processing...

every time we meet with a new professional, the outlook looks bleaker. this week it was a very long occupational therapy assessment; educational psychology and speech and language coming soon. as i've said before, i don't quite understand why this is happening when previously we were all satisfied moving forward i.e.p.-wise with a list of "differences" rather than a solid diagnosis. actually i do, but it seems a little inconsistent. the thing i am attempting to focus upon is how "charming" and "delightful" all these new people profess to find my little boy.

so i've retreated somewhat, as i am apt to do. it can be quite tiring being how i normally am socially, and at the moment i don't really have it in me. i can't really string a sentence together. the phone rings and i can't always pick it up. i'd rather not speak at all than have people be all nice and understanding because that's when i can't keep it together anymore. it's just how i am. i can pull off my usual cheerfulness with the kids (to a point), the school run, and the required amount of interaction involved in day to day living, but no more. the closer someone is to me the more less i have to say to them at times like this. i feel like i'm letting people down and am not very good at articulating what's going on with me.

anyway, being all kinds of done with the "characterful throw", i am cheering myself up looking at ryan reynolds, and suggest that anyone else with a severe predilection for snidely funny bearded beefcake follows suit. here's ryan with multiple ow-ies having suffered some sort of run in with a marvel character. that might be code for something; i'm beyond caring.





.

where's rudy?

rudy's keyworker has the week off, ("she is at holiday, in the north pole." states rudy, definitively; she is in poland) and the room at nursery is full of agency staff. he keeps coming home with food all over his face, his trousers unbuttoned and his shoes on the wrong feet. he is really quiet, whiney and withdrawn when i go to get him and twice so far has actually fallen asleep after getting home at around 2pm. i notice when the temporary staff attempted to engage him- for example, rudy went to get his thomas from his drawer to take home with him and on the way back tripped up over a book. he just picked himself up and carried on. as per normal. maybe because i was there, one of the temps asked him, in baby talk, if he was okay... you know, the way that you or i might talk to a pink cgi chihauhau with a broken arm out of politeness- he completely ignored her.

this has happened before. last time she had a week off, he refused to go in at all. i wouldn't say that they are especially bonded, but they get eachother. they're fond. she has in the past, even in a diagnosis environment, played down rudy's differences. that is cool, because to her that's just how rudy is. she understands that differences exist nontheless, and knows that there are some things he won't think to do or needs support doing. she understands and respects that he often plays by himself, will only really engage on his own terms, and stims out from time to time. they have a laid-back-buddy kind of rapport. this might not be the case if he was disruptive, but he's not. so it works.

seeing how much he has regressed this week makes me slightly concerned about the impending big change in environment and person-scenery, when he goes to school. he is floppier this week, taking his thomas everywhere (rather than wall-e or some other robotic conversational prop), has to be reminded to take his thumb out of his mouth to talk, after which he decides he can't be bothered. i couldn't engage him, there was nothing he wanted to do. i picked him up and took him out into the garden to watch the guy next door's pigeons, but he whined until he was lying back down on the sofa, preferably curled up on my lap, being rocked. he didn't even want to read the book about cogs and levers. he's staring into space a lot. won't play. coping.

i'm missing him.




.

let's be co-people

or, part 5(?) of the occasional series in which all the best things in life are claimed by indigo doll on behalf of the neuro-atypical.

i'll be quick because i'm supposed to be cleaning my house, but i just had a flashback of an interview i saw with will ferrell. and then i thought i'd dreamt it, so i turned to google (obv) and found this:

"Born and raised in the Los Angeles, California, suburb of Irvine, in 1968, Ferrell was an easygoing child. "He was born like that," his mother, Kay, told Scott Raab in Esquire. "You know those little Matchbox cars? Will would line up his Matchbox cars, by himself, and be totally happy. You'd say, 'You wanna go to Disneyland today or line up your cars?' and he'd have to think about it." Ferrell was known as a funny kid even in elementary school, where he would punch himself in the head just to make girls laugh."

*excitedly bites lip*

also, in case you already didn't know, professor simon baron cohen (designer of the aq test) is sacha baron cohen's cousin. oh yes.




.

environ-mental

i've been walking around with my head in fog for the last couple of days, stuttering, stumbling, and generally avoiding contact. i spent a good two hours in hobbycraft deciding between 4 shades of red DMC embroidery floss. i went with 666 in the end. distracted and foetal whenever possible generally means that i'm processing something.

on tuesday it was formally recognised, if not diagnosised, that my son displays many of the behaviours associated with asperger's syndrome. i came to terms with this quite a few months ago, shortly after his dx of dyspraxia, so that isn't really what's been eating me. what is, is the fact that the doctor mentioned that he felt that my son's symptoms could be exaccerbated by his home environment. i don't think rudy behaves differently than he does at nursery, and, if i may quote myself from the comments section *points down* in response to laura..,

"what i inferred from what the doctor said was that my background and our inherant family culture... may be informing rudy's habits. he has... license to "geek out" (not my phrase) and his myriad quirks are quite normal to [me]."

articulating that has been cathartic. i suppose in some way i have been concerned that i am in some way "enabling" him; but that's ridiculous, and presupposes that something is "wrong" in the first place. i am concerned, as with my daughter, that any future unhappiness my son may encounter will be in some way my responsibility. but maybe that shows a naive approach to parenting. in tuesday's post i reproduced a quote concerning 'asperger's as lifestyle' in which a 'real napoleon dynamite' reacts angrily to the labelling of his way of life as an illness. i don't really do outrage, but i can relate.

.

roots

who knows what makes us what we are.

this is a papercut piece called "speak flower" by kako ueda.





