Aspie Ups and Downs

Going "back to school" after the winter break is much more abrupt and complicated now that the Boychick is actually going to school. With Homeschooling, the transition was suble and gradual in feel, whereas the transition to the new EMHS semester was accompanied by a countdown to when we return to reality--on a certain day at a certain hour.

The entire end of last semester and the begining of this one was also affected by some academic and social concerns that have added to the stress for both of us. One change was made in November when, in consultation with the Boychick's doctor, we decided to withdraw one his medications. This medication, given at sub-clinical doses, has a subtle but powerful effect on the quality of social interactions and also tends to blunt the cognitive, social and emotional apraxia (that sense of getting stuck at a decision point) that is common to people with AS. The medication in question regulates the neurotrasmitter Dopamine, which in the frontal lobes controls the flow of information from other parts of the brain. Thus Dopamine dysregulation in the pre-frontal cortex causes problems with memory, attention, and problem solving.

What we had noticed starting a few weeks after the medication was completely withdrawn (there was a process of gradual withdrawal), was that the Boychick was beginning to withdraw from social interactions more often, experience more episodes in which he would get stuck at a decision point, and shut down. When these experiences occured, however, he would "throw attitude around" (as his special education coordinatory so tellingly put it), as a substitute for action. During his winter break, the social pressure of needing to perform for peers was reduced, but we still saw these things happening.

The first day back began on a positive note, as Boychick reported it. He was excited about his guitar class, and on the way to Taekowndo, we stopped to get strings and a pick, and again to get notebooks. But as the week progressed, the notebooks in their bag stayed in the car, and on our drives to and from school, Nate listened to music on his I-POD. On Wednesday, he said that he hated his special ed math class. I told him that he needed to continue working on math even though it is hard for him (due to short-term memory issues), but that by doing it with a tutor, there is the opportunity to take frequent breaks when he gets cognitively tired.

On Thursday when I picked the Boychick up to go to Taekwondo he was very quiet. He seemed to have a very good Taekwondo session, and we stopped at the store on the way home. But when we got home, he put his ear-foams in and didn't respond to us at all. It turns out he and the vivacious L., she of the Winter Ball date had an argument. So I commiserated about the ups and downs of a woman's mood, and thought he'd be better after a good night's sleep.

Friday morning began in a rush, and the Boychick was once again not talking to us. But the Engineering Geek and I were rushing to get us all out the door so that we could attend Coffee with the Principal while the Boychick attended his first hour class. We spent about an hour discussing the re-chartering process for the school, and how the charter would be handled. It was interesting and informative, and I then had plans for the rest of the morning at home.

We arrived home, and I had barely poured my cup of tea when the phone rang. It was the Boychick's special education coordinator. He was having a bad day, she told me. He was incommunicative and throwing attitude around when he and Mrs. H., the EA, were trying to help him. As we talked, I checked his meds box, and discovered that he had not taken them. I told her so. We went on to talk about the problems he had been having that week. It turns out that there were several:

• He had not taken the notebooks we had purchased into school. They were trying to help him get organized and off the a good start for the new classes, but he had no notebooks.
• He was using his ear-foams all of the time, and was missing important instructional information. Since it is hard enough for him to process auditory information, missing parts meant he had no comprehension of what was happening
• He had a library fine for an overdue book from October. Since he had not paid it, his account (including his computer account) was suspended and he could not use school-net for his academics. The librarian had spoken to him numerous times, but he had not told me about it, nor had he asked his teachers for help dealing with it.
• In the despised math class, he was refusing to try the work, and when the special education teacher or the EA tried to engage him, he would shut down or give a display of attitude. The other kids were getting tired of it and trying to let him know.

In short, he was using a new strategy to deal with his apraxia. When he could not solve a problem or make a decision, instead of asking for help or shutting down, he was covering by putting on either the devil-may-care or class clown attitude. We had seen some of this during the last few weeks of school in December, but now the behaviors were coming out in spades.

