wrong with you? Why are you doing that? What is going on?

I can’t help it.

I do the same thing with Daniel. If he begins to act differently, I begin to have all of these questions flood my mind and then begin to fear that I have not done enough for him. I have gotten a lot better with this but the thoughts and doubts still come, they just don’t last as long. I focus my energy on observing our current situations and if there have been any changes. I have learned to support Daniel through the situations and wait. This time his frustrations were not everyday, they were off and on. They only lasted for short periods of time. What is funny is that during these times I feel this need to push him to try new things too, maybe because the pattern has been that he does something major while he is having these hard times. The day he drink from the straw he had a couple of moments that day. However, it did not stop him from playing with Ariel and Joshua.

He plopped right down in the middle of them playing and joined right in.

Either Ariel or Joshua had an extra cup on the floor and Daniel was playing with it. I said “Hey, Daniel why don’t you take a drink?” He started laughing and Ariel said “Yeah, Daniel take a drink.” I said “Daniel watch Ariel do it then you do it.” Ariel showed him, which she has done time and time again, but this time he did it. I started jumping up and down and saying “Yea! You did it, Daniel you did it!” Everyone joined in and he was so excited. He kept drinking and then said “I did it! I did it!” He has now given up the Honey Bear cup and is drinking from a straw cup. Not only did he do that but at the store the other day, Ariel insisted on getting peanuts….in the shells.

Let me just tell you, I do not like peanuts to begin with but in the shell is even worse!

We got them because she doesn’t usually ask for specific food items and I decided I could sacrifice shelling these darn peanuts for my kids. I guess. We got home and I put a bunch of peanuts on the table and we all worked on trying to shell these nuts, Daniel wanted some too. He tried to crack the shells but was having a bit of a hard time. He asked me to do it and as I opened them he ate them. He loves them! They all do. And now for the past three days I have been shelling peanuts and thinking to myself “How am I going to get these guys to eat peanuts already shelled?” I think I have a plan, I can use the lack of patience in 4 and 5 year old to work in my favor, I hope. It is all worth it though, Daniel trying new things and Ariel and Joshua having fun. The peanuts are actually a great family time kind of thing.

We all sit at the table and talk while we work on those peanuts.

I love it when my kids surprise me with their accomplishments and help me to break out of my own mode. The straw and peanuts are two other examples of how I never know what they will try next or what is possible. They remind me that we should always try new things and challenge ourselves always. It is very easy for me to challenge our kids and think of new things for them but they help to remind me that I need to do that for myself as well. Challenge my thinking, my molds, the foods I eat, and the places I go. I find it very easy to stay in my secluded world, eating the same thing everyday, doing the same things and forgetting that there is this whole huge world out there for all of us to explore. I go through explore spurts myself, sometimes I want to consume everything I can about this world we live in and other times I never want to leave the screen of my computer.

It is a good time for exploring and when I feel I have explored too much, I will come back to my screen.

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07/16/10

Target Gave Me Skills

Pretty much all of my childhood and young adult life is a fog when I think of social situations. I can remember certain events and every detail about them but over all I cannot remember kids I went to school with or many people who I had worked with during my young age of 16 up to my early 20′s. I do remember many people who I spoke with and socialized with to a point and I did have friends but I do not remember how we stopped being friends. I don’t have any recollection of why we stopped hanging out or talking. I am under the sneaky suspicion that it was my doing some how. Either I just dropped off the face of the earth in their world or they got sick of me.

I do recall several people who I just stopped talking to.

I just didn’t return their phone calls and I let them go. There were several times where my anxiety caused me to never speak to them again. I have a phone phobia for sure, I always feel like I am calling at the wrong time or something. I do not want to interrupt anything or be bothersome. I also get all freaked out when they say they will call me, I need a time. I try to insist on a time because otherwise all day long I am thinking about when they may call and I can’t get started on anything because if they call then whatever I was doing will be interrupted and I will not be able to focus on the person at all and I admit at times I get quite annoyed by that. We finally just stopped answering the most days because David and I both have phone issues and surprise phones calls affects our family in a big way.

