Abifae - Ciao Babies!

[SKR8PN]

Abi.........I been reading your blog, and one of your viewpoints stood out to me.......


"Maybe it's because I'm autistic, but cowardice is second only to lying in things that make you worthless. "


I am reading "The Gift of Fear" by Gavin De Becker.

There is a very thin line separating cowardice from fear, and conversely, fear is sometimes mistaken as cowardice. Fear is one of our basic survival instincts. Learning to recognize and understand it is a very interesting subject..........

One of my thoughts on what makes a person useless, is laziness. To me that is as bad as being a thief........

 

[abifae]

There is a very thin line separating cowardice from fear, and conversely, fear is sometimes mistaken as cowardice. Fear is one of our basic survival instincts. Learning to recognize and understand it is a very interesting subject..........

One of my thoughts on what makes a person useless, is laziness. To me that is as bad as being a thief........

Cowardice is GIVING IN to fear.

Laziness and uselessness bother me a lot too.

I'm at work but read that and now I want to read that book.

My favorite is The Miracle of Mindfulness.

 

[Bethanial]

Thanks so much for the tips - and I have checked out your blog! He hasn't yet found a "real world" realm where he can be "non-asperger's." I say "real world" because he excels at video/computer games, but I try to limit his screen time, whether its TV or computer.

And I may have to invest in some toddler legos - I've been buying him regular legos/sets, and he'll put it together or play with it a little bit, but when we go to a dr's office, he's all about building with those bigger legos. I hate stinking fine-motor skill coordination! And his handwriting - atrocious!

Still can't buy him pants with buttons - he just refuses to wear them. Do you know how hard it is to find jeans with a snap and not a button? (Wrangler makes them) Or even worse is dress pants - finding those that use the slider instead of a button is a huge pain! And now try to find these items in the Goodwill

We're trying origami stuff for Christmas this year - he loves playing with paper, and has been making lots of those fortune teller things, so we'll see if origami is his "thing"

 

[Henrietta23]

I was playing with origami paper in the car waiting for DS this afternoon. I found an old book I had called Origami for Christmas. DS is getting into it too! Great for fine motor.
I work in speech therapy and now have a number of Asperger's and Autistic kids I work with. The youngest I've worked with was a 4th grader last year. This year all my students on the spectrum are in HS. They are all so different and it is any area I didn't study in college because it was soooo long ago. It is fascinating to me to read things from your perspective. Some are very introverted and a few are the most social kids I know!!

 

[abifae]

Thanks so much for the tips - and I have checked out your blog! He hasn't yet found a "real world" realm where he can be "non-asperger's." I say "real world" because he excels at video/computer games, but I try to limit his screen time, whether its TV or computer.

It might be something like a computer club at school. He'll be with other geeks and they all geek out together. They're still weird, but not weird alone LOL.

And I may have to invest in some toddler legos - I've been buying him regular legos/sets, and he'll put it together or play with it a little bit, but when we go to a dr's office, he's all about building with those bigger legos. I hate stinking fine-motor skill coordination! And his handwriting - atrocious!

Have him practice writing bigger then. Seriously. I did all my homework growing up on a big white board with lots of colored dry erase markers. It helped a LOT!! If you write bigger, you can practice more easily. The kids learning to write paper is good too. Large spaces.

Still can't buy him pants with buttons - he just refuses to wear them. Do you know how hard it is to find jeans with a snap and not a button? (Wrangler makes them) Or even worse is dress pants - finding those that use the slider instead of a button is a huge pain! And now try to find these items in the Goodwill

LOL My faerie godson only wears sweat pants for the same reason. I prefer skirts. Do you have anyone who can sew enough to just replace the snap with a button?

We're trying origami stuff for Christmas this year - he loves playing with paper, and has been making lots of those fortune teller things, so we'll see if origami is his "thing"

Oh fun!! That's good fine motor skill practice too!

How old is he? I cannot sequence for anything (ask Auntie) and so when I was in algebra and using real numbers, my dad had me write each step in a new color, and write out my homework on graph paper to line it up. My dad is the awesome. I suddenly quit making stupid errors.