.

can you bring me my chapstick?

i've written about the film napoleon dynamite in the context of asperger's before, and since this whole flurry of concern surrounding my little boy's specific diagnosis came about, i have been itching to watch the film again, not least because i love it. but then i love any film which has awkward silences and superlative styling. speaking of which, this tattoo is by a man called brad bako, who definately has some sweet special skills.

it turned out my copy of the dvd was scratched (yet another possession sacrificed to my children's campaign of unknowing destruction), so i had to put that little urge on hold until it i saw it was on tv last night, so of course i had to put my busy social life on hold and watch it. i love a bit of gentle, dysfunctional comedy, me, so it made orange juice come out of my nose about three times.

anyway, i thought i should rethink my previous diagnosis (because i'm, like, such an expert) because of napoleon's habit of telling fantastical lies in the hope that he will win respect. for example, in one scene, napoleon tells a bunch of jocks in the gym changing rooms that he spent the summer in alaska hunting wolverines with a 12 guage because they were attacking his cousins. genius, but this didn't quite chime with the aspie profile i had in my head. thinking about it more, i am totally wrong, and i have already experienced examples of this behaviour. not from my son, although he does love to cast himself in the hero role quite dramatically, but elsewhere. anyway, i took my lil' theories to the internet, and it turns out i was right in the first place.

here's a link to a paper published on psychiatryonline.org, some of which i have pasted below-

Napoleon Dynamite is the unexpectedly critically acclaimed movie from 2004 that became an instant cult classic. It is also, however, something of a psychiatric conundrum. The film calls into question poignant issues that psychiatrists grapple with daily. As observers of human behavior, we must consider why unexpectedly successful cultural phenomena so powerfully capture the public’s psyche. This question is ideally suited for the psychological examination of Napoleon’s immense popularity. In addition, it is clear from the very beginning of the film that Napoleon is not like other teenagers. He is awkward, frequently misses clear social cues, and seems developmentally delayed both emotionally and perhaps cognitively. One could easily entertain the diagnosis of Asperger’s spectrum disorder in trying to make sense of Napoleon’s challenges. And yet, inherent in most conceptualizations of Asperger’s-like syndromes is the assumption that those who suffer from the disorder are bothered by their lack of social connectedness and that those who spend time with Asperger’s sufferers are equally bothered by their strange behavior.

this paper would seem to identify and address the apparent dychotomy of the film's popularity when asperger's is generally regarded as very much an "outsider" condition. interestingly, in response to this paper, also on psychiatryonline.org, i found this. bow to your sen-sei.-

Few things I consider myself an expert of, but the recent analysis of "Napoleon Dynamite"... is one of them. That is because I am Napoleon; not the Napoleon, but a Napoleon (there is more than one of us). I grew up on the borders of Preston, Idaho, and I dare declare I am the only Napoleon to have become a psychiatrist... The "cool" kids label the "geeks," but tell me again, who calls it a disorder? If you had treated me the way suggested in the article, I would have become abnormal. Proof: my mother, a daughter of the founders of Preston, does not get Napoleon. He is just a nice boy, and the story is boring to her because it is about every day life!... I suggest you put down your DSM sometime and pick up the local newspaper, visit the local church or relic hall (there’s a great one in Franklin), meet the family, read the local history, and learn about ancestors and traditions before you go calling someone’s behavior an illness; because one day the Asperger’s geeks may be labeling your lifestyle a disorder.

that last line is kind of beautiful.

malaise de la maladroit

my son was recently diagnosed with developmental coordination disorder recently- or dyspraxia, or congenital maladroitness, or clumsy child syndrome. pick one, they are all the same thing.

there are certain differences between r.baby and other kids. he can't catch a ball, write his name, hop, draw a picture, or walk across a room without falling over or breaking something. he is very bright, but has problems following instructions and ordering his thoughts. he is very easily distracted. he is obsessed with small details, robots, and small details of robots. i am at the moment trying to work out if he might have asperger's syndrome, as charmingly portrayed on the big screen in "napoleon dynamite" (... at least that's what *i* think automatically of. i think it's a coping mechanism on my part- in the face of my son's special needs, i see jon heder falling off a bike and do a quiet guffaw. i am probably going to hell.) my son starts school in september, and i want him and the classroom he is going into to be as prepared as possible, and i suppose i just... want to know.

there's such a lot of overlap between the two conditions that one minute i am content with the d.c.d. diagnosis, and the next i am racing to the internet typing "my son walk on his tiptoes, flapping his hands and licking things whenever he is excited- aspergers?" into google and biting my nails down to the cuticle. should i be pushing for an asperger's diagnosis? who exactly is that going to help? and exactly who has just spread black poster paint all over the living room?

of course i am concerned for him. his school career, and indeed his life career are not going to be easy. i should know because i have d.c.d. too, and it's been a whirlwind of disorganised thought, rubbish coordination, wierd spontaneous behaviour, stumbling over my feet (physically and metaphorically), being thought generally odd, and the pitiful self esteem levels that this entire bundle of joy results in. this is maybe why it took so long for r. baby to be diagnosed- i think his behaviour is entirely normal.

oddness leads to isolation, and i see this happening already in his social life. other kids aren't that interested in hearing extended monologues about wall-e's elbows or lack thereof, and r. baby has a habit of zoning into a hinge or an axle, say, on a toy and operating it, transfixed, for hours. on the other hand though, he is outgoing and confident and sensitive to other people's thoughts and feelings, even if sarcasm is entirely out of his range of understanding. everyone loves him. now.

he is to be re-assessed in four months, and should be hearing from occupational therapy any day now. i am adrift in indecision.

on the plus side, however, i have found the perfect wedding guest dress. now i just have to work on becoming the perfect wedding guest.