Rediscovering our rhythms...

Well, we seem to be more than halfway through our jet-lag adjustment, although it still hits at unexpected moments (with sudden exhaustion or ravenous appetite attacks). Brendan, I think, has done the best job of readjusting, with Charlie coming in a close second- but then, he had 2 days to get his act together before going back to work last week, so it was kind of necessary, poor guy. Unfortunately, about the time we all felt like getting out & getting some exercise this past weekend, it started to rain, then the heat kicked-in. I thought that southern Japan would have gotten us acclimated to summer heat, but that wore off pretty quickly. The past 2 days it's been close to 90 degrees (or over) outside, so we've only been venturing out for necessary trips in the car :( A good thing was that Charlie convinced Brendan to go swimming Sunday afternoon, so at least they've gotten some exercise. (Brendan has become somewhat agoraphobic since coming home from Japan, so this was a big deal.) My brand-new bathing suit is on the slow boat from Mizumaki to our town (jettisoned as unnecessary baggage after our trip to the onsen), but I've promised the guys I'll go swimming with them when it arrives. The other fun thing that happened Sunday afternoon was that our college-age friend Ck came over to dinner so that we could plan "Camp Ck" together...

Most summers we have "Camp Mom" interspersed with 2-3 weeks of summer camps for Brendan- computer camp or the programme at the science museum. For various reasons, all of them seeming quite reasonable to us, Brendan didn't want to do any of the summer camps, but this left us with the dilemma of finding mom-time throughout the summer. After we brainstormed ideas, we decided to ask Ck, who has been a favourite sitter of Brendan's since Ck's freshman year of high school (& whom Brendan missed very much this past year, Ck's first at college) to do "Camp Ck" 2 days a week. He had been looking for summer work & decided that this would be a good start :) so this week saw the beginning of both "Camp Mom" & Camp Ck". When we discussed the summer plans with Brendan before leaving for Japan, he became decidedly "moofy" at the thought of yet another summer with a daily schedule of activities. He, of course, would be perfectly happy to play Adventure Quest & Dragon Fable all day, interspersed with movies & lego-ing. We started the daily summer schedule thing 4 or 5 summers ago, at the recommendation of Brendan's psychologist, to help him learn to self-regulate & to give us both a sense of accomplishment over the summer. It's ended-up being summer homeschooling, really, & I have felt very good about doing it. He's always retured to school in the fall with little loss of skills & the transition to a school schedule has never been a problem since we've kept to one over the summer. In fact, Brendan basically learned to read over the summer he was 8, since that's when his visual abilities really kicked-in, & thankfully we were ready to jump in & facilitate. We've done so many fun projects over these past summers, too, which has made the time really memorable. Two summers ago I taught Brendan to weave on the small loom & he wove scarves for his dad & grandparents as Christmas presents. Last summer I taught him to use the big loom & we wove a blanket!

Needless to say, I'm convinced that continuing with this summer scheduling is a good thing, but Brendan... took some convincing. It wasn't hard to get him to agree to reading every day (especially when he realised that he was behind on his manga reading :). And, when we came to actually plugging things into our weekly schedule on Sunday evening, I acknowledged that he's older now & can handle more free time. So we put in more free time, such as half an hour before lunch & from 4:00 to dinnertime, & that seemed to satisfy him very much (I think that the acknowledgement did more than the actual extra time :). While Ck was over to dinner on Sunday we brainstormed a list of things they could do together (including field trips, since Ck drives). In the evening I typed everything to post on the fridge & Brendan & I set our schedule for Monday, Wednesday, & Friday of our first week. It probably helped that we had appointments first thing Monday morning & at the end of the day as well (been away 3 weeks, you know!). Brendan participated in the scheduling with little sign of "moofiness" about it all.

So yesterday, after a bit of misunderstanding about what each of us thought the words "come down now & eat breakfast" meant (I could hear obvious sounds of playing upstairs...), we were both on track for my first-thing (& much-needed) appointment with the chiropracter. Brendan does really well when we visit her office & we brought one of our japanese magazines (featuring the Kamen Rider & Geki characters) to read to each other in the waiting room. It was fun to tell her about our trip, too :) Then, since we were out, I planned to do something we've never done before... take Brendan shopping for shoes. (Did I ever mention that we left Brendan's sneakers in Tokyo after our first week in Japan? We didn't even notice until we were packing for Kyoto, & he was outgrowing the sneaks, anyway, but it's left him without anything but sandals to wear...) It didn't hit me until afterwards that Brendan had never been shoe-shopping before. Until recently I could just buy them through Land's End & it was a pretty good chance that they'd fit. But he's now at the very end of the youth shoe sizing & has a wide foot as well, so I didn't think we were going to get away with the long-distance thing any more. The main hazards I envisioned for shoe-shopping were the strong smell shoe stores often have, crowds, & his being triggered by various people in the store. So, we got there just after they opened to avoid crowds, which worked. He didn't seem to notice a smell, which was a bonus. However, I forgot the "desecration" factor, sigh. Anything made of dead animals is "desecration" to Brendan & he was instantly repelled by the first "genuine leather" verbiage he saw on a shoe box. I assured him that many of the shoes would have no leather & we looked specifically for that sort of shoe. It took a while, & some false starts (he has depended on the loop on the back of Land's End's kids' shoes for years to pull his shoes on, & most of these shoes had no loop) we ended up in the men's shoe section (he's official now) & found what he was looking for. Skate shoes with some blue on them (very important :) in size 6.5. Hooray! Our reward for getting through this was a trip to the manga & anime store to get the most recent "Hikaru no Go" manga & dvds. We drove home for lunch in a very good mood. Success on our very first trip to the shoe store!!

After lunch we had our quiet reading time (Brendan started catching up on past issues of Hikaru...) & together reading time (we're still working our way through "Eldest"). Then we tackled his room, partly because the house was being cleaned today & you couldn't find the floor, & partly because he couldn't set up his new nezumi incense burner on his dresser until we could find the top of his dresser. No joke... Charlie had donated the biiiig box he'd brought home from work last week, with all of his vacation mail in it, for us to put cast-offs in. We really needed it, too. In the end (after clearing & wet-sponging), the InuYasha & Gundam action figures, his incense burner & crystals, & the necessaries like light, fan, & alarm clock, are all that remain on his dresser. It's amazing :) Next to tackle (another day...) is his desk. After a quick trip to the orthodontist (changed wires, asked about Japan :) we were home & finished cleaning his floor for vacuuming pretty quickly. Then we finally watched our Pythagoras Switch dvd, purchased in Japan (I have Brendan's computer set to region 5, so we can watch anything from Japan on it). It is absolutely awesome- 20-some minutes of Rube Goldbergs, many of which we'd never seen before on YouTube. There's an accompanying book &, at this moment, Brendan & Ck (having watched the dvd this morning) are working on their own Rube Goldberg contraption in Brendan's room :)

This morning Ck arrived a little early (very kindly) so I could make a regular appointment with my therapist. They've been having fun with the solar energy kit I bought, playing Incredible Machines on the computer, & now, after lunch, they're making their own. I showed Ck the fridge calendar & list & they worked on it over lunch. Brendan is obviously having a great time with Ck & I am actually updating the blog. A recipe for success, so far...!

