Stuff With Thing

We are having a family party at our place today for Annie’s 5th Birthday. Mothers Day with the in-laws, should be good, we like each other and it is coming up to the anniversary of my MILs passing away so we don’t want FIL to be feeling alone (especially on mothers day).

But our home being invaded by 20+ people does leave us with some problems - namely Heidi and how will she cope.

I’ve emailed the family -

quote:

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A few requests.

To make Heidi feel more secure with so many people around I need to ask your help in a couple of areas.

1. the girls bedroom is a no-go zone. This is Heidis safe place and I need her to continue to feel safe there so that she sleeps at night. We will be putting a lock on the door but if things get too heated the I will have to unlock the door so Heidi can hide out in there away from everyone. If you can prompt your children before hand to be aware that they are not to go into the girls bedroom I would greatly appreciate it, as it is usually easier to enforce this rule if everyone knows in advance.

2. Heidi has the hyper-sensitivity to certain noises so common in those on the autism spectrum. In particular high pitched noises can cause her great pain which results in unpleasant meltdowns - I’m talking here about things like the mosquito ringtone, 80s pop music, other childrens screams (when constant and on going). Please be aware of this, I know there is not much we can do in some cases (ie crying child) but in others they are avoidable (high pitched ring tones etc).

3. If things get too much for Heidi then either Ralph or I will pop her in the pram/car and go out for a little while with her, thus allowing the part to continue. We don’t anticipate needing to do this but just so you know there is a plan B.

Thank you so much. We are looking forward to seeing everyone on Sunday.

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After I did that my next priority was a social story for Heidi. I don’t care if the party food is not ready in time, if the house isn’t clean, so long as I get that social story ready and Heidi fully prepped.

and here in all its glory (well minus pictures because they’d take forever to upload) is the party social story. Basically each line is a new page complete with pictures to illustrate what the written words are saying. It is much longer than anything I’ve previously attempted.

[snip] list of people who will be at party names removed for privacy [/snip]

GAP (General All-Purpose) Verbs

This is the next step for Heidi.

Most commonly used verbs for children aged between 3-4

1. want
2. go
3. do
4. look
5. got-have
6. open
7. play
8. That’s a
9. work
10. come
11. get
12. need
13. see
14. put
15. make

Listed in order of acquisition

nb - a child might develop the use of one and the loose use of another especially with like, need, want.

This week we have been focusing on ‘make’ using Play-doh and cooking. Mostly I cut out a shape with a cookie cutter and say “Mummy make (whatever shape it is)” and then “Heidi’s turn, Heidi make (whatever shape it is)“.

Added benefit - practicing turn taking.

Later developing verbs

• hold
• give
• lose
• find
• build
• cook
• drink
• eat

We’ve been practicing ‘find’ using the Animalia book by Graeme Base. That has been much fun.

It is so strange talking to Heidi and teaching her the basics of communication. Annie learnt to talk before she did pretty much anything else, I remember the delight we had in her increasing language skills, the joy of simply talking to Annie and the sillyness when Annie got the idea of ‘word play’.

So many times I feel that I took all that for granted, that evolution of speech and the ability to communicate ideas, non-concrete concepts, feelings and everything else without any work or prompting. It truly is amazing the way language and communication works. To think that only 12 short months ago Heidi could barely communicate - she had words but not the skills to use them in a meaningful manner, eye contact was rare and disscussion did not happen. It is wondrous the change time and a little effort can make.

And I look at Annie talking all the time and think now when do I stop to listen to her, because I spend so much time just trying to teach Heidi the basics of communication that we’ve begun to take Annie’s amazing communicative ability for granted. And yet there is Heidi the perfect example of why we shouldn’t just take Annie and her constant talking for granted.

Heidi cried and screamed for a couple of hours yesterday morning, I’ve developed a real knack for blocking the noise now. Every so often she’d peek out of her blanket at me to see if I was paying attention.

If the screaming ceased for a bit I’d go over give her a cuddle and suggest reading a story or playing with playdough - trying to reward the good. We’d play / read for maybe 10 minutes before she’d start up again.

After a couple of hours she fell asleep -

I left her cocooned in her blankie on the kitchen floor because

A) if I remove blankie she would wake up.

B) she wet her bed that night and the bedroom and mattress were airing out.

C) when she wet her bed that blankie got soaked and at least I knew I would be able to clean the kitchen floor fairly easily later.

So yep my daughter was sound asleep on the kitchen floor in a soaking wet pee covered very stinky blankie.

And we were happy about that.

3 hours later she woke up with a high fever and vomiting. Not sure if that was induced by the meltdown or the meltdown was caused by feeling unwell.

She threw up on both her special blankies so there was the whole drama of washing them again.

Speaking of which I finished Heidi’s feelings book homework for Kinder last Friday. Am very proud of the end result.

We did “Happy” and “Sad”. I drew your basic happy face on the happy page and sad face on the sad page. Heidi is familiar with those and often asks me to draw them so that was a good start.

Then I cut out faces from some junk mail of ‘happy’ people. Had to go out and purchase a Womens Day magazine to get pictures of ’sad’ people to cut out - realised later my local doctors surgery probably would have been happy to donate one of their circa 1980s Womens Day magazines from the waiting room.

Once I had my happy and sad pictures I got out the sticky tape and put two pictures out at a time. I’d say to Heidi

“Heidi choose Happy face”

and if she got the correct one she’d get to stick it in the book as a reward. We randomly alternated between her choosing happy and sad faces and she got most of them correct the first time. I was very pleased. When she did make a mistake I’d just say “Try again”.

Then I printed out from the computer the PECS images for ‘happy’ and ’sad’, I also printed out a PECS image of ‘hug’ and ‘broken’. Couldn’t find one for a washing machine that looked like ours so google images to the rescue and we had ‘washing machine’, also googled ‘watermelon’. Then I printed pictures of Heidi “sad” and Heidi “happy”.

Except after all that I realised that the kid grinning like crazy in the happy picture is Annie - somedays my girls look far too alike, especially in black and white. But Heidi at least was in the picture so it was okay.

Then Heidi and I sat down and we talked about the pictures - first the two photographs I’d printed out.
“Is Heidi happy or sad?” didn’t work. So try again Mummy. “Heidi happy or Heidi sad” - which did work and she correctly identified happy and sad Heidi - and started to cry about sad Heidi picture. :rolleyes:

Then it was onto the PECS images.

‘Happy’ and ‘Sad’ got correctly identified and stuck on their pages.

It was a bit harder with the concepts. I talked about each picture and we were making no progress.

We had to identify if these were happy or sad

‘watermelon’
‘hug’
‘broken’
‘washing machine’

The breakthrough came when I got to ‘washing machine’ - “blankie in washing machine, Heidi happy or Heidi sad” says I.

“Heidi sad” - tears and wails and Heidi makes a quick bolt to the laundry (while carrying blankie) to check if blankie was in the washing and I try very hard not to fall over laughing.

Then I gave her a big hug and said “hugs happy” and Heidi agreed “hugs happy” so we went back and stuck ‘hug’ on the happy page and ‘washing machine’ on the sad page and I cheated and did the other two myself while telling her why. “Heidi like watermelon, watermelon ‘happy’”. “Heidi broke puzzle, make Heidi ’sad’”.

Handed it in to the teacher a little worried because we’d not done exactly as asked and only two of the four feelings. But she seemed very happy and showed it to other parents as an example of how they could do their childs book. Woo!