Fearmongering at Daycare, News at Eleven

[handful_ofdust]

Ha ha! Well, gee, Gemma, what did you do on your one day off this week? Oh, started a flame-war amongst my RL friends, destroying the only peer-group I have left: Stuff like that.

Otherwise: Went to the doctor about my various aches, got/took drugs. Got an x-ray. Yes, it’s probably a pinched nerve; yes it’s a bit better now. Next Thursday I get to go back and find out what the x-rays revealed, if anything. My biggest hope right now is that it doesn’t turn out to be somehow psychosomatic, though I don’t really think it can be.

On Friday, after the Diners fooferaw came to its inevitable head, I came home from seven straight hours of teaching to discover that Mom had gotten frightened by one of the Daycare people, who’d decided that Cal’s apparent inability to make eye contact with and/or interact with the other kids (let alone walk where you want him to, sit when you want him to, eat what you want him to, come when his name is called, etc,) might mean he’s somewhere on the autistic/Asperger’s spectrum. She wanted me to read up about it on Wikipeia, so I did, and got a bit frightened myself. But…okay, yes, I’m his Mom, so I’d be likely to think it was’t so, and yet:

A) He hasn’t been around other kids on a regular basis for, like, his entire life, so that might be a lot of that right there. Steve and I have already decided to move him from two half-days a week to three or even four, and we’ll see how that goes.

B) He’s VERY responsive otherwise to people he knows (me, Mom, Steve, agincourtgirl), and even to people he doesn’t when he’s in the right mood.

C) He understands and reproduces other people’s emotions, and laughs and cries spontaneously.

D) He has no violent attachment to any sort of set routine, or aversion to physical contact.

E) If you take the time to make him look at you directly and don’t take nothing for an answer, he will eventually say "hi" or "bye". We’re now working on "yes" or "no", as opposed to just pointing at stuff and crying.

F) He can make preferential choices between objects, as proven last night, when he chose Don’t Let the Pigeon Stay Up Late over How Do Dinosaurs Say Good Night, which he suddenly doesn’t like anymore.

Yes, he repeats things over and over, but he also uses those phrases communicatively, and improves on them—I see this as a series of stepping stones to forming sentences of his own. Yes, he engages in repetitious behaviour with extreme concentration, but you CAN distract him. He learns new actions and words all the time, picking them up from everywhere. We’d been worried about the fact that sometimes he seems disinclined to feed himself, but that was before we introduced him to little boxes of raisins. He’s an odd damn kid, but I think the Daycare people are being just a tad quick off the mark here, as they’re probably trained to be; if bumping up Daycare frequency doesn’t produce a result, we’ll have him assessed, and if there’s a real problem, we’ll find ways to deal with it. Nothing is written in stone, especially at less than three years old.

All of which is just a bit more important and personally relevant, to my mind, than anything to do with internal politics amongst my former Friday Night dates ever could be. Which certainly isn’t to say I don’t want to see any of them anymore, but I think they understand that…the ones who matter, anyhow. You know who you are.;)

Which reminds me: Happy early 40th, agincourtgirl! I won’t be able to see you on the day itself, obviously, but I hope it’s grand. Let’s try to clear some quality time next weekend for talk and presents, shall we?

Meanwhile, in the world of work—

On Lilim, which one of my former students is interested in showing to his producer, I’ve finally managed to format all the dialogue. The script has swollen to 111 pages, and will need a thorough gutting before I show it to anybody professionally, but it seems like we’re into the home-stretch…thank God. And after that, it’s over to "The Speed of Pain", for real. At the moment, I’m amusing myself and shoring up the backstory by writing copy for Veruca Luz (Tim Darbersmere’s ultimate fan/cyberstalker, the "pale girl with a bolt through her septum" of "The Emperor’s…")’s nonexistent website: A bibliography, plus sections of biographical articles, essays, book reviews, etc. Writing all these quasi-pretentious, quasi-British scifantasy titles, their publishing dates slightly cribbed from J.G. Ballard’s Encyclopedia of Science Fiction entry, has been a lot of fun. But I don’t want Tim to be nothing but Ballard (I never did), so I’m having to branch off into other directions—fun of another kind. You’ll have to read the Loonie Dreadful to catch up on all that, however.

Okay, c’est fini for now. Onward, downward.

Comments

[carmarthen.livejournal.com]

He could just be very shy--I had HUGE eye contact issues as a child (still do) and wouldn't talk to other people unless they spoke to me first, and hid behind my mother upon meeting new people or people I didn't see regularly (including relatives). A lot of people see signs of shyness as abnormal, so they can be mistaken for other things.

