School Registration

So we headed down to the local public school (Edna Staebler) to register Fox for school and it wasn’t actually too bad.  We talked with a teacher and the principal and they came across as supportive and willing to work with us, which is a far cry from some of the horror stories we’ve heard.  Of course, it was really only the preliminary stuff – we just filled out the registration forms which were straightforward enough.  We’re still hoping to get into Kidsability, but this second option is not looking nearly as onerous as I’d feared.  Sure, we’ll still have to do a lot more ground work if we end up going to public school, but it’s amazing how the attitude of the teachers factors into making you feel at ease.

That said, we still need to decide whether we’re even going to send Fox into Junior Kindergarten.  The JK program is alternating full days, 2 or 3 times a week.  Fox has been doing alright with Nursery school which is a half day, but we’re not sure how he’ll do with a full day schedule.  It’s something to ponder anyway.

We heard back from our KW Hab resource and it sounds like the real work won’t happen for a while, so we have time to regroup and find out exactly what the next steps are.

The Rundown

So as the first entry from me in a long time, let me first apologize for anyone following along at home (I know, all two of you).

In any case, in the last 8 or so months, there's been a lot of changes, as you might imagine. The quick rundown:

• RDI: We've been continuing with RDI, working on strengthening the Guided Participation Relationship. Fox regularly helps us do the laundry, or cooking. He especially enjoys making smoothies from fresh fruit. Still a long way to go, but as they love to say, "it's a marathon, not a sprint".
  
• IBI/ABA: We attended a course provided by Kidsability called the Autism Learning Journey. It's invaluable for showing parents how they can implement the IBI/ABA techniques at home on their own. A lot of this was review from things we had already read/seen, but I guess repetition is the key to learning, right? Regardless of that, there are still definitely a lot of things to recommend it. There were also some great insights that I took away from it regarding communication (at some point I'll go into the verbal operants), the analyzing of home videos is always enlightening and there was also a "Make and Take" session at the end, where we constructed various teaching aids. We also decided to take a break from our private IBI for now, for a number of reasons.
• Speech: Fox has come along but progress still feels frustratingly slow. He's actually saying some vowels properly, but consonant-vowel pairs seem mostly beyond him, and same with multiple syllables. This is definitely an area where we need a lot more work and practice.
• Music: We've started attending Music Together on Saturday mornings. Similar to Kindermusik, it's a childhood music program and so far both kids seem to be responding well to it.
• Naturopath: Lisa began bringing Fox to a DAN doctor to investigate if naturopathy and diet intervention would be a good fit for us, particularly because Fox has become such a picky eater. We've just recently discovered that Fox has an intolerance to egg and wheat, so now we're back to working on a gluten-free diet. Sigh.
• Community: Networking with other families at the various events and courses got us pointed in the direction of a new website, the Autism Spectrum Connection. It's intended as a social networking site that will serve as a hub to connect parents, organizations and individuals who live with/work with/are people on the spectrum.
• School: Schooling is a tricky subject for us. We've registered and are really trying to get into the Kidsability school. Here he will be working with teachers who have been trained to work with special needs children and should get the attention and assistance he needs, without us having to advocate every step of the way (at least, I hope). We've completed the referral process with the help of our SLP and OT, and are just waiting to hear back from them in March. Unfortunately, there's no guarantee that Fox will be accepted, so we're also planning to sign up at our local public school as well. We believed we'd be getting a lot of help from KW Hab, but they strangely switched out our resource last month at the lousiest time. Not surprisingly (but frustratingly nonetheless), the our new resource hasn't really brought up anything about the whole process - even though she supposed to be our liaison to the school. I'm not looking forward to all the extra work we'll have to do if the Kidsability option doesn't pan out, but I think expecting the worst means you're more likely to be pleasantly surprised. In any case, we go to our local public school tomorrow morning to register, meet the principal and a teacher possibly.
  

I'm sure there's a lot I've missed or glossed over and I'll try to elaborate if I remember to, but that's a good start.

:Duan

A Mother's Perspective

Well I finally decided to help out Duan with this blog. I've never really blogged before but it sounds like oodles of fun! It's been a while so here's an update of what's been going on since May.

Fox turned 3 and really enjoyed his chocolate cake!