Food chain...

Thank-you, Kim Possible. Not only have you given us Rufus, but you have given us a ready-made common vocabulary for Brendan to talk about one of life's most difficult stages- adolescence. Specifically, the way adolescents (or pre-) sort themselves into seemingly arbitrary hierarchies, which is what KP refers to as "the food chain". :)

Yesterday morning at breakfast, in a discussion aimed at getting at the root of Brendan's complete inability to remember to brush his newly-braced teeth after lunch at school (in spite of notes in his locker, lunchbox, & the re-location of toothbrush to his lunchbox), we came to the conclusion that part of the problem was that he & one particular friend begin playing their very imaginative free-time game (usually known as "The Pokemon Game) during lunch. It then spills over into outside time after lunch, & involves imagining themselves as various super-heroish characters & then acting out the drama on the playground. I'd gotten the clue about this being the "ish" (as KP would say) when I delivered Brendan's birthday meeting treat to school on Tuesday & was there for part of lunch time. Brendan & buddy were so immersed in the game that Brendan never noticed that I'd kissed him on the cheek & said goodbye... It's no wonder he sometimes comes home with part of his lunch uneaten. (I also have to wonder if getting completely immersed is the only way Brendan can participate in this game, since the friend he plays it with is also one of his major tic-triggers. Perhaps the intense focus allows Brendan to play the game & not get triggered...) In any case, I suggested that maybe he just explain to his friend that, until he's in the habit of brushing after he eats, they refrain from playing during lunch & wait until outside time. Brendan agreed, & we both realised that it meant Brendan sitting with other kids, since this friend is a juggernaut when it comes to this game & would probably have trouble switching gears if he was near Brendan. I told Brendan that I didn't want him eating by himself, either (lunch time is prime socialisation time, & socialisation is one of the reasons he's not being home-schooled). So, we talked about who else he could sit with... Now, I had noticed on Tuesday that Brendan & friend were the only 2 boys at the table during that lunch time- the 2 5th-6th grade classes had divided themselves up into a table of girls (+2 boys) & a table of boys, which was fine by me since I had some nice conversation with the girls as my kid utterly ignored me. When we got to imagining who else Brendan could sit by, he blurted out, "But mom, most of the other guys don't talk to me during lunch because of the food chain!" Thanks to KP, I knew immediately what he was talking about. Sigh. He then listed the hierarchical order that the boys had arranged themselves into, who kind of "floated" in status, & who had no status at all (he, his buddy, & one other kid who seems to kind of float through life anyway). He then did a comparative analysis of the girls' food chain as well. Not bad for an autistic kid, huh?

We then talked about how this all affects him. Brendan sees himself as a sort of free agent, not part of the hierarchy, but not really bothered by it either, except that it's inconvenient. He said that all of the kids in the hierarchy do talk to him at other times & he's played with them on the playground at times, too, & never felt picked-on. He's noticed that the kids who are trying to move into the food chain (but are not seen as "cool") get picked on, so he's decided to steer clear of this, although he's been known get involved to defend or comfort a friend who has been picked-on. His Pokemon game buddy exists on the outside of it all because he doesn't seem to notice that it exists, & we decided that that's why the higher-ups don't give him a hard time, either. It was comforting to know that Brendan has the savvy to see what's going on & decide just how much he wants to be involved in it, & that so far he's not being drawn-in hypnotically by the "cool' factor. I feel sad that the whole thing exists at all & remember acutely how much it all hurt when I was an adolescent.

Fortunately, Brendan's school is doing a great job of recognising the fall-out from food chain-related conflicts & is getting families involved, & has starting a series of socialisation workshops to teach the whole group some healthier ways of interacting. The consensus of his teachers is that the early intervention Brendan received for socialisation has really put him ahead of the game in this area- ironic, no?

At the end of our conversation, we decided that he might try sitting with the girls- there are 2 girls who also have braces & the 3 of them have been trying to remember to remind each other to brush teeth after lunch since Brendan got his. He's been with them since first grade, too, so they treat him pretty kindly. We shall see how this all plays out... "Will he remember to clean his teeth?" has receded on my list of concerns, though, after the food-chain conversation. Adolescence is here, whether we like it or not!

A happy birthday... :)

Thanks for the kind birthday wishes from commenters on my last post! Brendan had what seemed to me to be a magical day on his birthday. Magical because, in spite of pre-birthday jitters, he was less ticcy, less OCD-driven, less inflexible than usual, & so he really enjoyed the day & so did we! :)

I had been very concerned that we wouldn't get him to church after opening birthday presents (including a desperately-desired lego), but he was very mellow & only asked to bring his new Kirara (demon cat from InuYasha) plushie with him- no prob! He had a great time on the church computer while Charlie & I were in choir rehearsal, & even came up front with his Sunday School class during the service for a presentation (something he really doesn't like to do). We zoomed home after church, bringing our 17-year-old goddaughter with us, for a quick lunch & then off to the clubhouse to finish setting up for the party.

The party went off smoothly & with no difficulties at all from the guys I was worried about. Hooray!! My faith in humanity (& in the inner sweetness of even the most troubled child) was restored, for sure. There were repeated comments from the kids on how fun the activities were, & no-one balked at being asked to dress-up. Some of the guys came up with elabourate back-stories for their costumed characters :) Our goddaughter made a great sphinx :) & she was amazed by how easily the kids got some of the hardest riddles. The guys who were "cursed" to become the dragon seemed to have a blast:

(that's Charlie in the backwards jexter hat & Brendan in his mage robes :)

...they sorted-out who would be in the front of the dragon pretty quickly & went about uncursing themselves with good humour (they had to get someone to offer the dragon a drink of water without speaking :) The rest of the kids thought it was hilarious. The rate at which they whipped through the fairly challenging games made me glad I'd made them pretty difficult (yet not so difficult that our guys with motor-planning issues- & there were at least 4 of them there- would have too much trouble). The big surprise was that they got hung-up when it came to putting together the puzzle to make the treasure map. Go fig... but there were lots of adults on hand eager to join in the fun, & there was ping pong & foosball upstairs to make the waiting easier.

