Snoopy Dancing for Pamela

While we are working on a new objective, we have not closed the book on helping Pamela with her anxieties. We can add another objective to our plate because the whole family is mindful of how to handle moments of anxiety. We have a game plan for current issues, and, if any new ones crop up, we have an idea of what to do. Guiding her through uncertainty (the root cause of most of her worries) is part of our parenting style (when we are not grumpy or exhausted--hey, we are only human). Sunday was a good example.

David went to the early service. He got home just as we were leaving for the late service (our church is around the block, so we walk). Steve specifically told him to feed the dogs and let the hyper dog out of the kennel. When we got home, we planned to pick up David and drive to a restaurant for lunch. David had not done as requested, and I could hear Steve scolding him (which David deserved). I knew Pamela would feed off of that, so we walked to the front yard and sat on the brickwork. She knew David was in trouble, but she saw me acting calm and neutral so she stayed cool. Then, David walks over to us in a huff and vented. I told him that it was between him and Dad, and my job is keeping Pamela neutral. If he had to vent, I told him to find another spot. If I had not been a buffer, Pamela would have had moments of anxiety where she grits her teeth. I prevented it by showing her that I was going to sit there with her and enjoy the glorious sunshine!

We drove to the restaurant for lunch. David and Steve did their usual fast-paced repartee in the car. I could tell Pamela was growing frustrated because she could not follow them nor keep up. Her frustration was beginning to build into anxiety. I stopped the banter and reminded them that Pamela could not keep up. Then, I repeated Pamela's question for Steve so he could answer it and help her feel competent and part of the conversation.

After our meal, we walked by a table with a family and a baby seated in the high chair. While we were putting the trash and trays away, Pamela stopped and walked up to the baby with very friendly overtones. We did not know the family so we moved on and I said, "Do you like babies?" Pamela answered, "Yes."

Pamela does not go to church events very often because we hope she will want to go because she feels competent. Sunday night, she wanted to go to a church spaghetti dinner (and we brought her gluten-free noodles and sauce, of course). She sat at the table, while we headed to the food line, where we needed to snag a plate and drink for her.

Someone in our Sunday school class walked up to Pamela and greeted her. She was wearing a pretty, shiny ring. Pamela grabbed and massaged her hand and looked at the ring mesmerized. The lady said, "Pamela, do you like my ring?" Pamela looked her in the face and said, "Yes." Then, the lady said, "I like your hair. Who cut it?" Pamela didn't quite get the question, but she did answer with, "Me!" So, the lady said, "Did someone cut your hair for you?" Pamela again confused, said, "Yes, me!" What impressed the lady the most was how Pamela looked her in the face while they talked! While the lady was relating this anecdote story to us, her daughter walked over to the table to give Pamela her plate and drink. Pamela looked up at the daughter and said, "Thank you." They were both very amazed at how well Pamela engaged them without direct prompting.

While we ate, Steve was talking to a fellow car buff. They talked about cars, selling toilets, and washing the siding. Pamela had two issues: a slight case of jealous and trigger words. Whenever she would start to over react, I would explain the whole story: "Oh, Bob just moved into his new house." Steve was able to converse in peace while I kept Pamela regulated!

Yesterday, Pamela did a fabulous job in reacting to visual and auditory barriers I put in her way. She seems to know when I am not able to see and hear what she perceives. She overcame every challenge I gave her. Instead of getting frustrated at her mother, who seemed to be acting like a blockhead, Pamela was very playful and laughed. She required hardly any scaffolding (only for removing the head phones). The most exciting moment was when she automatically knew that she had to move to see the astronaut that I built out of blocks. I have saved those Discovery Toys blocks for ten years and I am so glad I did! They are quite awesome for a physical barrier that can also function as showing two different perspectives.

Pamela clearly has a higher level of understanding than I thought. I suspect that her aphasia (which has prolonged her confusion with pronouns) has masked her true abilities. We still have to demonstrate a fuller understanding for her to master this objective. I think you will enjoy watching her shine. I had a hard time repressing my urge to do an endzone dance during this recording.