We attempted potty training but it did not go well. We went cold turkey from the diapers, and tried to take him to the potty frequently throughout the day. He just loved sitting on the potty, he played with toys and read books, but wouldn't pee. In fact he would always pee about 5 minutes after he got off the toilet. We tried various things for about 2 weeks, but it just seemed like he wasn't getting it and it was starting to stress him out (and me!) so we stopped. We're thinking of giving it another go in another month or so, he's showing more signs of readiness now so maybe, hopefully it'll go better this time.

Fox didn't have pre-school in the summer and we took it easier on all of our other appointments, so we spent a lot of time at the park. Fox just loves being outside, he really comes out of his shell. It's really amazing how much he changed from the beginning of the summer to the end. At first he was afraid of the slides and he would only go down if I went down with him or if I held his hand down. Now he's completely independent on them and just seems to enjoy them more. He still as always loves loves loves sand, especially loves mixing water with sand and most of all loves mixing sudsy water with sand. We had a lot of fun on the deck with just these simple ingredients. He got a lot of exercise running back and forth between the kiddy pool and the sandbox with handfuls of sand to throw in the pool. We also played with oobleck a lot, it's a combination of corn starch and water and food colouring if you want, it's messy so he of course loved it!

Fox has really gotten into art over the last few months. He use to do a lot of colouring, but now he mostly loves finger painting. Just as proof of how far he has come, he use to freak out whenever he got his hands a little dirty, now he just dives into the finger paint! I tried a couple different recipes for homemade finger paint and then tried using corn syrup with food colouring, but I have to say the store bought non-toxic washable finger paint is by far the easiest to clean up! Plus, it doesn't give the mistaken impression that paint is delicious. I walked into his room once and caught him licking one of his old paintings, that's when the corn syrup painting had to stop :)

As for his different therapies, we have started one-on-one speech therapy at kidsability. It's going well so far, she noticed that when he makes sounds he is having trouble shaping his mouth, his mouth always falls to the side, so 'no' sounds like 'neh'. So we're practicing vowel sounds and he's being very good about letting us poke and prod his face while we do it. His ABA therapy is also going well, we recently had our 1 year assessment (can't believe it's been a year already!), and he has made a lot of gains since the last assessment. The one difficult thing is that every child with ASD is so different so there's no base of comparison to say that he's moving at a quick enough pace, but any progress is good and keeps us motivated to push forward. We also dove back into RDI. We're continuing to work on developing our guided participation relationship with Fox. We do this by working him into our daily activities and giving him a role in them. For example, he'll help us make juice, put dishes away, put laundry in the wash, etc. When we first started doing this he was so not interested in helping and it was difficult to keep his attention, but now it's getting so much easier! He's becoming so great at listening to instructions it's really making things around the house a lot more pleasant. We also did some occupational therapy over the summer, she focussed mostly on play skills, and we talked a bit about his sensory needs. The OT thought that he was really seeking out proprioceptive/deep pressure input, so told us to try to incorporate more of this throughout the day and it should help to keep him more calm and focussed. So we've been trying this, but to be honest it's hard to stay consistent and also difficult to know if it's making a difference for him. The good thing is that he enjoys these activities so at least he's having fun jumping on his trampoline, rolling up in his blanket like a hot dog, being lifted and flipped by Dad.

Other then that there's not much to report. Little Miss Ruby will be a year next month. She is crawling around and getting into everything! She just adores Fox and is all up in his face all the time. This has really helped Fox I think, he's really started to pay attention to her and other kids now. So it will be interesting to see how they interact going forward. She's just a little chatterbox, so maybe some of that will rub off on him :)

A Year Later

So it's been a year since I started this blog, marking when we started looking at Fox's developmental issues in earnest and trying to correct it.  So how has the progress gone?

While it's been slower than I would have liked, I have to admit that we've come a long way!  Fox is making a lot of sounds, he's got a lot of signs and I'd even say he has a few "words" (even if they're just what they call "approximations").  For example, to say down Fox will say "da".  It would be nicer if he was initiating conversations more but baby steps, right?

What else is going on... well, Lisa's been attending the More Than Words program at Kidsability, which is a parent-led speech program for children with developmental delays like Austim.  And we finally are off the waitlist for Occupational Therapy at Kidsability and will be starting OT shortly.  And Fox has been attending school at Westvale for the last little while and is really enjoying it so far.