As we talked, I developed a few hypotheses about what was going on. First, freshman boys tend to come to their first semester of high school using a bit of the tough-guy act to cover for their sense of nerves and inexperience. But by the middle of the year, most of them have discarded that attitude and have gained an understanding about how useful adult help is. But the Boychick, as is often the case, was perseverating in the behavior long after the others had figured out that there were more useful ways to navigate the high school experience.

Secondly, for the Boychick, the glass is not only half-full (the Aspie tendency toward a negative world view) but cracked and dingy as well. Things clearly weren't working for him socially, so he decided that everybody thought he was uncool. So once again, instead of asking for help, he covered with the teen-angst attitude. This exacerbated the social problem, but since he does not read others very well, he was not aware of it.

Finally, by Friday, the Boychick was completely overwhelmed. He could not access the computer. He kept forgetting to take money to pay his fines. He had no notebooks to collect his papers in, and L. wasn't speaking to him. When his Humanities teacher asked him to take out his ear-foams, he did not respond at all. The teacher, thinking he was being oppositional, got angry with him. Thus the phone call.

In discussing the situation with his special education coordinator, I determined that this was a situation in which I needed to take some steps to take the pressure off. So I called the school librarian and determined how much money he owed. I gathered his meds box and the notebooks and drove over to the school, expecting to find a shut-down and very unhappy Boychick.

When the Boychick came from his class to the office, he came bouncing in. I asked him if he was having a bad day. No. He was great, he told me. I pointed out that he had not taken his meds that day and gave them to him. Good. Then I gave him the notebooks and the advance of a few hours on his allowance (he usually gets it on Friday after school). The Engineering Geek and I shrugged at each other and then went to post office. Great? Clearly the Boychick has no clue about how he affects others.

Sure enough, after completing our errands, I returned to the school to bring the Boychick home for Shabbat. The beginning of the conversation was interesting:

Boychick: "You know, Mom, I didn't have my meds and I was completely focused!"

Me: "That's not what your teachers and peers thought, Sweetie. Mrs. R. called me and told me that you were pretty unfocused and having a bad day."

Boychick: "Hmmm. Well maybe I was but then L. made up with me at lunch. So now I am awesome."

That's my Boychick. Everything is black and white. When it's good it's very, very good, and when it's bad, it's aweful. To make a long story short, on the ride home we talked about his apraxia, what it means, why it happens to him, and how it affected every one of the problems he had been having that week. We also talked a lot about the social-language problems that come with AS. We then began to consider how best to deal with these problems. We developed a picture about how to act in class and how to get the best out of the people that are there to help him learn. We talked about the struggle with math,and I explained that the Engineering Geek and I understand that the Boychick does indeed know how to do the operations, if he sees the problem rather than hearing it. We talked about a great many things.

When we were talking about the differences in how an Aspie brain works, and why the Boychick might need to resume taking the medication we had just discontinued, he turned to me and said: "You know, this is the digital age. I wish that instead of needing to tweak my meds, we could just have Intel make a tiny chip and put it in my brain so that it would work like everybody else's."

To myself, I said: That may be coming sooner than you think, kid. But to the Boychick I said:

"You know, those of us whose brains work differently will really have to think about whether that would be a good thing. Although our brain differences create many challenges, they also provide us with great gifts. People like Albert Einstein, the great pianist Glenn Gould, and the inventor Thomas Edison all had Aspie-like characteristics. Our unique ways of seeing the world make us capable of doing great things. Should we want to be just like everybody else.?"

Boychick: "I don't know for sure. But when I'm left alone, I do like the way I think, sometimes. And I think Bill Gates is an Aspie. I think about that when I'm using the computer. And he's a billionaire."

Bill Gates? I think the Boychick may be right. Maybe someday I will be another kind of MOB--Mother of the Billionaire. Sweet!

And if he's a bit like Einstein, that would be great. But I am every grateful that I have never been called to school because my kid threw a chair at his violin teacher. Like Albert did.

I am suddenly feeling sorry for poor Mama Einstein.

Aspie Spring Term: A Proactive Stance

Today is my birthday.