Borat's Cousin

Although it is highly original, I can't stand the humor of Borat, aka Sasha Baron-Cohen. I find him too cruel, crass, and crude for my money. Anyway, until recently, I did not realize that Borat's cousin is the very famous researcher in the field of autism, Simon Baron-Cohen. Does anyone know if Dr. Stanley Greenspan, developer of Floortime (a development) and former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan are really brothers, or is that another urban myth?

Simon Baron-Cohen, director of the Autism Research Centre (which is not misspelled), is working on projects like empathy and mindblindness. He has extensively researched a core cognitive feature of autism: challenges with theory of mind,

By theory of mind we mean being able to infer the full range of mental states (beliefs, desires, intentions, imagination, emotions, etc.) that cause action. In brief, having a theory of mind is to be able to reflect on the contents of one’s own and other’s minds.

We had our own little version of Baron-Cohen's classic Sally-Anne "False Belief" test last Friday while delivering meals on wheels. Every time, the food set up is slightly different. Today, one meal included a hot lunch, three bags of crackers, milk, and salad. Pamela was in charge of handing me the latter three items as usual. Because she manned the cooler, she knew the meal included both milk and salad. David and I did not know about the salad, so we only asked for milk. Pamela must have thought, "They know about the salad because I know about it." So, she never volunteered the fact that we were forgetting the salad. With only six meals left to deliver, Pamela handed me both milk and salad. So, we ended up backtracking to make sure all of the clients got their allotment of greens!

Experts in the field of autism are addressing theory of mind in different ways. Nearly everyone mindreads unconsciously (no, I do not mean psychic powers or paranormal states). We interpret, predict, and participate in social behavior and communication through theory of mind: reading facial expressions and body language to determine the mental states of other people. Clearly, the first step children with autism must learn is recognizing facial expressions, and Simon Baron-Cohen developed two DVDs to teach this (Transporters for Thomas the Train fans and Mind Reading for mature audiences). I agree with Baron-Cohen when he claimed that children can improve this social skill through practice, but I prefer the non-technological route. Like our kids already get enough screen time, eh?

I also agree with him that recognizing emotions may not be enough to transform behavior. Without a guide, children with autism may not understand how to use this greater understanding of emotions in real life. Through RDI, we adopted the approach of teaching this skill through daily lifestyle activities in the real world. We have had many, many situations in which we remained nonverbal and Pamela made decisions about what to do based upon our facial expressions. Now, we are taking baby steps in theory of mind by working on sharing perspectives.

Our first step focuses on concrete things: physical barriers that prevent she and I from perceiving the same thing. I wanted to build a positive episodice memory in this uncharted territory, so I made it very easy and obvious. In my first lesson with Pamela, I covered my face (blanket, poncho, cap, blindfold) and let her know there was a problem without direct prompts: "uh-oh," "I'm blind," and "I can't see." Pamela is very playful person, and I knew she would like it. I tried to slow down my actions at the critical moment of discovery. So, I caught her attention and slowly covered my vision. Pamela laughed and then would remove whatever it was. After she showed me she understood the need to address the problem physically, I added more challenges and she met them all with a little bit of scaffolding!


Yesterday, at Walmart, I found opportunities to work on this objective. Pamela was looking at a TV guide from the magazine stash near a closed checkout aisle. I stood perpendicular to her and stared at boxes of turtle chocolates. Then, I used a lot of declarative language. "Mmmmm . . . I see chocolates . . . Mmmmm, they look so good." She was so absorbed in the TV guide that it was pointless. Later, we were in the book section. I was again perpendicular to her so I opened my eyes wide, gasped, and said, "A spider!" She didn't see any arachnids, so she walked in my direction to check out the books on spiders. We were back to back in the electronics. She was studying the digital converter box, while I was looking at computer games. I had my back to what she was seeing. She wanted me to look and did lots of pointing and verbalizing, and I responded with, "I don't see it. I see games." I had to scaffold her by moving closer to her and putting her hands on my face. Then, she turned me in the right direction.