Although, when people call me unexpectedly and it is family or they sound in need I will drop whatever and call them back.

The thing is though, that has given me the control over the calling, I have had time to process and now can communicate and make the adjustments for the day to be able to talk on the phone. Some would say I am being a control freak but it is not about that it is about the disruption of our family schedule and social anxiety that no matter what, I will experience even if the phone conversation goes well and I feel that I was understood and I that I didn’t make any social mess ups. It takes a lot for David and myself to talk on the phone, it really stresses us out. I have another whole phone post that I need to write. It goes way back to childhood, me and my phone phobia.

As for my social skills, well most people would never even know that I have any issues.

I learned from the best. At the age of 16 I was hired on as a cashier at a Target store. I knew retail, my mom had worked for Air-Way and then it was bought out by Target. She would have to bring me to work many nights and I loved to help clean up, they called it zoning. She was in the clothing department and I loved being surround by the clothes in the middle of those circle racks. It was so cozy and comforting, however I was not supposed to go under them and would get in quite a bit of trouble for doing so. I have fond memories of working there. I loved working but I hated anything to do with customers. My customer service, lets say lack of, was always getting me into trouble. I am not one who believes that the customer is always right, but I was conditioned into thinking so.

Eventually I was able to work a job there that was just filling the shelves.

I loved it! The merchandise had order, the empty spaces had to be filled, and any over stock had to be put away. The items all needed to be put in their proper places and neatly. I transferred to a different store and was promoted to charge back, I love it too. Eventually, transferring to the stock team, unloading trucks, stocking shelves and putting away over stock. Then to a position that was called pull team at the time which used a scanner to scan the lows and empties on the floor and then it told you where it was in the stock room so I could pull it and fill the shelves. Thinking of that job still makes me smile. I loved it, I genuinely enjoyed doing those things. Eventually, I was promoted to front end, the worst time of my career and then promoted again to the sales floor in several different departments and ultimately to a management position.

I was pretty happy with that because I was over the backroom and logistics of the store, no customers.

Once I had to start dealing with customers as management I began to hate my job. During all of these positions I learned a ton about social skills. However, there was always my attitude problem. Just as in school, I always got in trouble for my “smart” mouth and that did not change in the work force. I came across very aggressive and hateful to my peers and to management at times. Most of the time I had no clue that I was behaving in a negative way, there were times though that I didn’t care, I knew that they wouldn’t get rid of me, I was a fantastic employee. I always got excellent reviews on my performance but would score low on my appearance and attitude. I hate socks and I even got written up for not wearing socks one year because it was policy but I hated them so much I just couldn’t wear them.

I had been talked to quite a bit before I got written up but my manager was serious about disciplining me.

I wish I would have known then what I know now and I would have told her “hey back off I have sensory issues!” Ok, I wouldn’t be that rude but it would have been nice to let her know that I wasn’t directly being a pain in the butt, I seriously had issues with socks. (Still do) In every position I learned how I was supposed to talk to people, that I am not supposed to say certain things and that some of the things I say can be very hurtful. Many people thought of me as the girl who would just say what was on her mind, which is true but I was not doing it to be hurtful. I said whatever was on my mind because that is what I saw, felt, or understood from the situations.

One of the greatest things Target did for me was to give me social scripts.

Not only did I learn them from the classes they had us do but my mother worked her way up too through the company and became a store manager, she learned even more scripts which in turn she would say to me. She didn’t do it on purpose, what would happen was a certain situation would arise, I would talk to her and she would tell me the script without knowing that it was a social script. My mother learned social scripts too from Target and it made it very difficult for her to come out of them after she left. Even now she will still apply certain social scripts learned from Target to a situation and it is not the best thing to do. I don’t stick to the scripts as rigidly, I am not sure why, maybe because I had more freedom as a child and I really like to entertain and be funny so I improv much more.

Target had team leaders and management go through training constantly.