As usual, my birthday is on one side or the other of the line between break and a return to reality. For the Engineering Geek, it was a return to reality, and he went off down the snowy road to work today. For the Boychick, today is the absolutely last day to sleep until noon. He still hasn't gotten dressed, but he did get clothes into the washer.

For me, today is both . . . and . . .
I am at home today, and although I considered going into town, since the Boychick wanted to sleep late, I decided against it. But, there was work for me to do to get us ready for the spring term. The fun part was a good e-mail from my neuropsychology mentor. I have several new assignments that ought to carry me to the end of January, all related to getting a paper published.

Another part is for me to begin preparing for the Boychick's IEP--which is going to be collaborative between me, his special education teacher, and the Boychick himself. The eligibility will be Autism (it has taken years to get to this for various reasons) and I want the goals to broadly address his social and educational needs, so that we can work on skills that transcend any particular subject matter. For example, I want us to address the issue of working memory. Although there are those who say that WM cannot be improved much past the age of 13, new studies about the brain development of children with AD/HD, ASD and other developmental problems, as well as for gifted children, show that peak cortical thickness and the subsequent thinning that marks the maturing brain come later in all of these groups. So it is possible that working on working memory (sorry, couldn't resist!) could spark some improvement.

As I was dredging my virtual files (all stored on thumbdrives) for papers about this, I got sidetracked by another start-of-term chore: dealing with Machon (Jewish Education). As I wrote towards the end of last term, there were problems (again) for the Boychick at Machon. The problems could have been nipped in the bud had the Education Director done the following:

• read the material I sent along about AS and passed it on to the teachers
• read the information about the Boychick and AS and passed it on to the teachers
• read the e-mail I sent her that informed her that I would be sitting in the lounge and available to help should there be any problem with the Boychick whatsoever.

I got sidetracked because I found the information I had sent out last September, along with my e-mails dealing with the problem, in my files on AS, ASD, and the Boychick.

So I edited my The Boychick and AS Information for Machon file and sent that (again) to the synagogue Director of Jewish Ed (DJE), along with a note that included the following:

"I would like the opportunity to meet with the Boychick's teachers to make sure that they understand his AS symptoms and I would also like your assurance that I will be notified immediately when classroom problems occur. . . Once again, I will be in the lounge by 7 PM each evening that the Boychick is present. . . This coming Wednesday, we will be there early in order to be introduced to the Boychick's teachers. . . it would also be really helpful to me if I could sit down with him before Wednesday evening and present him with his schedule. I would like to be able to tell him what to expect: the courses, the teacher’s names, and a general outline of what he will be learning in each class. Getting the “set” for each class will help the Boychick be ready to participate in the class. This is an absolute necessity for the Boychick to get the most he can out of the classes, and for the teachers to see the best in the Boychick . . . "

Given that I was never allowed to speak to the teacher last semester, even when the problems had been exacerbated by lack of timely communication, I was decidedly more pushy in this e-mail than I was in the one I sent last fall. I did not request that a meeting with the teachers be set up, rather, I simply told the DE that we (the Engineering Geek's quietly imposing six feet plus is more helpful in getting taken seriously than is my title, sad to say!) would be there early to meet the teachers.

On this e-mail I attached only the aforementioned information sheet. It includes a description of the Boychick's diagnoses, what they mean, his strengths and weaknesses, and a detailed list of suggested classroom interventions. I will include here just the first two parts:

Diagnoses: The Boychick is a gifted child with Asperger Syndrome (AS) with co-morbidities of Auditory Processing Disorder (APD), and Attention Deficit and Generalized Anxiety Disorder as the result of the AS. Asperger Syndrome is an Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) characterized by at least normal intelligence, normal speech, a tendency to perseveration, and profound difficulties with social communication. Auditory processing deficits affect auditory working memory and accurate understanding of verbal/auditory based instructional methods. It also affects reading and writing, which are primarily verbal skills. The Boychick currently qualifies for special education services as a child with Autism under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).