It also helped because I burned anything with wrong answers on it or that was done wrong and so less fire happened. I only copied over a problem once it was right LOL.

ETA: Henrietta, ask anything you want and I'll try to answer

 

[SKR8PN]

Cowardice is GIVING IN to fear.

There is a time to take counsel of your fears, and there is a time to never listen to any fear. ~George S. Patton


Sometimes, listening to your fears insures your survival.

 

[Bethanial]

He's 9, in 4th grade (yes, that's technically a year ahead) - and grades at/near the top of his class. (He's good at reading, but that's totally different from reading comprehension - which is what the standardized tests measure.... FWIW, I hated/abhorred/detested reading comprehension from the jr high level up - I mean, seriously - what good is it gonna do me to know WHY such-and-such character did what in a story, and then analyze the heck out of it? And I story that I prefer to read as an escape, at that!)

Sweat pants/all elastic waists are his fav things to wear

LOVE the idea about graph paper and different colors for as he gets older and has to sequence stuff - although math is his FAVORITE and BEST subject (seriously - he was doing 2nd grade level stuff addition/subtraction in kindergarten).

I've seen the bigger "learning to write" paper, and they even make that now with the blocks like graph paper, and had thought about it, but I didn't want to embarrass him or make him feel "like a baby," so I didn't get it. The school did do some testing, and found that he improved a little bit when using paper (regular ruled school paper) that the lines were just slightly raised, so he could feel them. But, again, I haven't found that aside from the "learning to write" stuff, which is the huge lines and stuff. But now I just might get a pad of that - and even if he uses it just at home - and see if it helps any. His newest dr said "why is he writing? He needs to be doing everything on a laptop!' (Who's buying this laptop....)

Sorry to have hi-jacked your thread, but thanks SO much for all the wonderful tips and suggestions

And Henrietta - recommend Tony Attwood's book "The Complete Guide to Asperger's Syndrome" - it's a fabulous resource, and I'm so thankful that the dr who diagnosed him recommended it!

 

[abifae]

There is a time to take counsel of your fears, and there is a time to never listen to any fear. ~George S. Patton


Sometimes, listening to your fears insures your survival.

Listening to isn't giving in to. I find that listening to is "yes, this is an actual danger and I will avoid harm" and giving in to is blind running from everything that upsets and scares you. Giving in is not thinking it through and making a rational choice. It's an emotional decision. So I guess, for me, it's back to mindfulness. Are you acting or reacting? Where are your choices coming from?

Although, with me, I have a very separate distinction between fear and survival. Fear is everything. The phone rings, I'm scared. I hear people outside: fear. There is a paper on the floor that wasn't there last night: fear. A car backfires: fear. I have to get mail: fear. Survival is that I scan rooms for weapons and exits, and watch people's movements so I know which way to dodge and if they are going for a weapon. Those things keep me alive. The fear stuff is all static in the background at this point.

I always have a high adrenaline level LOL. My tummy poof will never go away. I can't ever get my cortisol to drop. Is that the one, Auntie, that makes tummy fat? The stress hormone...

Bethanial, threadjack away I don't care. And what kind of doctor misses the entire point that his handwriting points to the issue of fine motor skills. You aren't upset that YOU can't read it. You are concerned that HE can't write! lol.

jeez.

Reading comprehension is totally biased towards societal norms. I could never figure out what they were asking. But I could go on and on about why I hate school LOL.

 

[Bethanial]

Reading comprehension is totally biased towards societal norms. I could never figure out what they were asking. But I could go on and on about why I hate school LOL.

 

[Farmfresh]

Let me run this idea by you Abi for Bethanial's son... Calligraphy!

That sounds crazy for someone who has trouble writing I know, but it helped my D1 a lot. She is dysgraphic, which is a kind of dyslexia. So is my son. They both read fine, but their output programing is wrong. Writing is super hard. When D1 took a calligraphy class in school her writing improved a bunch and it got much easier. Most of her writing is still not great, but she uses a different part of her brain now which makes it easier to write. She "draws" letters now, using her art brain, instead of writing using her language brain. Does that make sense?

Do you think it would work for Bethanial's son Abi?

My son on the other hand just types everything. He claims there is no need to write so long as you can type! Different strokes.