They finally figured it out & found the treasure box in the sandy, cave-ish basement of the clubhouse (top photo is of the treasure-frenzy :). I was amazed by how popular the mardi gras beads were- the kids, boys & girls, went around festooned for the rest of the afternoon. It really was time for cake & ice cream after that, & afterward Charlie was amazed by how all of the kids gathered around to watch Brendan open his presents.

Recently Joel asked What do you love about your autie?. Although there are many things that I love about my son, a few sprang to mind as I watched him at his party... Brendan greeted everyone personally as they arrived, setting the tone by welcoming them to the "quest". He participated unselfconsciouslessly in the activities, pretty much forgetting that he was the "birthday boy" & encouraging his friends to have fun. When he opened his prezzies (aka "loot" :) he was equally excited about each one, saying something complimentary about every gift he got (he told me later that he remembered not to mention if he already had something he was given, because he didn't want anyone to feel bad :). When it was time for everyone to leave, he stopped what he was doing & said good-bye, in spite of being really tired & distracted by all of the excitement. He was wonderful. Charlie & I were so proud & more than a little relieved that he kept it together so well. In the comments for my last post club 166 mentioned that he hopes his son will get to the point where he makes friends. I can think back to years when I've hoped & wondered the same thing, & I think it was age & maturity that finally did it. Our guys on the spectrum have a longer curve for learning the social stuff, but Brendan has definitely gotten to a place where he knows who his friends are & has a good sense of who isn't, too. I wasn't ever sure it would happen, but it has. Whew!

When we got home from the festivities we just let him lego, offering him various foods to keep him nourished, & ate scrambled eggs ourselves, for dinner. His room looked like an explosion at the lego factory right before bed- mostly because he & dad had moved all of the projects started in the living room upstairs, so that at least one room was passable. As he got a last few pieces put in place before bed, I discovered that the new bionicle Bahrahki containers are this really cool translucent blue & have decided to try & make a lamp from one of them... stay tuned :)

Monday morning we had some extra time before leaving the house because he was due at the orthodontist for the rest of his braces at 9:00 am- more lego time! This appointment took longer, but they said it went very well, thanks to his co-operation. He was definitely much cooler about it all this time, not jumping up & down excited (no duh!) but not whiny or unhappy about it all either. He refused the offered tylenol on the way to school & seemed pretty comfortable, pain-wise, although the fixed bite-plate was making him lisp a lot & he wasn't very happy about it. He had a fine day at school & bounced out to the car when I came to get him. He said that the plate was starting to give him some pain & that he'd take me up on the tylenol offer when we got home. I told him that we needed to start his birthday meeting treat after snack time, & then he was free to do what he liked until dinner. He got a few dvds for his birthday & was excited by some new doings at Adventure Quest that a friend had told him about, so I knew he'd have sufficient distraction from his face if he needed it.

At Brendan's school they celebrate birthdays by having "birthday meetings". On the first 2 floors (pre-k through 4th grade) all of the kids & teachers sign one big card & then the birthday child's family makes a treat to share with, usually, 2 classes of kids- about 25 people at most. They sing happy birthday & then the birthday child can make up a math problem or just ask the rest of the kids to guess their age, then they have the snack. Parents are not only welcome, but pretty much expected to make an appearance if they can :) The first couple of years we were really good & brought fresh fruit trays for snack, & the fun for Brendan was dyeing the dipping-yoghurt different colours with food-colouring. The past couple of years we've gone a bit more decadent, making candy sushi from rice krispie treat rolled around twizzlers, wrapped in fruit roll-ups & sliced into little maki sushi's. Brendan & I have really enjoyed setting-up an assembly line to make these :) Mom does the sticky bits & Brendan unwraps things... With the braces, though, we needed a new idea. We got that idea from the jello that Brendan's been eating since his first round of braces- jello aquariums. We'd seen this on Zoom a few years ago- carve little fish from apple slices & suspend them in a clear cup of blue jello. It takes some time, since you have to do 2 pourings of jello to set the fish properly (& I still had some floaters), not to mention carving all those apple fish (52-ish of them). Brendan & I made the first batch of jello together, then I set him free while I poured it into 26 clear plastic cups & set them on cookie-sheets in the fridge. A bit before dinner I started carving fish, floating them in lemon-water to keep them from turning brown. After dinner Brendan & I situated the fish in the set jello & then we made another batch of jello to top it off. (We ended-up using 9 boxes of jello for 27 cups.) We ran into a hitch while situating the fish, when Brendan started freaking out about eating the cute little fish. Sigh. I made him one without & Charlie undertook to calm him down while I finished up. He was feeling better, though, today when I brought them in at 11:20 for the mature, 3rd-floor version of the birthday meeting (everyone sits down to lunch, sings happy bday, & then eats snack with lunch). He was very proud of the jello aquariums & his classmates were impressed that we'd made them.

All in all, an exhausting but exhilirating few days. Brendan has turned 11 in style & he doesn't see the orthodontist again (barring the unforeseen) for 6 weeks!

Full circle...

This past week can't have been just a week long... I feel as though time has stretched (sometimes agonisingly so), but then that's what happens when you have a kid in discomfort, I guess. Happily, we seem to have come back round to where we were & life is settling down to what passes for normalcy (for us). But what a ride we've had...

The first main consideration was the pain of these new braces & how to cope with it. We did the usual tylenol, round the clock, which helped, as did the hot-water-bottle teddy bear I'd bought years ago but had never used. Brendan'd lay on the foof chair (like a beanbag) & watch tv after school with the bear over his face & said it really helped. By Tuesday evening Brendan's face was really swollen & the initial all-over discomfort had settled into just the spots where the wires were poking his cheeks. Up to then he wasn't tolerating any wax in his mouth to cover the poky things, but by Wednesday morning he was ready to tolerate just about any secondary discomfort... Wednesday morning as I was trying to situate small lumps of soft wax on his upper back molars I realised that, in nearly 11 years of life, this was something I'd never done to/for my kid before. I've changed diapers, fed him, wiped & bathed him, placed thermometers where "the sun don't shine", but had never reached this far back into his mouth before. It was weird. He was so relieved when the wax was in place, you could see it on his face. After Charlie took him off to school, I called the orthodontist & got an appointment for that afternoon, to see what they might be able to do. Fortunately, they were able to re-situate the end of the wires so they didn't bother him & his face de-swelled by Thursday morning.