The Boychick's strengths:
*excellent visual memory
*focuses strongly on details
*passion for nature, natural philosophy, and science
*high level of curiosity about and awareness of the physical world
*excellent large muscle coordination and timing
*passion for the visual arts

*well developed vocabulary

The Boychick's weaknesses:
*dysgraphia
*difficulty reading body language and social cues
*difficulty with metaphors, symbolic language, sophisticated verbal humor, and sarcasm
*difficulty processing complex verbal instructions
*difficulty processing auditory input in a noisy environment (low signal to noise filtering ratio)
*dysfunction of sensory integration
*high need for structure and environmental predictability
*tendency toward pessimistic world view (the glass is not only half-empty, but dingy and cracked as well)
*short attention span/limited cognitive endurance

In a different e-mail (so as not to confuse the issue), I also sent along two short articles that will be very helpful to the Boychick's teachers, should they be given the opportunity to read them:

1) Blinded By Their Strengths: The Topsy-Turvey World of Asperger's Syndrome This paper discusses the problems that teachers encounter because an Aspie student's strengths raise expectations that he will be entirely normal and successful in the classroom. It also includes five areas that direct teaching strategies ought to address for these kids: perspective taking, sociocommunicative expression and understanding, reading/language comprehension, executive dysfunction (i.e. problems with planning and organization), and problem solving.

2) Overcoming Inertia: Five Survival Strategies for Children with AS

This paper discusses the profound apraxia in cognitive, affective, and behavioral tasks often seen in AS that leads to great difficulty in initiating action. (Apraxia leads to shut-downs, which are often interpreted by neurotypicals [NT] as oppositional behavior, because NT's in authority tend to think that a child's behavior is a reaction to them. They rarely consider that it may be internal to the student). The problems are described, giving examples, and then five strategies are suggested: consult with the AS student to reduce stress, use a pre-arranged touch-prompt to signal the beginning of a new step in a sequence of actions, lead from behind, teach paced breathing as a calming technique, and teach binary decision making.

And just in case these attachments do not get passed along, I have printed them out to give to the teachers.

I had already made another proactive arrangement to reduce our stress in the coming term. I have reduced by GA hours to ten per week, so that I will have more time for my own schoolwork and for managing the Boychick's school issues, Machon issues and whatever else comes up.

And what is so cool about getting sidetracked today, is that as I re-read and edited The Boychick and AS for Machon file, and read the short papers again, I realized that all of this concise information will be valuable for the upcoming IEP. The five categories of intervention listed in the first paper described above will be useful categories for IEP goals. The five survival strategies in the second paper are useful reminders for me to give teachers about how to keep the Boychick on task in his regular school classrooms, and will help them key in to what the apraxia is (internal) and what it is not (oppositionality).

A good day's work. I think I deserve to go listen to the radio and relax for a while!

Humming: "When I'm old and wise . . . bitter words mean little to me, like autumn winds, they'll blow right through me . . ."

I can hardly wait until next year.

Making Progress

We are making progress on all fronts, even though some of the work has exacerbated my allergies to the point of a sinus infection.

The floor done and even the dogs like it!

At the end of last week, the Engineering Geek finished up the Boychick's room. This weekend, the Boychick and I put his room back together, which was quite an involved process! Every piece of furniture had to be dusted, drawers had to be vacuumed and cleaned out, and stuff sorted into throw away and give away piles.


On the agenda as soon as my teeth no longer feel like they are about to pushed out of my head is a trip to Goodwill. That's in town, and until the antibiotic starts working, a trip involving elevation changes of greater than 100 vertical feet is out of the question.

With new throw rugs, the floor looks great, and the sheepskin from New Zealand has become a good place for the dogs to rest.

The Engineering Geek now has one more room to go; his office a.k.a. the firetrap. Because he feels he has to read each piece of the two years of accumulated junk mail, and because he has an absolute horror to throwing anything away, I expect that the office will take more time to floor than the rest of the house put together.

The Boychick has also been making some good adjustments in school. He has been doing his homework regularly, although there were a few evenings on which he started with whining. We reminded him that he had made a choice and that since it was his choice, he now must do the work entailed by the commitment he has made.

