The Merry Go Round

A lot of parks these days no longer have any fun toys for the kids to play on. Mostly you will find a plastic play structure with a broken slide and barkdust covering an old parking lot. Better than nothing, but still not as cool as a merry go round.

All of my kids really love the merry go round, but when I want to calm Mr. Energy down this is where I take him. That's him there in the green hat. He loves to ride the merry go round. He will stay on it for an hour at a time, even if it isn't moving.

But he really loves when it spins just as fast as I can get it spinning. He just stands there and smiles and giggles and laughs. The other kids all eventually get dizzy and threaten to puke if I don't stop it but he just laughs and wants more.

I don't know why he loves it so much, but it makes for an easier afternoon when he gets his merry-go-round fix.

T.V.

Mr. Energy, as I like to refer to my autistic boy really doesn't like to watch television, except for a few movies that he really, really, really likes.

One expert warned us that if we weren't careful he would be much more likely to sit and watch T.V. for hours on end than the rest of our kids. So far this has played out completely the opposite. While the other kids sit glued to a show he will be bouncing from place to place and room to room gladly ignoring the show.

I am still unsure if this is a good thing or not. On the one hand yes I am glad that he will not be turning into a couch potatoe anytime soon. On the other hand it means that I can't just pop in a DVD and go and work on whatever I think I need to work on for a few minutes without worry. Those little parenting breaks are something that I need in order to keep my sanity, but they come only very intermittently with Mr. Energy.

The Moneky Harness

The Monkey Harness is an indispensable tool in our arsenal to keep our kid safe. We actually have another harness which is a puppy, but we like the monkey harness the best.

He wears it on his back like a little backpack, and the tail is a leash. We never really used a harness with our other children, but with little mister energy it is absolutely necessary.

We send him to school everyday with his little harness on so that his older brother can hold onto him and keep him from running off until he is in the safe hands of his teachers.

At stores, most of the time he still rides in the shopping cart, but for those times when he just won't cooperate the monkey is a life saver. He is getting to where he wants to do more things that other children do and this is one way to allow him those experiences without having to worry if he is going to be off down the street in another three seconds.

Learning To Sign

About a year and half ago we started to learn sign language with our boy. In all honesty it didn’t take the first time. In fact it didn’t do anything at all except frustrate us and him. He didn’t understand what we were trying to do and we ended up quitting.

I think that at 3 years old he was just too young. All children develop differently, and that holds true for autistic kids as well.

We tried again about six months ago, and what a miracle. Our little clam has opened up in ways that we never expected. He has gone from not understanding or at least not being able to communicate what he understands to having some semblance of normal communication with his parents and siblings.

We made the plunge and spent over $300 and got the “Signing Time” DVD collection. Now I’m not selling them and I could care less if you run out and buy them or not, but they have literally opened up a whole new world for us.

We have two other children, one nine and one four. All of the children love the videos and as parents we are learning the signs as well. Now our little boy can identify all of the foods he likes, as well as a variety of other activities and objects. It is so much easier to be able to say it is bed time than to have to show him the bed etc.

I know that for us learning sign language has been a huge bonus.

A Day At The Park

My boy just loves the park. He loves to swing and he loves the merry-go-round. He really enjoys the motion and the senstations of freefall.

In a lot of ways he is very fearless (which can be quite dangerous). He has no qualms about jumping off of a spinning merry-go-round.

Oddly enough he doesn't run off as much as he used to, which is very nice because this particular park isn't fenced in. For those of you out there dealing with flight risk children, might I recommend scouting around for parks with fenced in areas. They really are very nice because the kid gets to play without you having to be the virtual fence.

No Clothes

My son has some sort of vendetta against wearing clothes. Whenever he gets home from school, the first thing he does is strip off all his clothes so that he can run around the house. Even when he sneaks out into the back yard he doesn't bother putting on any clothes.

We have a super tall fence and the neighbors aren't nosy so I don't worry about it too much except that he does it even when it is really cold or really hot outside. I don't really want him to get sick or sunburned and it is sometimes quite scary. If I dress him before he goes out then I just find his clothes scattered around the yard, which makes it quite a pain to keep them clean.

He especially hates to wear socks. When we go to the store, for example, he will allow us to dress him, but if we put socks on him then by the time we get out of the car he will have removed his socks, though he does put his shoes back on his bare feet. I really have no idea why he hates his socks so much. Maybe he gets sweaty feet. This is just one of those things that I would really like him to be able to explain to me so that I can understand.

His First Words

When my oldest child said his first words, it was pretty darn cool. I mean I called up my mother and told her about it and she was pretty happy. He was about 9 months old. He hasn’t shut up since, and believe me we’ve been trying.

We also have a daughter who it took a bit longer to get her to open up. She was about 14 months before she really started talking. For a while we were a bit worried, but now she is as bad (or good) as her brother.

Then there is our little autistic boy. Waiting for years for him to say “daddy” really was hard. There is an expectation that children will just recognize you at some point. That they will just say who you are and give you a bit of credit for bringing them into the world. When it doesn’t come it is pretty rough to deal with.

All I can say is that when that day did arrive it was one of the happiest in my life. I admit that I did shed a tear or two over it.

Unlike the other two we still struggle each day to get him to say even the simplest of phrases. There is something inside him that just doesn’t see the need to communicate like that. But there is still a look in his eyes and something in his smile that he reserves just for mom and dad. The words may not be there, but all of the love and emotion that a child has for his parents is there, and those are things that make him just too adorable to ignore.