Eating has been a big challenge, too. He was really psyched by the prospect of going out for Japanese on Tuesday night, since dad had to work late, & we were pretty sure that his usual selections (rice, soup, edamame, ice cream) wouldn't cause trouble, but we weren't prepared for him to be so frustrated with the amount of time & effort it took just to eat. He nearly exploded a couple of times while we were at the restaurant, while not getting much food down (on top of it all), so I was not inclined to order dessert... but when he promised to keep it together while he waited for the tempura ice cream, I relented. Good thing- after eating the ice cream he was feeling much better & proceded to eat everything that had been giving him so much trouble pre-ice cream. When I went shopping Thursday morning I stocked-up on ice cream... He'd also decided that ice cubes made of fruit juice helped his mouth, so I got more juice, & decided to get him some jello (which he's never, ever liked) along with the requested apple sauce. He tried the jello for snack that day & loved it. :)

As for distraction- what we discovered was that tv worked best, with me reading out loud to him coming in second. Dragon Fable (his newer, better version of Adventure Quest) was not distracting enough, so he's spent remarkably little time on the computer this past week. Tv-wise, he asked me if we could try watching my old (from the early 90's) "The Adventures of Batman & Robin" animated series tapes again & I agreed. The first time we tried, maybe a year ago, he was too freaked out by the costumed criminals & decided himself that he should wait. I sat & watched with him, just to be sure he was doing ok. It's funny how you don't really notice certain things... while watching the shows this time around I was struck by the heavy undertones of mental illness (with the bad guys) & focus on their incarceration in a mental hospital (Arkham). The more we watched, the more Brendan asked me about how or why various baddies went crazy & I was getting more & more umcomfortable with exposing him to this. He was particularly taken by Two-Face's compulsion for flipping coins to make decisions, which, given Brendan's OCD, made me uneasy...

By Friday morning he was much more comfortable, physically, but I could tell that he was on edge in general, very likely due to the discomfort of learning to live with the braces. So much has changed- when & how often he brushes his teeth, a new fluoride regimen that has to be timed, what & how he can eat, when & if he can have a snack before bedtime... & just the constant feeling that he's got these things in his mouth. I went in on Friday afternoon for our usual japanese lesson to discover that Brendan had gotten in a bit of trouble during lunch/outside time & was waiting to have it all dealt with. His teachers were actually a somewhat pleased, since it seemed to them normal, kid-type trouble & it was good to see him doing developmentally appropriate things. I was cautiously ok with it all, but it never feels good to know your kid has given a teacher trouble (he misunderstood a direction that lunch had to be either entirely consumed or put away before he could go & play, & thinking that he had to eat it all, got angry & was caught chucking woodchips at the teacher, thinking she couldn't see him do it). He was pretty embarassed about doing it, being caught, & worried about the consequence. I had suggested to the teachers that the consequence be helping the teacher he'd given a hard time to with something at school & they thought that was a good idea, so I told him that much, to relieve his anxiety. But not much seemed to relieve his embarassment & discomfort. I managed to talk him back to a place where he could join his classmates for a workshop (japanese lesson got steamrollered by it all) & he hung in there for a bit, but then the tics got out of hand & he had to leave. I finally just took him home, but he was an emotional disaster by the time we got there.

One of the things that complicated it all was that he'd showed me something he'd made at school & it was weighing on my mind... he'd taken 2 playing-card jokers, taped them back to back, made a scratch on one side (to indicate the "bad" heads) & was flipping the whole thing like Two-Face flips his coin. I didn't react strongly when he showed it to me, but realised that I wasn't comfortable letting him see any more Batman... Of course, when we got home that's what he wanted to do, & when I explained that we were going to take a break he flipped. Sigh. He got so worked up, it was very much like the psychotic episodes he'd had when he was 8 & had just developed the OCD. He was "scared" to go in just about any room in the house, scared of his "bad" left hand & arm (a long-standing OCD issue), writhing on the floor & banging his head repeatedly. I wasn't really sure what to do- call Charlie? Call his psychologist? I didn't feel secure leaving him alone to do either. Finally I just shook him. I felt rotten about doing it & he got really angry, but he came back down to earth. He ran into his room & burrowed under the covers (which is something I'd suggested he do but he was too scared before...). I sat on the bed & held his hand through the covers, apologised for breaking trust with him, & explained that I'd been scared & didn't know what else to do- & cried with him. When he calmed down & we both were blowing our noses he told me I did the right thing. I'm not so sure... but it was over for the moment. We had a snack & I suggested that we watch some of a japanese programme I'd found on the internet (at veoh) called "Kamen Rider Den-O". It's in the Power Ranger/Super Sentai genre, but with a lot more plot (IMO), & although it's not subtitled, I've been able to glean alot from watching & researching the show on wikipedia. He was psyched to watch, so we did for about an hour & then he wanted to play Dragon Fable.

He was emotionally up & down for the rest of the evening & it was a great relief when Charlie came home from work & could spell me. Grammie was due to come to dinner, but called during the afternoon (while Brendan was on the computer) in a panic about the pet food poisonings. She was afraid to feed her 3 cats & couldn't get through to the vet to see which foods were safe, so I looked it up for her on the internet & then told her that Brendan was having a tough time. She decided that she'd stay home & recover from her scare (& feed her cats). It is such a gift to have a mother who understands & gives us the space to do what we need to for Brendan, plus loves us all pretty much unconditionally through it all :)

Saturday morning was fairly calm (good thing, because Charlie was in the office for the morning). We watched more Kamen Rider & discussed it over lunch. Charlie came home in time for japanese lesson & sat in with us. I'd thought Brendan would be up for lesson, but he had a really rough time coping (the purple part of the sofa pillow bothered him & his left hand bothered him) & finally he melted-down. Charlie suggested that they play with legos instead, so Tomoko & I finished the lesson & talked about orthodontia- she'd had braces as an adult & really sympathised with his discomfort. I also invited her to Brendan's birthday party next Sunday & we arranged to have our lesson in the morning next Saturday, so she could move her Sunday students to Saturday afternoon & come to the party.

