Where’s the Smart Boy’s Guide?

Emotions and middle school are such an awful combination–for parents and kids. W had the bulk of her frustrations at the beginning of this year. Understanding social drama is hard at this age. I looked online for resources for middle school girls and emotions, and not only did books come up for parents, but there were dozens of resources for middle school girls. I ordered three books from the American Girl Smart Girl’s Guide series: A Smart Girl’s Guide to Knowing What to Say, A Smart Girls Guide Drama, Rumors, and Secrets, and A Smart Girls’ Guide Friendship Troubles. I was SO impressed with all of them. “How to compromise with your parents and teachers. What to do if you need to say no. Dealing with difficult adults. What to do if a friend lets you down. What to say when your friend’s parents get divorced.” That’s just a small fraction of the topics covered in the Knowing What to Say book. We read some of it together, and then she read the rest of them on her own.

W gobbled all of them up in a day.

J’s been consistently the one who has been struggling with middle school (and autism) emotions the most. Thursday W had a violin performance at the high school and needed to be dropped off at 6. I was still finishing off the second coat of paint in the kitchen at 5 and sent Steve to grab a Little Caesar’s pizza (because dinner was not happening that night). Just as Steve headed out the door, J yelled, “we’re getting bread sticks, right? RIGHT? RIGHT?”

Usually J absolutely has to have Kraft Macaroni and Cheese on the weekends. But a few weeks ago he tried Ramen and decided he could “compromise” and have that every once in a while too.

Steve, in a hurry (and just as stressed as I was) just had pizza on his mind and said, “No, not tonight,” and closed the door.

J came running into the kitchen in full-fledged meltdown, “NO, NO, we HAVE to get bread sticks. I want bread sticks. I WANT BREAD STICKS!”

I’m not sure if it was anxiety because we always get bread sticks, or just plain old selfishness because he wanted bread sticks, but I knew we had a problem because he doesn’t handle either of those things very well. I came down from the step stool, paint brush still in my hand, with an open paint tray in the middle of the floor, and as calmly and quietly (I’m really trying to work on my “you’re driving me crazy/your tantrum is sending my blood pressure through the roof” reaction of not yelling back) said, “J, there is wet paint on the walls, and there’s paint on the floor. Please get out of the kitchen.”

But when J is in full-fledged meltdown mode, and when he’s at that place he wants to engage you in your space and pick a fight.

“Dad’s getting bread sticks, right? Right?” And then immediately came the baiting.

“What happens if dad doesn’t get bread sticks?”

“You can handle it,” I said, because that’s the line we always give J when he’s having a hard time with something. I should have said nothing. I know better than to engage him verbally, because that’s exactly what he wants me to do. It seems really strange, actually, coming from a kid who has been in speech therapy pretty much all his life and has a hard time with meaningful communication and yet when it comes to a verbal fight, he’s all in.

But I was tired, and starving, and I had paint all over my hands and in my hair, and on my clothes and I just wanted to be done with the kitchen and the concert and the night in general. And J was beyond the point of reason.

“You need to go to your room now. You can’t have a tantrum in front of me right now. There’s paint everywhere. You have to go to your room.”

“I’m not having pizza. I’m having bread sticks AND pizza. Not just pizza, bread sticks AND pizza,” he kept repeating. But after about a minute of crying and yelling, he stomped up to his room. And cried and screamed for about 5 more minutes, came back down again with big red puffy eyes (really puffy because he’s battling eczema around his eyes right now too).

“I’m going to have leftovers.” He announced.

“Wow. Yes,” I said. “Good idea to solve your problem.”

By the time Steve came home with the pizza, J warmed up his leftovers in the microwave. And ate 3 slices of pizza.