Rest in Peace, Sweet Lily!

When I pulled off the cover of the bird cage on Friday, I noticed that Lily our sweet parakeet was dead. I knew Pamela would need scaffolding on handling the death of a beloved pet, so I left the towel on the cage all day to avoid attracting her attention. Steve left work early and picked up a new parakeet for us. Pamela decided to take a bath, so I quietly took care of Lily and cleaned out the cage (yes, we gave her a Christian burial and not a royal flush). Steve had just arrived when Pamela noticed that the cage was in pieces, and Lily was nowhere to be seen. I decided to film our conversation in case I needed to learn how to better handle the death of a pet.



Pamela began asking me, "Where's the bird?" I very calmly and quietly eased into the news by telling her about the new bird first. She was mildly upset, but we spared her the kind of uncertainty that drives her over the edge. Because we already had a new bird, I think it lessened her anxiety. She was very interested in assisting Steve in moving the new bird into the cage. Steve had no idea how to do it and did a great job of remaining calm and neutral. I scaffolded Pamela in finding little roles to help him out. We used lots of declaratives and nonverbals and limited our prompts and commands as much as we could as we moved the new bird. Pamela named him Pat. We have no idea why she picked that name!


And, here's Pat . . . (Patrick if you are being formal).

Scaffolding Great Backyard Bird Count for You and Your Kids

Hear ye, hear ye, all ye RDI families! Believe it or not, bird watching can be a great activity for framing RDI objectives or just plain family fun! You do not have to be an expert in birds to get started. In fact, part of the joy of birdwatching is not knowing much at all and making discoveries for yourself! You do not have to live near a nature center to see our feathered friends (yes, in time, you will grow to think of them as friends). I live right in the middle of a rural town with two gas stations, a storage facility, two stores, a former dialysis center, a church with several buildings, and four houses on my busy block!

You do not need a web camera or special equipment. This battered, old, taped-up camera (with the zoom set to the highest level, without flash, pictures take through my sometimes clean kitchen window) has produced the bird pictures on my blog! Then, I crop, resize, or adjust the color as needed. When I was busy trying to catch the painted bunting in action a few weeks back, I put the video camera on the back porch and let it rip for thirty minutes!

Become a Good Guide
To scaffold your children in watching birds, you need to become a good guide and that means getting to know your birds. When I first started homeschooling in the dark ages (1995), I could recognize obvious birds in my yard, but not much more than robin, cardinal, blue jay, and crows. When we moved to a house in Colorado with bird feeders and bird boxes, I caught the bird-watching bug. I bought a bird book and began watching them from my kitchen window through some binoculars. Very gradually, I began to recognize them based on several factors. I keep on hand a local bird book and a national field guide for traveling.

The first thing you need to do is attract birds by supplying food and water in a place you can view from a window. We have a bird bath, a seed feeder, a suet feeder, and a nectar feeder for hummingbirds in Spring. Great daily lifestyle activities are filling the bath with clean water and making sure all feeders are full. You can either buy feeders (an outing with potential for framing objectives) or make your own. You can figure out what birds you may attract this time of year by plugging your town into the 2008 Great Backyard Bird Count results. You and your child can talk about what kind of birds you would like to feed and choose a feeder type, bird food, and feeder placement based upon that--all great venues for problem solving and dynamic thinking.

Then, the fun begins . . . watching and identifying birds. I started off by getting the know the boldest and most frequent visitors to our feeders. Between bird books and online guides, you have a wealth of information available. The first thing most people notice about birds is their appearance. Talking about how a bird looks is a great opportunity for making declarative comments and learning new vocabulary words. The other day, I identified a tufted titmouse for the first time. It came and went so fast I had no time to share it with Pamela, but I did take a blurry picture! That way we can slow down the action, zoom in on any details after we transfer it to the computer, and take our time in making comments, "the chest is creamy and fluffy," "the bird has a blue crown of feathers that look like a Mohawk," "its black eyes look like buttons," and "I see a little bit of rust colored feathers at the left and right edges of its chest." You can classify many birds based on appearance only! Some birds are tricky to identify (an example from earlier in the week was distinguishing between the Carolina wren which has a solid chest and the brown thrasher which has a speckled chest) and may require much more problem solving over several viewings to figure out.

