Nature Study: Birdwatching?

I was recently inspired by Tammy in her post about the "Great Backyard Bird Count" to have my children do some birdwatching for Nature Study. Here's how it is going so far:

Day 1: Monday, February 18. It was a lovely morning here, surprisingly warm. I told the kids we'd be doing some birdwatching. My oldest got the camera while the younger children got their shoes on. No jackets needed! The four children burst out of the house and proceeded to prance around the back yard. Me: "Do you think we are going to have any birds with you guys making that kind of noise?! If we are going to watch birds then I think we had better be a little more quiet!" Eventually the kids quieted down but the only birds we were ever able to see were from a great distance. They were either sitting way up in the trees or were flying in the sky over a distant meadow.

Okay, a whole week has gone by and I have not taken the time to post any more because we had a busy week last week. We had a tough week with getting Samuel to cooperate with his school work. There was a lot of waiting him out at the table.

In summary, I figured out that we needed a bird feeder to attract some birds. We got one on Tuesday. A few days went by without us seeing any birds but yesterday I finally noticed some! This will be an ongoing family project. Thanks for the inspiration Tammy. I should also thank my Mom, who has also inspired me to watch birds over the years. She gave me the book we'll be using to identify birds about seven or eight years ago. It's about time I put it to use!

Video Vacation and Moving On

Samuel's video vacation ended last Sunday. It had started the previous Sunday when I attempted to put the boxes of videos away and he did the job for me!

How did the week of "Video Vacation" go? Overall I would say "good!" Like I mentioned on day two of the vacation, we weren't without videos completely all week. The supply we checked out from the library did stay in a location where Samuel had access to them all week. Actually, they were in a hidden place but Samuel discovered it a few days later. However, he was not allowed to look at them or take them out. He was only allowed to access them when it was time for him to watch a video on TV.

Now that "Video Vacation" is over, the boxes of videos he was attached to previously are still down in the storage room. Samuel is allowed to go look at them on occasion. He is being very good about not getting them out in groups of 4 or 5 and taking them all over the house like he used to. The bag of videos from the library is still in the laundry room. He goes and looks at them sometimes, but only takes a video out if he is going to watch it. One of my upcoming projects is to come up with a decent place for Samuel to store them. The budget director of our household (my husband) has an ongoing request from me for a good media storage cabinet for our entire family's collection of CDs, DVDs, videos, etc, but perhaps a small cabinet or bookcase for Samuel's things would be good as well.

I had hoped that Samuel's scripting of videos and production companies would curtail as a result of "Video Vacation" but that doesn't seem to be the case so far. I hear him singing the themes from Tristar, Paramount, and Strand (found on old Thomas the Tank Engine videos). I am happy, however, that Samuel seems to have accepted the restricted access to his videos and DVDs. I'll really have to stay on top of this though, he'll slowly try to go back to video chaos! Another good outcome is that I have been able to place video watching on his morning schedule AFTER getting dressed. This is proving to be a very powerful incentive to him dressing more independently. He even picked his own clothes out yesterday morning!

The Blessing of Communication

You have to check this video out at the Joy of Autism. I am so happy for this Mom who has been waiting to be able to communicate with her son!

Larry King Show This Thursday - Autism

I learned from A Bishop's Wife at The Pentecostal Pariah that there is going to be a show about autism on Larry King Live this week. Her post says the show is on tonight, but according to the show's website it will be on Thursday evening (perhaps Michelle Obama's appearance pushed the Autism show further into the week?).



This is what Larry King's website is saying about the upcoming "Autism Show":

The heartbreak ...and hope of autism. Jason "J-Mac" McElwain inspired the world
with his incredible shot-making at a high school basketball game. Larry talks to
the teen and others about the disorder. Holly Robinson Peete, Doug Flutie and
Toni Braxton join the discussion to bust myths and present breakthroughs. It's
an uplifting hour with those who know!

I wanted to bring this to your attention for two reasons: first, so that you can watch it if you are able to; second, so that you can contact the show to e-mail in any questions you might want to have them ask the guests. If you go to the website for Larry King's show there is a link to send an e-mail for Thursday's show.


Do you think there's any chance of them putting some other points of view on the show besides the typical celebrity "autism is a tragedy" type shows we have seen in the past on Larry King?

Our Family - What A Difference A Year Makes

Estee, at The Joy of Autism, recently posted about how far both she and her son have come in the past year. She invited readers to comment about what their year has been like. Since I just passed the one-year anniversary of blogging at the end of January I feel like I have a lot to say about this topic. I didn't want to "overload" her comments so I decided to do my own post about this.


A year ago I was consumed with Samuel's situation at school. Now, he is no longer at school. I teach Samuel at home. While I don't have to worry about the lack of communication from teachers and aids anymore, I do have the daunting task of trying to figure out where Samuel is academically, and to find work for him that is appropriate and meaningful. It's worth it though, I like having Samuel at home. I want my family to live a family-centered life. I value having a good community around me, but I don't want my family life dictated by that. So much of the activity of life seems to take us out of our homes these days. I am enjoying just staying at home for now.