The optimist in me thought we’d be past the meltdown and tantrums at 13. But we’re still here. The good news is that, as crazy as the bread stick story sounds, his meltdowns have come a long, LONG, way. Just a year or two ago, we’d be engaged in this battle for at least 45 minutes. After 45 minutes, he would still be inconsolable. Steve would probably be headed back to Little Caesars to get a package of bread sticks. One of us would be missing the concert because J wouldn’t be able to pull himself together by then, even with winning the bread stick battle.

Helping J manage his emotions and deal with them in an appropriate way has been a struggle for as long as I can remember. In fact, that’s one of the main reasons he still is in speech therapy. J doesn’t have a stutter, lisp, or struggle with pronunciation. He struggles with meaningful communication, social appropriateness, and understanding other people’s point of view, and I owe a lot of J’s progress to J’s speech therapists. They create social stories to help him navigate stressful situations, they create social stories to help him know what to say. He has a class with other kids on the spectrum, other special ed kids, who also need to practice their speech and social skills. Sort of like W’s Smart girl books. A little more simplified.

J’s also become quite the chef in the kitchen. In fact, he has quite a few kitchen responsibilities like loading and unloading the dishwasher. He really thrives with responsibility. In a weird way I think it helps him regulate his emotions better.

There are no Smart Boy’s Books out there to help boys understand and navigate their emotions. (If there are any, PLEASE let me know). Most of the books under “middle school+boys+emotions” are parenting books, or books that are gender neutral in approaching emotions and social struggles. There are very few middle school boys books geared to the boys themselves that go beyond the puberty talk. As I’ve looked through books that might help J navigate the social emotional issues he will facing in the next five years and beyond, I’m finding that it’s really hard to find these books about boys for boys unless you are a boy on the spectrum. Books for kids on the spectrum are good, but I want him to see that other boys struggle and have questions about their emotions too.

J needs empathy, kindness, social appropriateness, and managing emotions spelled out for him. And I’m guessing he’s not the only boy out there. I’m guessing there are non autistic/spectrum boys who need some guidance in these areas too.

It’s actually one of the weird things about autism I’m really grateful for (not the tantrums), the weekly discussions on feelings, the instruction he gets from his speech therapist and psychologist. I feel like boys don’t get much instruction on how to navigate their emotions. It’s strange to me that we think that young girls are the ones who really need direction in this area or are the only ones who want to explore and talk about these things. Clearly boys struggle to understand their emotions and social worlds too.

J loves talking about emotions. He loves trying to understand other people, even when it’s hard for him. That’s why he’s always loved speech. And he gets excited to visit with his psychologist Dr. T.

And that’s why I’ve started reading , with W’s permission, A Smart Girl’s Guide to Knowing What to Say with J. Some of it is still a little “old for him” but I’m keeping that book on my radar. In fact, I’ve picked out some pages he can work on right now. Like “25 things to say after hi.”

So far, he’s into it. He doesn’t even care that it’s “for girls.”

 

 

 

Making Pictures out of Words

W reading to J, back when they were babies

One of J’s biggest academic struggles is with reading comprehension. In the beginning he was a fabulous reader. He could sound out words and burn through the early reader books because he’s good at individual words. He loves to figure out how they work together and what the rules are for putting them together. He’s always been a kid who wants to know the rules. (As I’m typing this I’m wondering if we should be reading poetry with this boy to help him build those images and other sensory experiences with words…)

There was even  a time where he was obsessed with synonyms, antonyms, and homophones. Especially the homophones. He just thought it was the greatest thing in the world that two words could sound exactly the same but be spelled two different ways and mean two different things.

J loves individual words but has a hard time seeing how they work together as a whole to produce something abstract such as an emotion or motivation. This is typical for kids on the autism spectrum. They don’t understand why people do the things they do in real life–why someone would say something to someone and turn around and do completely the opposite thing?–there’s no logic in that at all. As a toddler (and sometimes even now if he doesn’t know the person very well) he had a hard time reading how someone felt based on the expression on their face. When you read a story you have to make all these connections without any visual cues–all the cues are hidden in the words with nuance and meaning.