Well, actually, the Engineering Geek told him in a conversational tone to "put up and shut up."
I was the one making the earnest and mostly unheard argument about choices. Sometimes I forget that long and involved reasoning is goes in one ear and out the other of a teenage boy.

As I expected, although the Boychick is reading way ahead of many of his classmates in humanities, he gets behind in writing.
Like many 'Aspies,' he is a very slow writer physically, but also he has difficulty organizing his ideas coherently. We worked hard on sequencing as homeschoolers, but he is still quite slow.
Also, he tends to perseverate on the homework for one subject and forget that he has other assignments to do as well. Planning work and budgeting time are still areas where he needs a lot of support.

Math is another area of great difficulty. Here, it is a matter of the auditory processing disorder and deficits in auditory working memory (these go together!) that give the Boychick fits. He can understand algorithms, but he is very slow at the step-by-step solution to problems because he has such difficulty holding more many chunks of information in working memory at the same time. We had to intervene with the math teacher so that the Boychick can now use a TI-Math Explorer calculator. This frees up his working memory for the algorithm he is using. Often, he can get the right answer, going from A to D without the intervening steps at B and C, but this is not the way that math is taught. Also, in applied math, especially in science and engineering applications, he must be able to show how he arrived at a solution.

We have had a great response from the East Mountain High School faculty as we have set about getting our Boychick what he needs to succeed in this highly academic environment. He has a very experienced special education teacher to whom he can go to hash out problems and who can explain strategies for him to his teachers. He is in general education classes and those teachers have also been very helpful to him, and have been very willing to take our suggestions for strategies to help him build stamina for work that he does not particularly like.

I think part of the successful adjustment we are seeing is that we are not fussy about grades. I never have been. High school grades are just not as important as many people think.
Work ethic is far more important in the long run.
What we are emphasizing with the Boychick is that all his work has to be done to his best ability and in a timely manner. If he does that, we tell him, then the grades will come.
East Mountain High School does not practice grade inflation, and they do not give credit for course grades below a C. But even so, what tends to bring grades down is incomplete work and missing assignments. So these are the things that we are helping the Boychick keep in the forefront of his mind. He is not perfect--he carried one worksheet around in his backpack for a week after it was due. But we are after progress, not perfection.

Socially, the Boychick is doing well! He is actually popular with his classmates.
We are supporting him here in two ways.

First, we bought him stylish clothes. They are not over-the-top, but they look good. The Chem Geek Princess taught him how to take care of these clothes, and how to wear them. Since 'Aspie' kids are socially at a disadvantage already, this is very important. These kids need help understanding the importance of clean, neat clothing that is relatively fashionable and about regular hygeine. We didn't spend a lot of money on this. We were just very careful about what we bought with the money we did spend.

Secondly, the Chem Geek Princess spent several hours with the Boychick, explaining and role-playing important social rules for adolescents. She emphasized that the Boychick needs to listen to others--very difficult for him!--and that he needs to be nice to all the girls. "Girls," she pointed out, "Are not like boys. They have long memories for meanness and slights. If you are nice to all of them now, you'll have no lack of dates for the Senior Prom."

This is something that a lot of kids would do well to understand. Ordinary kindness and manners go a long way towards social success.

Things are progressing here.
Now, I am just waiting for the antibiotic to make a quick advance against this stubborn sinus infection. Until then, it's altered reality with Sudafed and lots of tea!

Oh! And here's Lily, her ears all askew--the tomboy!
She wanted to be in on the picture-taking as she settled back into her room. The one that she deigns to share with the Boychick.

Spring 2001 Term Started Today!

...And it was a pretty good start!

N. grumbled a bit when I shook him awake at 7:30.
He was drowsy at the breakfast table--but who wouldn't be? The outside temperature was -1.5 degrees F.

He perked up when we prayed the morning service. I let him lead today even though he still uses the Shabbat nusach (tunes). Tomorrow, I will take charge so that he can learn the weekday nusach and so that I can shorten the service to a manageable time.
After the service, I asked him to collect his dirty clothes before we started math. (He left some things out as I discovered when I went to sort them).