At one point it was called Target University and it went through everything. We trained on peer situations, customer service, human resource issues, dealing with vendors, diversity, sexual harassment, management styles, what type of personality we were, how we learned best, you name it we did it. Through all of those training sessions we would have to get into groups, play out scenarios, get up in front of the class and role play, answer questions, get tested on what we learned and let our peers evaluate us. At first I was a nervous wreck, I would have panic attacks before hand but once I saw that this gave me a platform to act, I started to really enjoy them. I could excel at this stuff and take what I learned and apply it to my job and then get even better at my job. I still would have anxiety afterwords but when it comes to work my anxiety has always gone to the side because when I have a job to do nothing else stands in my way.

I really enjoy working, it gives me purpose, routine, schedules and deadlines.

I liked having someone tell me when I needed to come in, how many hours I had to work, what I needed to get accomplished in the hours I was there and the sense of accomplishment I felt when I would achieve my goals. I really enjoyed Target because they had binders and binders full of policy and procedures for each department, each position in the store and through out the company, they were very organized. I did find it frustrating when a store that I was working in did not follow the rules. Myself or someone would get trumped by management, but overall it was very comforting and reading those manuals gave me a lot of the information that I still use today in my social situations. Without Target’s training I am really not sure how well I would have done in the work force. Being that I have an “attitude problem” and I say things to my peers and bosses that are not always appropriate.

Thanks to Target I was trained in social etiquette and diversity, among many other things.

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07/13/10

Why Won’t My Brain Do It?

I have several posts waiting in my queue. I have written a ton, trying to help me process the things I am going through right now. I cannot get my mind to cooperate. The right side and the left side of my brain seem to be in the middle of a serious battle. And they just will not write what I initially plan on writing. I am getting side tracked and I go in completely different directions. I find myself writing and I have no idea why I am writing whatever it is I am writing. This is very frustrating, my head is fuzzy and chaotic and no matter what I try to do to help me, it just doesn’t work.

My brain and body are just not working together.

I am quite clumsy lately and getting overloaded very easily with sounds and textures. I am misreading David and other social situations, more so than usual. I feel so tired and it drives me crazy because when I get like this I feel lazy. I have so much to do and my body/mind will not do it. I am fighting against myself and I don’t want to. I am sad for no apparent reason and it is driving me crazy.

Oh, well I do know that this doesn’t last long and I know it will be better soon.

Hopefully all of the things I have waiting in my queue will make sense when I go back to them. Maybe they are just crazy rants and I will question whether or not I left the planet for a while only to return to a mass of ramblings and insane rhetoric in my queue. There is a lot going on in my life right now so maybe I just need to cut myself some slack and just rest.

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07/10/10

Our Museum of Art

The other day I had an idea pop in my head to make a museum in our school room. I knew I wanted to do some thing being creative; that involved a positive association for school stuff and try to get Daniel involved with using more textured items and to work with his hands. Daniel loves the museum, so I thought maybe he would want to participate if we made our own. It turned out to be a great success. All of the kids loved it. We went through several of our books on art history and their children books about art and went with it. I was so excited with their creations and also that Daniel participated with all of them.

After their creations had dried, we set up our room and had an exhibit ready for showing.

David was our guest of honor. All of the kids were so proud of themselves and loved showing David around and telling him how they did it and what inspired them. They named all of their creations and I made cards with the titles and their names. I dressed up and served chocolate covered bananas and water, we are on a limited budget. We are a museum in need of serious funds. This was a great day and I plan on keeping with the theme each month doing a new exhibit, next month I think we will be doing a dinosaur exhibit or maybe Lego’s, I haven’t decided yet. Maybe I will ask the kids what they want to do and go with that.

As we did each project I was amazed at how much Daniel really wanted to participate.

He did have to take a break for a while then come back and we all hit a bit of a sensory overload because of all of the textures, smells, drawing, gluing, and cutting. Overall though it went very well. There was a moment when I felt helpless watching Daniel trying to draw his butterfly. He was trying so hard and getting frustrated. He was using a picture diagram to help do the drawing, the struggle between his brain and his hands was both familiar and painful. He almost lost it but I rubbed his back and told him that it was alright we can try again and I turned the paper over and asked him if he wanted to try on this side. He did and I have a picture of his butterfly below. I told him how proud I was of him for trying and it was a great butterfly.

Here are some photos of the exhibit.