Reading novels for school has become more challenging over the years. Usually J and I have a copy of the book at home and we take turns reading sections of the book aloud. At the end of the chapter, my strategy is to usually ask him, “Tell me one thing you remember about what we just read,” and he will pick out something that caught his attention and then I can steer the conversation to other things in the chapter–questions about characters, things they like/dislike, what the character wants (or what/who is challenging the character). Then I write down short notes on what we’ve talked about so we can go back and refresh our minds later as the story progresses or if there’s a test coming up. It looks something like this:

J just recently finished The Thief of Always by Clive Barker (a fantasy book with magic–good fun for a kid who looks at the world in a very literal way 😉 ) for class and had a test over the book. I was able to see a copy of the test beforehand so I could help prep J to study at home. This test was heavily based on character profiles: what each character said and did, often direct quotes from the text. At first it was really overwhelming to prep him for it. J could barely get through summarizing the plot with help. How was he going to get through a test that was more character driven than plot driven?

Two days before the test, I came up with the idea of character profile sheets. I realized that J had no real pictures in his head of what these characters looked like, so I googled images of the characters from the book and assigned important plot points or quotes from the novel so J could visually see them. Descriptions of hair color or other physical features were covered by the picture. When I had quotes for or about the character, I included them in their profile. It helped reinforce the physical description, motives, or important events for the character. It really helped differentiate the three cats for J. He knew what roles the cats had in the story but would get the three confused as one character when I quizzed him. The pictures helped straighten it out for him.

 

For some reason, Lulu turning into a fish was something that really stuck out in his brain so the quote was easy for him.

Here’s a good example of how the description of an old woman was better reinforced by a picture. As we read the book, I tried to explain the concept of spider web hair, and J just couldn’t understand what that meant. I think he thought her hair was spider webs. This was a nice bridge of the figurative and literal description.

The 3 cats. J LOVED the cats, but thought the cat was just one character. This helped clarify that for him.

I’m always trying to think of creative ways to help J understand what he’s reading better, and the visual character profiles really helped for him. There are things that I would do differently for next time though. Next time we’ll try doing the profiles as we read along and not two days before the test. I’ll have J help pick out the pictures he thinks best fit the descriptions in the book and the pictures in his head. I’ll also see if we can get modifications in the test for a book like this–This book had twelve characters he had to identify and pair up with quotes and half of them had magical powers which was really hard for J to navigate.

It can be an awful mess helping J out academically. I feel like I come up with good ideas after the fact and it’s when I see the mistakes I’ve made that I know what to do and not do for the next time. Sometimes I feel like I’m failing in my attempts and just making him more frustrated about himself instead. But this time, I’m really excited to add this idea to our reading strategies, even if it was a disaster at times along the way. One more way to look a things that might help for the next time.

Just thought I’d share what we are trying 🙂

As a side note, and follow up to the last post, J got 44/46 on his Latin test! I really feel like he’s starting to understand studying strategies a little better!

 

 

 

 

Staying Inside the Lines

I feel like when you’re doing the autism gig, you’re constantly keeping your kid within the lines, corralling them into the spaces society creates. There’s personal boundaries, ethical boundaries, social boundaries. As a society I think that’s how we make sense of the world.

Autistic kids are always seeking these lines and laws and boundaries too. Except they have their own lines and boundaries and many times they don’t match up with everyone else’s.

Of course, “staying inside the figurative lines” has always been sort of an enigma to J. Figurative lines are more nuanced. You can’t see someone’s personal bubble–and everybody’s is different. You can tell a joke but sometimes it backfires and hurts someone’s feelings. These are the things you can’t see. They’re harder to judge.