Brendan spent a goodly part of the afternoon alternately obsessing about legos & raging around, & watching Kamen rider with me or other stuff with Charlie. It was a good day to have 2 parents at home! One thing we discussed over dinner Saturday was strategies for Brendan to reclaim his left hand & arm from the bad OCD thoughts. We've been working with him on this particular "thought" for a few years now- it's one of his earliest ones- & from talking to him about it, it may be that the whole thing originated because he has some sensory issues with his left hand. He's told us that sometimes it tingles or feels weird, which seems to have mutated itself into an OCD thought. He's renamed his left hand "Q-1", which stands for "quadroped 1" & that's how he refers to the thought, too. Over dinner we talked about Brendan trying to move his own "ki" or life-energy into that hand & see if he could reverse the bad thoughts about it. Brendan is very sensitive to "ki" & has found that he can sense the "ki" from other people & objects as well. I mentioned that the American Indians use bundles of herbs called smudge sticks to purify things, & that he might want to try this as well. I have done some healing work with crystals in the past, too, & told him he could use some of my crystals if he wanted to. Brendan seemed psyched to have some positive ideas for dealing with his hand trouble & went to bed in a pretty good mood.

I was worried about church on Sunday, since it's always a challenge for him, but he settled into his usual Dragon Fable game on the church computer during choir practise, transitioned really well to reading his book during the first part of the service, & even participated in the kids' story that happens right before we all go upstairs for Sunday School- something he rarely does. He wanted to stay for lunch (it was pledge Sunday, so there was good food :) & we heard that he'd taught his whole class some yoga that he'd learned in 3rd grade... although I don't think that was exactly the lesson for the day :) Flexible Sunday School teachers are another great gift... The whole afternoon at home went very smoothly. I found another ancient vhs tape- of episodes of "The Tick", which had been another of my early-90's faves- & we watched it in & around other activities. We went over to our sailing club, which is where Brendan's party will take place, to scout it out (I'm looking for likely places to hide the treasure, & we're all looking for where to do the various activities of his D&D-themed party). The bay is still mostly covered with ice, which was pretty amazing considering how balmy the weather has been lately. When we got back home I collapsed on the sofa to snooze for a couple hours while Charlie & Brendan went to fly a kite on a neighbouring hill & then played quietly with legos until I resumed consciousness. Brendan was much mellower all day- such a relief! And in the evening, after jammies time, he told us that he wanted to try to de-tic his left hand & arm. I found some lavender incense (I have real smudge, but strong smells are a problem & he loves the scent of lavender) & we did it in the living room rather than in his room, in case he had trouble with the smell. He lit the incense (part of the cachet was being allowed to light the match) & held some crystals in his left hand while I smudged his left hand & arm. He closed his eyes & pushed his "ki" until he said both sides of his body felt the same, energy-wise. The I smudged all of him. We affirmed that it was ok if his left had sometimes felt differently, because he's different & he's ok. Brendan looked very peaceful & happy when he was done, & he liked the incense so well he wanted to burn the rest of it in his room :)

I know this all may have sounded hippy-dippy... but I think that the incense & crystals were important psychological tools for him, that helped him to imagine himself as whole & ok. The effort certainly tired him out- he slept right up to the alarm this morning,which usually makes him grumpy as heck. But when I mentioned that I suspected the effort of moving his "ki" had tired him out, he smiled & agreed. He seemed proud to have done it. I asked him this morning how his arm felt & he said that it felt a little empty, so we discussed his taking time during the day to keep the "ki" moving. We told Cherie, his consultant teacher, what he'd done & she was delighted, knowing what a problem the OCD has given him over his left hand. I really love seeing his pride & joy in reclaiming part of himself. When I left school Brendan was sitting quietly at his desk doing his morning work with the rest of his class.

So we seem to be back to normal- for now :) This is birthday blowout week- I need to make lists of what needs to be done, particularly the adventure-quest-type activities (I have been googling co-operative games & have found some particuarly fiendish ones that will work very well to make things seem like a quest :) & then do them!! Our goddaughter has offered to help out & I think she'll make a good sphinx (tee hee). The RSVP's are dribbling in... And then, the day after the party (a week from today), the rest of the braces are installed & we get to go through it all again!

Braces, pt. 1...

Today we slept in a bit, since Brendan wasn't due at the orthodontist's until 9:00 am, about 45 minutes after we usually arrive at school. (Missing some school has been part of the charm of having to get braces :) Brendan had a tough time getting to sleep last night, in spite of having gone sledding in the afternoon, & intermittently had more than usual difficulty with tics yesterday, but also did some good work in overcoming them. He didn't want to go into the kitchen for dinner due to a tic, but I calmly reminded him that he had de-ticced other things & that he could do this, too. At this point he was sitting on the sofa headed for meltdown, so I asked him if he could stand up & he said he could... & when he did I slowly led him into the kitchen, where dinner was all laid out on the table. Charlie had poured us some wine & surprised Brendan by pouring him a teeny glass of his own. This proved sufficient distraction to get him to the table. All thoughts of tic were lost in sampling the wine & then drowning it in tonic water to make it taste better :) His difficulty falling asleep led to his waking up around 7:00, rather than his usual 6:30 (with time to read or watch tv until 7:00) so it was good to have the extra half-hour for him to settle into the day.

He bounced into the orthodontist's office in a mild state of excitement & they were ready for him almost immediately. It was clear that I was expected to wait in the waiting room this time & he didn't seem to need me, so although it felt odd, I let him go. A couple of times a technician came out to report that he was doing very well which was really nice of them. I tried to concentrate on my kanji practice while I waited. I have decided that the only way to learn to read kanji is to learn to write it, so I purchased a workbook a few weeks ago & have been working away when I have the time. It's been really good to do because learning kanji has deepened my understanding of japanese language concepts (today I discovered that the kanji for "understand" is the same as "divide"- to break down into smaller bits, maybe?). It's also helped me to understand why there's more than one pronounciation for most concepts (the original, imported chinese pronounciations & the adopted japanese ones). Tomoko likes the book I got & has been a great resource for answering questions that come up as I work. Drawing the kanji is a challenge & after a while I feel as though my brain is going to explode, which is when I know to take a break :) I've been thinking of ways to share some of this with Brendan, too, because I think he'd really enjoy it. It's like the ultimate secret code...

After about 45 minutes Brendan came & got me. He was still upbeat & showed me the wire in the brackets that had been cemented all along his upper teeth. The technician had him sit back in the chair & showed us a series of goodies for him to take home & how to use them. There was wax to cover any brackets that irritate his lips, samples of special fluoride paste that he could sample to see what flavour I should get for him (by prescription!), a new toothbrush & new rules for brushing, flossing threaders & how to use them... By this time I could tell Brendan was getting spacey from all the info, so I assured her that I'd help him out & we gathered our things to get him to school. Before we could leave, though, he had to kiss me on the cheek to make sure the brackets wouldn't hurt me. Pretty sweet... On the way he wanted to eat his snack (baked Lays) & asked me to remind him how to eat them (put one chip in at a time & chew with back molars). When he started picking at the food in his teeth I suggested he take a big swig from his water bottle to wash it out. I told him maybe he should have a toothbrush at school & he mentioned that a classmate with braces sometimes brushes her teeth after lunch. A couple of times he asked me nervously to look at the wire & make sure it was ok. I'm really glad they're taking it slowly, so Brendan can get used to the changes in stages. Right now the wire is just sitting in the brackets because they fitted the upper bands, took an impression, then took them off to have the appliance for his upper palate attatched to them, & he won't get all of that gear for 2 weeks. It will be enough for him to get used to a different & more time-consuming teeth-cleaning regimen, plus the way the brackets feel.