We've also been working with our RDI consultant with different activities.  And of course we are still doing ABA and we're on the waitlist at ErinOaks kids for IBI.

If this sounds like a lot of stuff, it's because it is!  This is not to mention all the other stuff going on in our lives, like taking care of a 6 month old.  So I think all things considered we're doing alright.  We've decided to pull back from RDI for the summer to allow time for the other programs we're attending to be over with, so that we can focus more effectively.

The next big thing is potty training.  In consideration of all that was going on and the fact that it was still pretty cold, we decided to push off going cold turkey on diapers until the weather got nice.  Now that spring has apparently sprung, we'll be starting that any time.  To be honest with you, I'm not looking forward to it - toddler poo is gross!

:Duan 

What's going on

There's actually, as it always seem these days, a lot going on.  Besides the RDI that I detailed in the last post, we lost our home daycare provider.   It was quite the loss; we liked her very much, and giving Lisa some respite from the boy two times a week is essential with Ruby being so demanding as well.  So in the last couple of weeks we've gotten help from the Infant Development Program to look into a daycare program that would fit Fox's needs.

Currently we're probably going to go with Westvale, which is in the vicinity (maybe ten or twelve minutes away max), has a resource from KW Habilitation already (so they are familiar with special needs) and the facilities looked less distracting than the other place we toured.

Lisa also started introducing Fox to the world of toilet training.  We've been using pullups at night for a few weeks now, and we've been having him sit on the potty in the mornings.  Lisa attended a toilet training seminar earlier this week and we'll probably need to take a week to really put what she learned into practice.  But as he's getting very good at taking off his pants, and there have been a few - incidents, shall we say - we really need get him learning to use the toilet.

Lisa's also started the Word Than Words program at Kidsability this week.  More details on this in a later post.

Introduction to RDI

Keep in mind the following is as I understand it right now... there may (almost definitely will) be updates as I gain a greater understanding.

RDI In A Nutshell

So what is RDI?  Relationship Development Intervention is a process for remediating (or correcting, lessening) the core deficits of autism.  RDI does this by focusing on (not surprisingly) relationships.

The basic idea is that autistic people tend to be afraid of social interaction because they are uncomfortable with changing situations.  Because of the way their brains have developed, the world is a particularly frightening place.  Like anyone, they try to make sense of their surroundings by finding patterns.  So when they find something that works, they tend to do it over and over.  It is positively reinforced because it's successful.  The problem is that they get into very rigid patterns.  So that if something goes just a little wrong, they become unable to deal with it.

This difficulty with changing ("dynamic" in the jargon of RDI) situations is considered to be key to the core deficits of autism, and what distinguishes it as a disorder.

Unlike "neurotypical" children, there is a breakdown somewhere and so the autistic child fails to build on these basic social skills, which has a snowball affect in hampering their development.  RDI researchers have looked at all the skills that a normal child picks up naturally, and break them down so that your autistic child can learn them as well.  The idea is to slowly introduce the challenge that causes them to think, but is within their ability to handle.  Doing this builds confidence in themselves and eventually they will be more okay with change.

Basically, IBI focuses more on "book smarts" skills, skills that would allow you to function in a classroom.  RDI focuses more on social skills and "street smarts".

No Deviant Parenting Here!

So we met with our RDI consultant and she was quite personable.  She set up a camera and had us play with Fox for a bit while she taped it, which was a little disconcerting at first.  Afterward we met with her and she assured us that we have not picked up any deviant parenting.  This can apparently affect parents of children on the spectrum, where they have been trying and failing to engage their children for so long, that they pick up bad habits.  Luckily we're new enough at this that their hasn't been time for any of those to form :)

A Little Behind

So I haven't updated in a long time. By now we've had several meetings with our consultant, we've gone through a lot of the parent training (as RDI is a parent directed program) and we've done some work on child objectives.  More on this to come.

Upcoming

So again with the procrastination... but I don't really have time for a full update.  Instead I will put down a preview to whet the appetite of whoever might be following this as well as have a roadmap for going forward.

On the plate we have:

- Our first RDI appointment.

- Our 2nd RDI appointment (which is happening in an hour)

- What is RDI?

- The BOS system

- Books we're looking at.

:Duan