Watching J trick-or-treat this year was a great reminder to me of the progress he’s made especially in the last two years trying to navigate these invisible lines. J hasn’t been the best trick-or-treater. Up until these last two years his experiences have been hard at times. I think trick-or-treating is a little bit of an enigma for kids with autism. It’s the one time a year where you ring door bells and beg strangers for candy. There’s always that awkward moment at the screen door where you’re not sure if you’re invited in, because the person at the door leaves you between the screen door and the front door (but leaves the front door open) and tells you to wait one second but you’re not allowed to come in. Sometimes the person will drop candy in your bag, and other times they’ll hold the bowl–do you wait for them to take something out of the bowl and give it to you? Do you take one on your own? Do you take more than one? Then you’re supposed to recite some phrase that makes no sense at all: “Trick-or-treat!” what does that even mean? Is the person at the door tricking you? Are you supposed to do a trick? Nobody does either of these things. All of the lines of traditional social decorum you’re supposed to stay inside are gone and there’s this weird dance between you and a stranger going on at the door.

To make things worse for J, there was the whole dog factor. J was terrified of dogs up until two years ago (when we ended up adopting a dog of our own and J could figure out dogs a little better–that’s another story for another day) and so every doorbell was like Russian roulette and if the lot fell on a dog door, J would go flying down the driveway before the dog owner could drop a few pieces of candy in his bag.

I guarantee most people don’t think about any of these things when it comes to Halloween. I can tell you I never did until J and autism came around.

This year everything went perfectly. I was so proud of our J, seeing him go up to each door by himself, with confidence, and go through all the quirky motions of “trick-or-treat decorum,” wait patiently for candy, taking an appropriate amount when offered a bowl, saying hello to the dogs. Saying thank you EVERY TIME. Wishing people a “Happy Halloween” as if he were wishing people a “Merry Christmas.” It was wonderful. And bittersweet, because just as he’s finally figured out this strange ritual we’ve constructed for kids he’s on the edge of being too old to participate. I find that’s often the strange thing about parenting an autistic child, once you’ve finally mastered something you want to pause, enjoy it, shout from the rooftops “hey look! we’ve figured it out,” but you can’t, because society’s constantly moving on and you have to keep running along too.

J went as Commander Riker (sans the beard) and W went as Rosie the Riviter this year.

Even though it’s tough, J knows “staying inside the lines” is so important to keeping himself happy. He has a really hard time functioning if he can’t figure out where the lines are. Even when it comes to school work. I think J feels constantly out of control, like things are shifting all around him–lots of times visually and mentally. Drawing lines, boxing things up, compartmentalizing, containing things. There’s a control in that, and it helps J make sense of things.

I’ve mentioned J’s visual spatial processing issues before. Containing things, keeping letters and symbols in their right place is very hard and yet very important, especially when it comes to taking notes and doing math problems. J’s been struggling with math lately. I have to say, this is hard. Because I was/still am an absolute mess when it comes to math. That’s why I became an English major. I was so terrible at math that at one point my parents made me do a stint in Kumon for a year. That year I did worksheets on fractions. Every day. Drill after drill. I have to say it’s probably the one thing in math I can do in my sleep. Right now J is reviewing fractions again–and here’s a sample of the basic method I came up with for dealing with fractions. It’s basically boxing up fractions to keep the numbers straight. Of course he’s doing more complicated fractions than this (mixed numbers, subtracting/borrowing from mixed numbers–maybe I’ll put the rest of my fractions strategies in another post), but here’s where it begins. He still struggles with some of the harder stuff–the more steps added on, the more there is to juggle. But he seems to get this method.

Here’s the weird irony of it all. As an autism parent, you’re constantly keeping your kid within the lines, corralling them into the spaces society creates, providing highly structured learning experiences for your child. But at the same time, you as a parent have to think outside all of these things. You’re forced to think outside of the box to solve problems other people can’t solve ALL THE TIME. To look at our world–our society–in ways that nobody else normally thinks of them. It gives you perspective and ingenuity you never thought you had. And I have to say that’s really satisfying too–just as much as seeing your child master the art of staying in the lines.