School was very quiet when we got there. It was 10:15 & everyone was at work. We slipped into his room & he showed Cherie, his consultant teacher the work in progress on his teeth. He went to his desk & his teacher, Jen, suggested that the class go over what they'd been discussing, to catch Brendan up. I quietly told Cherie to have him call me if he is uncomfortable or nervous. The I went home to laundry...

I had 2 calls in the morning but neither from Brendan :) One was Charlie checking up in how things went. I thought about how he's going to manage toothbrush & paste at school & decided that a zippered bag made from a wash cloth would work well (to keep things from getting too nasty-gooey), so I found a cloth & zipper & was just getting ready to figure out how to sew them together when the phone rang- it was 1:30 by then. Cherie was on the line & said that Brendan was starting to get some discomfort from the brackets, so I said I'd come over to get him (it was just half an hour before I usually go get him). They were playing a game in her room & Brendan was sucking on a lollie when I got there. Cherie said she wasn't sure about the lollie but it seemed to be helping... I told her as long as he didn't crunch it they were fine, although we both agreed that he can't go through the day every day sucking lollies either. She said he'd eaten his lunch in stages, some before outside time & some after, but that he'd really had a great day. I told Brendan that after his snack he could brush his teeth & then I'd stick some wax to the offending brackets.

On the way into the house I asked him if I could take picture of him & his braces for the blog, acknowledging that it was an odd request. He replied that I could & that he was glad I was not normal... I told him I was glad that he was not normal too :) He approved of the picture (said it was his "rogue's grin") after I showed it to him. We decided to freeze some orange juice in the ice cube tray to make freezies he could suck on to relieve his sore lips & they're now in the freezer. The zipper bag is made, equipped, & in his backpack. He's already dumped the first lot of wax, saying that it was annoying, & trying to lose himself in a Dragon Fable game... I'm poised to suggest a movie & knitting if that doesn't work. Wish us luck...!

New food, developments, & braces!

Hi. I'm back... Blogging for me seems to be a repetitive process of getting into "the groove" (keeping up with the flow of life & reflecting it in regular blog posts) & then periods of hiccuping through, trying to capture snapshots as life whizzes by... I am in hiccup mode these days & have found that, although it's uncomfortable to settle for posting snapshots of life, it's the only practical thing to do & I'm going to have to be satisfied with it. I have been thinking a lot lately about some of the deeper underpinnings of society's attitudes toward people who are different & at some point it's all going to gel in my mind when I actually have time to post it... but for now it's going to have to stay put. Sigh.

Brendan's been off school, yesterday & today, for family-student-teacher conferences. Yesterday we bopped out briefly in the morning to the asian food store & office supplies store to pick up some things. I had expected Brendan to want to stay in the car while I went into the asian food store because he usually can't handle the smell (lots of fishy overtones in a rather dank, warehouse-y building) but he was interested in looking for okashi (snacks) so was eager to go in with me. His only bad moment was running into (not literally) a cooked duck hanging in a corner, but he was able to go somewhere else in the store & didn't need to leave. We had to find non-gum or -chewy type snacks, which wasn't easy, but he found some konpeito & thought they would do :) (Konpeito is the bumpy, colourful sugar candy that the soot sprites are fed in "Spirited Away".) We talked about tolerance for those who eat meat on the way home in the car... which was interesting because Brendan decided that he wanted tuna fish for breakfast that morning. He hasn't eaten tuna for years. He has, however, assured me that it's ok if I eat fish or seafood around him, which relieved me considerably about travelling to Japan, since we're more likely to encounter fish & seafood there (Brendan can't bear to be in the room if someone is eating other animal products & even refuses to eat tofu products that are shaped like meat products, like veggie burgers). On Monday Brendan had earned a pokemon plushie from the new Diamon & Pearl series that is a penguin (whom he's named Linus) & yesterday morning he told me that Linus wanted tuna, so he'd like to have some too. I convinced him to hold off on the tuna until lunch time (I was trying to get out of the house early to run our errands) & so when lunch rolled around I made him a tuna salad sandwich. He loved it (so did Linus). So, I told him I'd make tuna onigiri for dinner & see if he liked that, too. Onigiri are japanese rice balls, a staple of box lunches there, but Brendan's never liked them with with any sort of filling & I'd been worried about finding any that he'd eat when we're in Japan this summer. (On a side note, according to our japanese teacher, the best place for take-out onigiri in Japan is the local 7-11 (yes, they have 7-11's in Japan). Tomoko says they take great pride in using the best quality rice & fresh fillings... something we're just going to have to experience, I think :)

We had a pretty mellow afternoon- we designed his birthday invitations using an image from his AQ online game- & when dinner came around I made tuna onigiri for Charlie & Brendan (I have really neat onigiri moulds that make the process go alot quicker & are less messy) with edamame on the side & tamagoyaki (rolled sweet omelette) for us parents (I had temaki sushi- yum!). Brendan ate all of his edamame first & then sat with an onigiri in his hand, breathing deeply. I encouraged him to "just take a bite & see..." & he told me he was preparing himself (new food is never easy...). Then, he bit into it. And he loved it :) He so rarely even tries something unfamiliar so I really savoured the moment. It's a lucky thing that we got him started early (as in, as soon as he started eating solid food) with japanese cuisine, or he wouldn't be eating it at all...