Become a Dynamic Thinker
Bird watching requires dynamic thinking because many elements can help you identify birds. You can guide your child in exploring a host of characteristics of birds in your backyard:

Behavior - When birds are hard to distinguish (especially little brown blobs), what they do reveals much. For example, suppose you are trying to sort out a female house finch from a song sparrow. Song sparrows forage on the ground, while house finches forage in trees, on the ground, and feeders.

Size - By comparing sizes of birds feeding at the same type, you can estimate the size of the bird you are trying to identify.

Location - Some birds live in your area year round, while others migrate in your area during a certain seasons. You may only see other birds while they migrate. Not only that, some birds are not native to your area! Researching online guides tells me that house finches live here all year long, but purple finches are here only for the winter. I can rule out the Cassin's finch, gray-crowned rosy finch and black-rosy finch because they do not live in the Carolinas.

Food - While a way to reach a bird's heart is through its stomach, each bird species is very particular about seeds. If you see a little brown blob feeding on thistle seed (nyler seeds), your friend is most likely a female finch, not a sparrow, which prefers sunflower, corn, and millet seeds.

Movement - I knew where to point my camera because I spotted quick, flighty flitting in the trees. Birds tend to move in a snappy way different from the gentle sway of the wind blowing leaves in the trees. Another fun activity is to load pictures on the computer, zoom in carefully, and find birds hiding in the branches and leaves. Here are two shots I found of an American goldfinch wearing its winter colors.


Great Backyard Bird Count
Last year, Pamela made some entries in her nature notebook. This year, I would like her to learn to identify and count the birds with me. Here are my plans for scaffolding Pamela in making more careful observations for the Great Backyard Bird Count this year:

Photos of the Usual Suspects - I have a very good idea of what birds to expect this year, so I plan to make up and print some pages with pictures of all potential candidates and their names.

Checklist - I will tailor the checklist in Excel of the birds we expect with all the information GBBC requires.

Video - I plan to film the area where I usually watch birds and do my count from the kitchen window on my own. That way I can be very accurate and know how to guide Pamela when watching the video. Then, I will put the handicam disk in my computer where we can zoom in for identification and pause for counting. If we capture something cool on video, we can submit it to GBBC and blog it, of course!

Clock - I hope to teach Pamela to use clock directions to point out a bird in a tree. Imagine the tree's crown as the face of a clock: twelve o'clock would be the tip-most top of the tree, while six o'clock would be the lowest point in the crown. That means nine o'clock is the leftmost edge and three o'clock the right most.

Input - Pamela is very adept at the computer. She can help me input the data and make sure we didn't make any mistakes before we send it.

Other Worthy Projects for Higher Level Thinking
E-bird
Nest Watch
Celebrate Urban Birds
Feeder Watch
Bird Sleuth

What to Do When You Don't Have $20,000 for a Week of Therapy?

Figuring out how to guide children with autism in their thinking is never easy. The Bilson family found their daughter had developed the habit of tantrums whenever she did not get her way. Figuring out how to set limits to avoid letting an autistic child dominate a family is not easy. Watching the "before" video of their daughter Marissa reminded me of how Helen Keller controlled her family before Annie Sullivan arrived on the scene. What I find most fascinating about this video is how closely Marissa pays attention to how people react to her screaming to see if they are ready to cave to her whims. I wonder if Pamela never developed that habit because she was not as adept at referencing our reactions.

The Bilson family received five days of counseling, worth $20,000, from an ABA therapist. Because CNN filmed and aired this story, the service provider of the therapy waived the fees. So, what do the rest of us do?