Math was LONG! There is a lot to do with Saxon and it took him 20 minutes to practice 100 simple division problems--even though he had the Times Table Grid right in front of him!
He was easily distracted and the dogs kept barking at some MLK day skiers who were cavorting in our meadow. I chalked it up to first day back after the Bar Mitzvah and a break. We'll see how it goes tomorrow. However, it was nearly 11 AM by the time we got done with Math.

I sorted the laundry while he did the Lesson practice sheet. I noticed that there were some missing socks from his skiing trip--so when he finished and checked his work, I had him do a "redo!" on the dirty clothes gathering. This time, we got it all.

After the "redo," we did our first activity for Brain Engineering. In this one he had to find 17 hidden pictures in a picture puzzle. As he circled each one, I dropped a coin into a cup. This is supposed to help him connect his "Opticoder" (that part of the brain that processes visual information) with his "Lexicoder" (that part of the brain that processes verbal information). He did this readily in a little less than 3 minutes. He wanted to do more of that--he felt very successful with the hidden pictures after having a difficult math morning.

However, he had an appointment with his room! I gave him a trash bag and told him to go through his room and pick up every piece of trash. "Trash in the trash bin, on the floor, under the bed, in the closet, on his desk, under his desk and in his book crates." He pointed out that I forgot to mention the trash on his night table and under it, but cheerful did the job. His room was a royal mess due to having his cousins sleeping in it last week--but after 15 minutes of "trash detail" it looked considerably better! (I was happy that pointed out my omission because it means that he is "getting multi-step directions).

After "trash detail," N. took the dogs for a (short) walk--it was only 17 degrees F outside, and nobody wanted to be outside very long. While they were out, I made hotdogs for lunch.

After lunch, we began reading "Black Ships Before Troy" together. I find it easiest to get him to read some of the literature that goes with the Ancient History spine, by reading it together. He has one book and I have another. I read aloud most of the time and sometimes he does. Reading aloud is difficult for him, although his Bar Mitzvah gave him a significant boost in ease and confidence. We talk about the story as we go along, giving N. a chance to identify important characters and events that move the story along.

When we were finished reading, N. and I loaded Word Roots A1 onto the computer. This program is from Critical Thinking Press. We had begun last fall with the workbooks--but N. hates workbooks! I think this goes back to third grade, when he called his teacher "the ditto queen" and claimed that she "worshipped at the altar of the Xerox machine." (This is what comes of reading the Torah to your child with emphasis and meaning!) At NAGC in November, I visited the Critical Thinking Press booth and purchased the Word Roots series for computer. So anyway, N. worked happily away on the computerized version, in which he is building a city out of bricks made from Latin roots.

Now he is writing Thank-You notes to people who gave him giftes for his Bar Mitzvah. I gave him a template:

Dear _________________,

Thank you very much for the _________________________. (e.g. check for
$18.00). I plan to ______________ with it. I was happy that you joined
me for my Bar Mitzvah.

Sincerely,
N.
When I checked his first cards, I noticed that he wrote the message on the back of the card instead of inside of it. I corrected that, but I left his other innovation alone. He was putting a smiley face instead of sincerely! (Anything to get out of writing more words!). N. has great difficulty with writing out anything by hand, much preferring to use Microsoft Word (TM)). But Thank-you notes must be handwritten! (We discussed the meaning of the word etiquette). So he will do 5 a day--I will address them for him because the envelopes are so small and his printing is so big. (He is much better at cursive--but refuses to use it! Go figure).

Soon, we will watch a video about Ancient Greece from the Wonders of the Ancient World series.

For tomorrow, I have to figure out how to add a 1.5 hour phone conference at 8:30 AM to our schedule. That is the weekly Brain Engineering "Ask the Doc" session. Unfortunately, I think I will have to get up half-an-hour early (6:00 instead of 6:30 AM) so that we finish the morning service BEFORE 8:30 AM. Then I can start him on his Math and Logic work. We can check the work after the conference. OY! One point for homeschooling was that I could rise a little later in the morning! Like at twilight instead of full dark. Well.