Today Brendan's school conference was at 8:50 am, so we got up nearly as early as a regular school day. Charlie got home from doing some catch-up at work as Brendan & I finished breakfast & we all hopped in the car to go to school. In preparation for the conferences all of the kids had done self-assessments & I always look forward to hearing what Brendan has to say. I also remembered that it was reading the assessment that had been partly-scribed for him last fall & seeing the contrast between what he'd been able to write & what he'd said to the scriber that led us to begin looking into voice-recognition software for him. That definitely came up in the conference today & we were glad to be able to report that we are finally ready to order the software & the laptop necessary for him to use it. (This will bring the number of working computers in our house to 5... deranged, but true. You would think that we might find a suitable computer from the array already available, but Dragon won't work with any of them for various reasons...) Brendan read his self-assessment (scribed for him, so it was full of interesting things) & commented on it as needed. One thing we all found interesting was that he prefers to work in groups of kids (as long as he doesn't have to do any writing), rather than alone because when he's in a room of students working on their own he feels an atmosphere of competition. When he's working with a group of kids he gets a feeling of co-operation. Charlie snagged a copy of Brendan's self-assessment to give to his psychologist, whom we were going to see at noon. When Brendan ran out of things to say he left the room & we did the grownup part of the conference. His teachers are very pleased with his current level of functioning at school. They moved desks around in the classroom a bit & found just the right place for Brendan's desk relative to the blackboard so that he can concentrate on his work without too many distractions. His big box has also helped enormously, since he can retreat to it & regroup when feeling overwhelmed. His teacher says he uses it a lot, but I didn't get the sense that he was in it during lesson times or that it was interfering with work time. He has also been much more fluent about telling his teachers when something is giving him a tic (triggering an OCD thought) so that they can modify things before he melts down from distress. So his days are less full of emotional explosions & he has more energy for school work & fun. We ended the meeting by thanking them very much for their flexibility & creativity in working with Brendan. So many of the things I've been reading lately highlight how lucky we are to have such a school in our community, which is not dedicated to serving kids with special needs but whose focus on alternative education provides him with teachers who are dedicated to helping him learn in the best way possible. They replied by telling us how much they enjoy Brendan as a person & how much he brings to the class. :)

The next event after school conference was the arrival of Grammie to stay with Brendan while Charlie & I went to see his psychologist for one of our regular meetings. I showed Grammie the chewy tubes that arrived on Monday, to be used instead of gum for Brendan's oral-motor/sensory feedback needs from now on... Luckily Brendan was on the computer when I did this because she was a bit puzzled by the tubes (& maybe my excitement?) & asked if they were like a pacifier. I kind of laughed & then asked her not to say that in front of Brendan... Later Charlie & I reflected on how well-thought-out plans could be destroyed by a single word & how lucky we were he wasn't around to hear the word "pacifier". Sigh. It also made me realise that I definitely live in an odd little world, where it's perfectly ok for nearly 11-year-olds to need chewy tubes... because, of course, is is ok (& necessary). We had a very productive meeting with Dr. M & he gave us some ideas for strategies to help Brendan transition to wearing the braces, particularly if he continues to have trouble keeping foreign objects out of his mouth (which is currently a problem). It's very clear that we will have to rethink how we do things at home until the transition has been made, & that Brendan will need more monitoring than he's required for quite some time. So he's not the only one who will have to learn to do things differently. Another thing we talked about was the way we've been approaching how to help Brendan learn the social skills he needs. Dr. M was pleased that we've evolved a strategy of talking about this sort of learning as getting "information" about things, rather than viewing it as coaching or getting help. He said that by speaking this as information-gathering we are not only piquing his interest (because he loves information) but empowering Brendan to learn how to do it himself, rather than teaching him to depend on others. It's a subtle difference, but affects how he views himself & his own capabilities. At these appontiments we always get positive feedback as to how Brendan's doing developmentally & it is always nice to know the ways that he's right on track for his age, rather than the focus always being where he's not doing as well... Brendan's recent interest in earning money is developmentally spot-on & is to be encouraged, we discovered :)

The final appointment for this busy day was with the orthodontist to begin the braces process (!). Brendan was a bit flakier than he's been at past appointments & had to be brought back to topic repeatedly (they did a thorough job on what foods he must avoid, how to eat others, & how he'll have to change his present methods for toothbrushing, flossing, & flouride rinsing). He was very pleased with the new water bottle he was given (as a treat :) & the dental mirror of his very own to use to keep track of the spacers that they put in today. He was really captivated by the mirror & was able to find all of the spacers with a little help from the technician. We checked-out using the chewy tubes to replace gum in Brendan's life (they hadn't heard of them) & after I explained how they work we got the ok... whew!! As it turned out, he only needed 3 of a possible 8 spacers, & although he complained that they made his teeth feel weird, he was barely noticing them by the time we left. I am worried by how he'll do once everything's actually in his mouth. We'll have to check his lips regularly to make sure the braces aren't abrading too much & giving him sores. His pain threshold is very high & I'm not convinced that he'll catch any abrasion before it's really bad. And we're really going to have to think about what he's eating & how. As I mentioned above, we're going to have to change our habits as much as Brendan will have to change his. It makes me realise what a creature of habit I am... On the way home we brainstormed a list of Brendan's friends that have braces already, so that he can ask them questions & get ideas for coping strategies. He's still pretty excited about it all &, I think, liking the extra attention :) Hey, if you've got to put up with all of this, feeling special is a nice perk!

Back to school tomorrow...!

Back on the roller coaster...

It's been an odd couple of days. Luckily, energies are running high so they've just been odd... :)

Monday afternoon Brendan saw the orthodontist. It's been one year since his initial evaluation, where we learned that he would definitely need braces to correct an upper overbite & lower jaw arch problems. Fortunately, no surgery will be required, just 2 years (give or take) of braces. Even more fortunately, Brendan's pediatric dentist was able to send us to an orthodontist who has experience with autistic kids, & it really shows. At our first visit, last year, Brendan was hyper-chatty & into pretty much everything. The response of everyone who dealt with him was to be charmed by his obvious intelligence & interest in the proceedings. The orthodontist spoke directly to him when it came time to tell us the results of the exam, & the whole place is really relaxed & quiet. When we explained Brendan's oral-motor issues & voiced our concerns about loose appliances we were assured that they could do the work without his ever having to wear a removable device. Very good news. Since Brendan's 12-year molars hadn't fully erupted yet they couldn't begin the treatment last year, so they told us to come back this March. The thought of Brendan being done with braces before he even enters high school is very exciting to us parental units :)

Brendan was psyched to go back to the orthodontist this past Monday. He really liked the people there & remembered the doctor's name :) He was just as hyper & chatty & they were just as relaxed about it. After the exam we were told that Brendan was ready for braces. Whoo hoo! :) (Later in the day I asked him why he's so excited about getting braces & he said that it "was something new" & that it "would be a challenge"...) While we were there we consulted the doctor about Brendan's reporting another loose tooth, even though we'd thought he was finished with losing teeth. I was very nervous because Brendan is extremely aggressive with loose teeth & I could envision him working away at a permanent tooth... It turned out that this was, indeed, his last primary tooth to come out (we'd miscounted) & Brendan was told that it could take up to 2 months to come out, at it's present stage of looseness. This guy doesn't know Brendan, though... The good news was that it won't affect the schedule of getting braces. So, we got the list of suggested payment options (of course ) & I made 3 more appointments while they took Brendan upstairs for xrays & impressions of his teeth. He bounced off after the technician chatting away. I was a bit worried about the impressions bit, since I've had this done & it can be unpleasant (I felt like the goop was going to run down my throat) but Brendan came bouncing back about 20 minutes later, all excited about the possible uses (other than dentistry) for the alginate (the goop's real name...). He's thinking that encasing fleeing miscreants in the stuff would be the "havaheart" trap version of catching criminals.