[handful-ofdust.livejournal.com]

Yeah, shyness is seen pretty much as a pathology, these days (or maybe always), and God knows, both Steve and I are fairly shy. Two introverts make an introvert squared, I guess.;)

[carmarthen.livejournal.com]

My parents are both pretty introverted, although we've all learned to fake extroversion more or less. But when I was 5 or 10? Not a chance. :/

[agincourtgirl.livejournal.com]

I've read up a bit on Asperger's and am indeed engaged to a man with it, and I don't think Cal is that abnormal - if he did nothing but spin wheels all the livelong day there'd be a point, but he seems more like a shy little guy to me than anything else...

...and thanks! Let me know what time is best for you and I hope to see you then (operations notwithstanding...)

[handful-ofdust.livejournal.com]

2:00 PM and on is usually good, since Mom and I work out together in the morning, and then we all go out to brunch. Looking forward to it too.

[harriet-spy.livejournal.com]

I have friends who had a little girl who was actually diagnosed; after a year or so of speech/tactile therapy, they, um, changed their minds. (Of course, none of us who knew the young lady believed the diagnosis in the first place.)

You know your own kid best, so if your intuition is telling you that he's fine, he probably is. Care providers are more sensitive now because the earlier the intervention, the more helpful it's likely to be, but that means more false positives.

[handful-ofdust.livejournal.com]

That really is the way I see it, but thanks; we certainly lose nothing by finding out if we need to worry, at any rate. So Steve's going to set up a doctor's appointment on Monday, get a referral, and we'll see what happens from there.

[moon-custafer.livejournal.com]

Agreed with all of the above - I've met kids who seem far more Aspberger's than Cal. Anyway, if he does have a touch of it, he'll be part of the majority in our social network - which according to theengineer is calming down and thinking things over; I'll be resuming contact with people over the coming week.

ps- Cal's two, right? Someone at work had a spare, never-worn kid's T with the slogan "I'm two -you have been warned!" if you'd like it.

[handful-ofdust.livejournal.com]

Thanks, that'd be great. As to the other--I heard from Jason tonight, so my mind's far more at ease than it was. One day, I may even turn up on some given Friday again.;)

[moon-custafer.livejournal.com]

PPS - green_trilobite is already aghast at the daycare workers on your behalf - I think that's partly because when he was one he saw a lot of kids who were definitely Asperger's, ADD, etc and wasn't allowed to do anything until somebody sent them to a doctor for an Official Diagnosis.

[handful-ofdust.livejournal.com]

well, I don't blame this particular worker too much--she genuinely likes Cal, and she's also already operating under an English-as-a-second-language disadvantage. like I said, we'll let the real experts decide...and even then, I'm going with my gut.

[xterminal.livejournal.com]

Mom had gotten frightened by one of the Daycare people, who’d decided that Cal’s apparent inability to make eye contact with and/or interact with the other kids (let alone walk where you want him to, sit when you want him to, eat what you want him to, come when his name is called, etc,) might mean he’s somewhere on the autistic/Asperger’s spectrum.

Or it could just mean he doesn't like that person.

I am still this way around people I don't like. Come to think of it, so is my brother in law.

Re: Cal

[chaplinlover.livejournal.com]

From all the times I have seen Cal I do not think at all that he has Asperger's. I teach all about Autism/Aspergerer's in my course. Cal is two years old and juat walks to his own drummer and I agree he is very shy like both of you. By the way I saw Cal quite a few times at the Christmas Party where he was being very social with the kids there. At this age they are still into parallel play and socialization is still in its infant stages. There are many two year olds who do not come when called, sit when you ask them and some won't eat at all in Daycare. He probably is still getting used to the food there. I am not sure this Daycare person can diagnose something that some doctors can barely diagnose, so she ought to lay off especially since Cal just started there not long ago. How much written observations has she done anyway? Has she asked anyone else to observe him such as the Supervisor? The other thing is if I were a parent I would be extremely pissed that a teacher went over yours and Steve's heads and instead of chatting with you and Steve in a meeting with this along with the supervisor present, (which in my mind should be the proper proceedure and one I advocate and teach) she went to your Mom who is not even the primary parent with this!!!!!!!!!!!!! I would take that up with the Supervisor immediately. She has no right to do that. The only thing she should be saying to your Mom is how are you? You need more clothes, diapers or you need to get this form signed for us etc and then have a nice evening. Nope she way over stepped her bounds there!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!