A year ago every day was hectic, rushing Samuel to school, racing home to do school work with my oldest son, getting out for piano lessons, music lessons, soccer, shopping. We spent a minimum of 80 minutes per day in the car just taking Samuel to and from school. That's not counting the 10 - 20 minutes I had to prepare ahead of time getting ready to go out. I tried to cram all kinds of things in to the time when Samuel was in school and it was easier to get out and about with the other kids. Now we don't have that every day craziness. We don't get out as much anymore. We have dropped the music lessons and my son now has piano lessons at home. Now if I need to go out, I have the option of taking Samuel with me (along with his personal attendant) to teach him appropriate social skills. There wasn't much time for that kind of stuff in past years.



A year ago we had help (through funding from the county I live in) for 9 hours per week from in-home therapists. They were contracted out by our county from an autism school. Now, a year later, we no longer have this county funding (because I withdrew Samuel from school) . Instead, we obtained a Medicaid waiver for Samuel and I was able to hire a personal attendant to work with Samuel and be of assistance to me. We have two people who help us right now and their help has been wonderful. The help I get now is very different from the help I had last year, but it is good help. It makes our school days at home manageable and they help to keep Samuel busy.

A year ago we had just stopped sitting in the cry room at church. We have never gone back to sitting in the cry room. Many weeks Samuel can stay in church for all of mass with only one or two breaks. His outbursts in church are only occasional. Last week we were even able to go to a different mass than our normal time. It is more crowded and there is music. Both of these things would have made mass intolerable for him a year ago. Now he is doing much better. He has even started saying the "Our Father" in the past couple weeks! Several years ago I remember asking one of our in-home helpers how on earth I'd ever get Samuel to behave well in church. Since then I have SLOWLY followed her suggestions, one of which was picking out ONE prayer for Samuel to say. The Our Father was it! I have used a child's book and a laminated page from his religion book as prompts to say the prayer so it's nice to hear it being prayed out loud by him!

Samuel seems to enjoy being at home. He has become much more emotional and dramatic in the past year. He can get into some pretty despondent moods, which can be kind of disturbing, but I see it all as part of his development. We make those moments opportunities to learn how to control his thoughts and self-regulate his behavior.

What is coming up in the year ahead? I'll continue my search for a behavior specialist to assist me with Samuel. I'm also checking into using RDI for Samuel. As Samuel gets more compliant in doing his work and other activities I think RDI will be "do-able". I'm also veering more towards using Charlotte Mason methods in my homeschooling. I'll be doing my best to stay a step ahead of ALL my children!

Video Vacation, Day 2

I mentioned a few weeks ago that I had informed Samuel of an upcoming "video vacation." I had the calendar marked, so he had ample opportunity to "digest" the idea. Two nights ago I told Samuel, "It's time to pack up your videos and DVDs!" I had envisioned tears, frustration, and a long drawn out battle to hide the two boxes and their contents that had taken over our foyer closet and the surrounding area. I started walking over to the closet to begin.

Samuel surprised me by saying, "I want to pack them up!" He did just that! He took the boxes down to the basement. I didn't even follow him down. When he was finished he came back upstairs and I didn't hear anything else about the videos all night. Samuel has been taking a few videos to bed with him at night for several months now, I really thought he be lost without them but that hasn't been the case.

When he took the videos down to the basement I thought, "Right, he'll be down there whenever he gets the chance." That hasn't happened though! His in-home helper told me that he went into the storage room one time on Monday, but other than that he hasn't tried getting in there at all!

What's really neat is some of the things he is doing now instead of "looking at videos." This morning he went to the basement and built something with his legos. He told me that it is an art museum. He is building things like he has seen on a Lego Creator computer game that he and his brothers play. I also saw him playing with his sister's "Dress Up Elmo" doll. It's not that Samuel never plays with toys, it's just that it's nice to see him play with other things at the times he used to ALWAYS look at his videos.

I haven't completely banished videos either. He has been allowed to watch one video each of the last two days, after which we put it away promptly. Today we even went to the library and he was allowed to check out 5 new videos. When we got home I let him pick out one to watch and told him the remaining videos had to be put away. He was a little upset, but got over it pretty quickly.

"Video Vacation" was presented to Samuel as being a week long. I'm sure he's counting down the days. I already told him, however, that we won't be going back to having 20 + videos floating around all the time. His access to them is going to be more restricted than it had been. I'll be giving some thought the rest of this week as to how to do that.

In restricting his access to videos, I'm not trying to squash down some interest that Samuel has, I just want to channel his interest a bit. I won't say that this is so that he will be more "normal". I will say though, that I don't want his interest or obsession with videos, to get in the way of some other interests that he has.

"Three Things, Great Job Mom!"

Each time Samuel approaches his visual schedule and sees "Work Time" (the schedule piece I use when it is time for him to do his school work) I catch him peeking over to the table where I have a mini-schedule of the tasks he is to do that session. He used to do something like this when he entered his classroom at school; he would look over to the table where his teacher made his daily schedule to see what was on the agenda for the day. In earlier grades his schedule was posted on the wall so he would look to that as soon as he entered the room.

Last week one day he took a look at the mini-schedule and said "Three things, great job Mom!" Today when he looked at it he said, "Wow! Three things!" He seems genuinely happy!