We're all going back (dad, too) next Wednesday for the pre-treatment meeting, & they'll also insert spacers to get him ready for the bands. They will also repeat the do's & don'ts & explain how he'll have to clean & floss (he already flosses) with the braces on. The biggest issue I can see is that gum will be forbidden. (When I told Cherie, his consultant teacher, about this yesterday morning she kind of gasped.) Brendan gets significant deep pressure feedback from chewing gum, plus it seems to prevent him from putting other, less appropriate, things in his mouth. Sigh. He had been using a chewy tube a couple of years ago while watching tv at home (never at school) but then stopped abruptly & I never really found out why. I brought it up a few weeks ago, when I found him chewing on a lego, but he said he wouldn't use it. I brought it up again yesterday afternoon, since the gum ban is starting to sink in, & he was more interested in the idea of a chewy tube then. So I looked at them on the Integrations site & found a couple different kinds that Brendan thought he'd like to try. One kind acts as a kind of pencil-topper, which I thought would go over better at school, & it even has little terry-cloth covers to catch saliva & give a different sensory experience (Brendan liked the idea). He'd also been telling me how it would be cool if they were flavoured, but the closest I found was scented ones (chocolate & the like) so he said he'd try them, too.

The other impetus for getting chewies back in our lives was the end of Brendan's schoolday yesterday... He had called me around 1:00 all excited because he'd lost the loose tooth (remember? The one that was supposed to take 2 months to fall out...?). When I got there I was surprised to see that he was sitting away from the rest of the class (around the corner but still within earshot), who were having music & seemed upset. His music teacher came over & explained that Brendan had been asked to remove himself from class for spitting on another kid. I was rather taken aback because Brendan has never had much trouble with spitting before. Brendan was really upset with himself & just this side of meltdown, so my priority was to get him home & then try to sort things out. His teacher said that things were ok, he understood that Brendan hadn't meant to disrupt things, but Brendan was not able to forgive himself for his lack of judgement. (The teacher has since asked to meet with me tomorrow afternoon, which was kind of funny because I had told Cherie just this morning that we need to sit down with him & explain more in depth what's going on with Brendan...) I barely got Brendan out of the building without a meltdown, he was so upset. He didn't calm down at all in the car & was on the kitchen floor in meltdown mode when his nose brushed my sleeve & we both made a run for the tissues, since he'd snotted my sweater & his face has gotten smeared. Before we knew it we were laughing uproariously at this & he was fine. Once he was in a better place I decided to try to sort things out piece by piece, so I first asked him why he was spitting... I guess there were a couple of issues, one being that he had a paperclip in his mouth (!) & had to spit it out. Another was there was a bad taste in his mouth (from the paperclip perhaps?), & then finally it became a tic & he felt he had to spit. I explained to Brendan why people freak out when "spit happens" (spread of disease) & explained that, if he feels the need to spit, he should excuse himself & find a sink. I asked him to imagine spit=sink, so that it would become an automatic reaction over time. Brendan told me that he thought the kid who'd accidentally gotten the spit-out paper clip on his shoe was over-reacting & when I checked this out with Cherie this morning she agreed that this was a good possibility. Then we tackled the paper clip in his mouth... I asked him to imagine getting a paper clip stuck in his braces. He made a face & decided that it would be bad, & then I told him I'd find him some chewy things to use instead of paper clips & the like. The last thing I tried to address was his over-reaction to the whole thing. We talked about how embarrassing it can be to be called out of class, & also that we know that he's not going to remember appropriate behaviour all the time, but that he needs to cut himself some slack & allow himself room to make mistakes & learn from them.

Last evening, when Charlie & I talked about it all, we decided that his lapse in good judgement & over-reaction was very likely due to the decreased dose of seroquel. Sigh. We've seen small signs over the past couple of days that he's just not coping very well with life. Episodes of screaming because the tics won't let him alone (literally) & his not being able to do things like lego because it's not diverting enough & the OCD starts freaking him out. So we decided to resume the 50 mg twice daily (we had reduced his evening dose to 25 mg 2 weeks ago). It looks as though he's just going to have to outgrow the seroquel. From what we've been told, as Brendan grows & matures, he'll be able to take more cognitive control of the OCD (& he already has), plus the Tourettes may back-off as well. The main thing is that he have "a life" & not spend large amounts of time terrified or paralysed because of the OCD & be able to do the things he likes & wants to do.

Charlie usually takes Brendan to school on Wednesday mornings & either goes to work (just for the morning) or does errands & comes home. Today I accompanied them so that I could get Cherie up to speed on yesterday's music class doings... She was surprised & distressed when I told her what had happened, because they (the teachers) had been meeting right across the hall, & Brendan's classroom teacher, Jen, kept going out to see if everything was going ok. It all must have occurred right at the end of class. I told Cherie how we'd decided to handle the spitting & all about the chewy tubes, & she told me that one of Brendan's school friends had just started using a chewy tube at school, which was a great relief. I also mentioned that we're going to have to do more with deep pressure, & we both realised that we're having trouble getting him to accept it when he's really upset. I had used it to stave-off a meltdown over the weekend, when Brendan was just starting to get agitated, & Cherie had had a similar experience last week in gym class, but he won't let us do it when he's in meltdown mode. I mentioned that I'm thinking of making him a "shoulder pal" - a weighted object that he coulld wear over his shoulders at school to give him more consistent sensory feedback. I mentioned it to Brendan (I had seen one in the OT catalogue) & we talked about making it look like one of his pokemon, then he could wear it & have it be kind of fun. He said he might wear something like that at school... Cherie & I brainstormed some, too- she said that if there was a beanbag component (like the head or the tail) he might like it because she's seen him play with beanbags. I was thinking that making it out of fleece might make it fun to touch & pet, too. The main thing is to make him want to wear it... I will definitely have him help me sew it when the time comes. He's been bugging me to do another sewing project, so I'll bet knowing he's made the shoulder thingy himself will make him want to wear it :) Stay tuned...