A Different House Tour
By Julie Fay
Editor's note: The opinions expressed herein are those of the author exclusively.
By Julie Fay
Editor's note: The opinions expressed herein are those of the author exclusively.
My husband woke up the other day with a poker chip stuck to his butt.
Rough night at the casino? Leftover from a Texas hold 'em tournament? Calling card from an old gambling associate? Hardly.
When he showed it to me, I burst into giggles, relieved that he had found it. We've recently started using poker chips as tokens for good behavior for our
Rough night at the casino? Leftover from a Texas hold 'em tournament? Calling card from an old gambling associate? Hardly.
When he showed it to me, I burst into giggles, relieved that he had found it. We've recently started using poker chips as tokens for good behavior for our
five-year-old, Abby, who has a mild form of autism. If we were one chip short, it could have meant a behavioral crisis for her and a very long morning for us. As I put the errant chip on the kitchen counter, I started thinking about how our house looks different from other homes, because of Abby and her brother, Brian, who has the same diagnosis.
Take the kitchen. At first glance, it looks pretty typical – a family calendar, children's artwork on the walls. But a closer look at that calendar reveals eighteen hours of early intervention services a week for Brian, as well as after-school therapy for Abby most days. The coloring book pages hanging on the cabinet doors are Abby's occupational therapy worksheets. Then there's what I like to call the cubist snowman, a collage Brian made in his toddler group. The circles overlap horizontally, the eyes are off the head, and the hat is in belt-buckle position. Hey, maybe Picasso started out in early intervention, too.
Moving on to other rooms in the house, there are a few signs of autism here and there. Above the kids' bookshelf is what I like to call the “structure shelf,” filled with games and activities that we use to help the kids acquire specific skills. Next to Candy Land and Chutes and Ladders – great tools for teaching turn-taking and social interaction – is the “Ask and Answer Social Skills Game”; a book called 204 Fold-and-Say Social Skills Stories; and the optimistically titled “Auditory Processing Super Pack.” Brian's behavioral therapy book and data charts are here, as well as workbooks and manuscript paper to help Abby practice her fine motor skills.
In another room there's a purple yoga mat, which is unfurled every morning for Abby's physical therapy. Although we have several toy boxes, any toys with push-buttons are stored up high and out of reach; Brian can play with them under supervision and only for a set amount of time, or he'll just push the same buttons over and over. There's a mini-trampoline and a hop ball, because both kids need to jump a lot and these props let them fulfill that need in a more functional (read: less weird) way. There's a step-by-step visual schedule to help Abby get dressed, and another one in the bathroom, to keep her on task there, too.
Even icons of a normal childhood have a backstory. In the living room is a framed photo of Abby from last year's dance recital. Her gaze is focused downstage right, her blond hair pulled back into a perfect ballerina bun, her left foot in a textbook tendu. The recital was a watershed event for us; she performed beautifully, her disability invisible to all but her family's practiced eyes. But there was a lot of hard work that led to her success. After observing her floundering in dance class, I became her private répétiteur, determined that she would be no more clueless or distracted than any other preschooler when she took the stage in June. I downloaded the music and burned a CD, and we had family dance practice every day for the six weeks leading up to the recital. Abby did great, but I'm willing to bet that she worked harder for those three minutes in the spotlight than did most of the other aspiring Pavlovas on that stage.
Beautiful dance photos aside, our world is a little off the beaten path. It's a world where a photo of my kids shows up on the evening news because my husband spoke at a public hearing about early intervention funding cuts. It's a world where we've had so many home therapy services over the past year that my kids plop down on the floor, ready to work, when the piano tuner comes. And it's a world where I research children's social and emotional development in my free time, so I am better able to write goals for my kids' educational plans.
Our world is different, because my husband and I want our children to be less different. We hope that by providing therapies and accommodations for them when they're young, Abby and Brian will fit in with their peers as they get older. We hope that someday our house won't be so different. In the meantime, we're just doing what we have to do, and letting the chips fall – or get stuck – where they may.
Take the kitchen. At first glance, it looks pretty typical – a family calendar, children's artwork on the walls. But a closer look at that calendar reveals eighteen hours of early intervention services a week for Brian, as well as after-school therapy for Abby most days. The coloring book pages hanging on the cabinet doors are Abby's occupational therapy worksheets. Then there's what I like to call the cubist snowman, a collage Brian made in his toddler group. The circles overlap horizontally, the eyes are off the head, and the hat is in belt-buckle position. Hey, maybe Picasso started out in early intervention, too.
Moving on to other rooms in the house, there are a few signs of autism here and there. Above the kids' bookshelf is what I like to call the “structure shelf,” filled with games and activities that we use to help the kids acquire specific skills. Next to Candy Land and Chutes and Ladders – great tools for teaching turn-taking and social interaction – is the “Ask and Answer Social Skills Game”; a book called 204 Fold-and-Say Social Skills Stories; and the optimistically titled “Auditory Processing Super Pack.” Brian's behavioral therapy book and data charts are here, as well as workbooks and manuscript paper to help Abby practice her fine motor skills.
In another room there's a purple yoga mat, which is unfurled every morning for Abby's physical therapy. Although we have several toy boxes, any toys with push-buttons are stored up high and out of reach; Brian can play with them under supervision and only for a set amount of time, or he'll just push the same buttons over and over. There's a mini-trampoline and a hop ball, because both kids need to jump a lot and these props let them fulfill that need in a more functional (read: less weird) way. There's a step-by-step visual schedule to help Abby get dressed, and another one in the bathroom, to keep her on task there, too.
Even icons of a normal childhood have a backstory. In the living room is a framed photo of Abby from last year's dance recital. Her gaze is focused downstage right, her blond hair pulled back into a perfect ballerina bun, her left foot in a textbook tendu. The recital was a watershed event for us; she performed beautifully, her disability invisible to all but her family's practiced eyes. But there was a lot of hard work that led to her success. After observing her floundering in dance class, I became her private répétiteur, determined that she would be no more clueless or distracted than any other preschooler when she took the stage in June. I downloaded the music and burned a CD, and we had family dance practice every day for the six weeks leading up to the recital. Abby did great, but I'm willing to bet that she worked harder for those three minutes in the spotlight than did most of the other aspiring Pavlovas on that stage.
Beautiful dance photos aside, our world is a little off the beaten path. It's a world where a photo of my kids shows up on the evening news because my husband spoke at a public hearing about early intervention funding cuts. It's a world where we've had so many home therapy services over the past year that my kids plop down on the floor, ready to work, when the piano tuner comes. And it's a world where I research children's social and emotional development in my free time, so I am better able to write goals for my kids' educational plans.
Our world is different, because my husband and I want our children to be less different. We hope that by providing therapies and accommodations for them when they're young, Abby and Brian will fit in with their peers as they get older. We hope that someday our house won't be so different. In the meantime, we're just doing what we have to do, and letting the chips fall – or get stuck – where they may.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||