In our case, we are finding that RDI helps us with Pamela's toughest issue, anxiety, a big problem for many people with autism. Dr. Temple Grandin, a well-respected expert on autism (who also happens to have autism), said that in her late twenties, "Anxiety and panic attacks got worse and worse. It was like a constant state of stage fright." Low-dose antidepressants have kept her anxiety at bay ever since. However, she recommends other alternatives like weighted blankets and other sensory integration equipment for younger children. When Pamela was young, we found sensory integration techniques critical in helping keep her from melting down.

Our approach is to teach Pamela to reference us when she is anxious, which I have chronicled all last month. Everyone in the family, including her brother David, is learning how to remain calm and neutral because it helps Pamela calm down. Rather than giving Pamela treats for becoming regulated, we focus on guiding her thinking about how people are feeling. If we are not panicking, then there is no reason for her to panic. Moods can be highly contagious, and we have noticed a pattern. If one of us wakes up on the wrong side of the bed, Pamela catches that mood and becomes out-of-sorts. If one of us gets upset because something is not going our way, Pamela becomes more susceptible to screaming when something does not go her way. We are all becoming more mindful of how we pass around moods like cold germs. To recap our efforts, I started off explaining resiliency in a messy world, handling Pamela's trigger words, whacking one uncertainty at a time, and practicing what if scenarios.

We are starting to see progress on the uncertainty front. For example, with trigger words, last week, I still had to warn her in advance that I was going to say the upsetting words. Here is an example of how she reacted when I forgot! My bad!


This week I noticed I no longer needed to give her warnings about saying trigger words. Pamela is starting to stay calm when she sees I am calm. In fact, she acts downright playful here!


However, I still have to limit the number of trigger words and treat lightly around topics that create major anxieties for Pamela (such as the radio station going silent for thirty minutes). Here I go from selling the dogs to being sick to the broken radio.


Earlier in the month, Pamela had started to get anxious whenever Steve ran before work because sometimes he left the house later than usual. She was even more bothered when he worked from home (which he does from time to time). While she has not conquered this new anxiety, she is improving.

Yesterday morning, Steve caught Pamela completely surprised. He left early (like 6:15 AM) to go to an early morning Rotary Meeting (a new gig of his). It was held about 20 minutes from home. Steve decided to return home and switch to the car that consumes less gas since the office is another hour from the location of the meeting. He did not warn either Pamela or I in advance. The worst thing you can do is surprise her like that! As soon as I saw him in the driveway, I got the camera ready and, when he came him, I let him know I would film. Pamela was startled but Steve handled it very well. He reassured her about his intentions to go to work and plans to switch cars first.


We still have a long way to go in whacking the anxiety moles, but now the entire family has a game plan and we are mindful of how we can help Pamela overcome her anxieties and how our negative moods influence her mood. Even better, it doesn't cost us $20,000!

Another Snowy Bird Day

One day with snow flurries is very rare for our part of the country. Two days in two weeks are downright shocking! Yesterday was another snowy bird day for us. It seems like the colder the weather, the more we see the birds. It is the only consolation for frigid weather that I can imagine in my chill-despising birdbrain! Pamela noticed the flurries, bundled outside, and enjoyed the super-light flakes. She put her hand on the frozen bird bath, too. The only way I could capture the snow on film was with the backdrop of our possibly one-hundred-year-old camellia bush (yes, that is a bush).



We saw the usual suspects but I was able to capture mourning dove on the frozen bird bath (before I melted the ice with hot water) along with a dashing chipping sparrow and two house finches at the feeder. Later, I got a nice shot of Mr. and Mrs. Dove on the ground. I will never say I like the cold! But, I am starting to appreciate it more!




Later, I shot some bold chipping sparrows at the bath and I love the one in flight in this shot:



The brown thrasher is a very shy bird. Every time I sneak to the kitchen door with a camera it flies off. I have tried to take pictures from inside the house with very little luck until today. These are the best pictures I could take, and, in them, you can see the curved beak, the fat speckled chest, and the long, thin tail.



Here are the usual suspects (a goldfinch with its head in the feeder and Mr. and Mrs. Cardinal):

Wordless Wednesday: Starting a Unit on the Hawk Family

(Link to the Head-Banging Hawk)