Little One's first joke

Both of my girls are funny and smart. While the Big One is still very much into bodily functions and slapstick humour, the Little One has occasionally given us glimpses of a razor sharp wit that belies her youth.

When the Little One was 3 years old, dinosaurs were everything! She is now 8 ½ and is still very keen on them but struggles with the fact that they are not particularly ‘girly’. I am working on the gender stereotypes but back to when she was 3:

We were reading a farm book; I was pointing at the pictures of the animals and asking LO what they were. ‘sheep’, ‘horse’ etc. We got to a picture of a turkey and LO paused. I looked down at her and asked what the animal was. She concentrated, then came up with the following response:

‘ummm…. A Galamimus?’

I was very confused by this response as LO knew what turkeys were and she knew that dinosaurs don’t belong on farms. I had started explaining this to her but when I saw the look on her face, it was clear that she was highly amused. I asked if she was playing a trick on me and she responded by bursting out laughing.

* note * 

Galamimus means 'chicken mimic'. This type of dinosaur walked on two legs and was slightly larger than a modern chicken. Considering that LO knew many dinosaur names and appearances, it is not likely that she chose this dinosaur accidentally, adding to the intellectual level of her joke.

Archiving this as it was taking up too much space

The why behind the blog

I originally thought of calling this blog ‘the Aspy bunch’ but was worried about putting folks off by being offensive/insensitive. That is a problem I often come across because, although I’m undiagnosed, after doing extensive research on Autism and Asperger’s syndrome it’s fairly obvious that I’m on the spectrum. This blog has the URL autismfam.blogspot.com because it’s about my family’s experience with Autism. Here’s a breakdown about who I’ll most likely be writing about:

Our Family – A snapshot at the end of 2012

- Mum (me): undiagnosed with many obvious traits of Autism/Asperger’s. I scored above 30 on the Asperger’s Quotient available online (I only know 3 people who scored above me).

- Dad (my husband): Pretends to be ‘normal’ but has chosen to marry me… This raises serious questions as to his sanity.

- The big one (Eldest daughter): Born in 2004, diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome (mild) in 2012. Speech developed early and quickly, excellent artist, very smart, quite athletic. Also prone to anxiety and struggles with socially appropriate behaviour (varies greatly from extreme shyness to hugging strangers depending on her mood).

- The little one (Youngest daughter): Born in 2007, diagnosed with High Functioning Autism (mild) in 2010. Non-verbal at 18 months (although she could speak), used to scream blue murder if anyone touched her. Has become very sociable, funny, highly intelligent and likeable. She starts school next year in January.

- Abuela (my mother): undiagnosed. Obviously Autistic; difficulty with social situations (often called rude or antisocial), obsessed with numbers/dates, becomes highly anxious if things are not done her way. She has a sister who was diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome at the age of 40.

- Other family members likely to get mentions are: Opa and Oma (Dad’s parents), Sisters (both husband and I have sisters, no brothers) and cousins (the girls have a few of these).

I have done a lot of research into the spectrum and I hope to do more, eventually I would like to do a PhD study in the area. It started when the little one was 2 and still refusing to speak most of the time. She was also known to wander off at day-care and lie down under the slide to escape the noise of the other children. This set off alarm bells for me but no one believed me at the time because she was so beautifully behaved when she was out of home. At home, however, she threw tantrums, hit her sister and father constantly and was generally unpleasant quite often. I took her to several nurses and doctors throughout 2009 but was only taken seriously early in 2010 when I took her to see a nurse who had known me for years (and, therefore, knew I wasn’t a crazy hypochondriac). She sent me to see my GP for a referral to a specific paediatrician who sent me to see a speech therapist and a child psychologist; together, these ladies put together a diagnosis of High Functioning Autism and they started helping my daughter to improve some of her skills. We have never looked back.

They say that knowledge is power but it is also fear/paranoia. Often, the more you know about something, the more you see it around you. Also, we all have a few Autistic tendencies in us so I started to see Autism everywhere while I was researching it in order to understand how to help my youngest best. That’s why I was a bit hesitant to take the big one to the doctors when I started to notice some interesting behaviours in her as well. I thought I had become the crazy mother the doctors had seen in 2009, finding faults where there were none. Eventually I took her to see the same specialists as the little one and they came up with the diagnosis of Asperger’s Syndrome.

The purpose of this blog is for me to share our stories. Sometimes they’ll be funny, other times less-so. Sometimes they’ll be about the girls, other times they may be about me (I’ve found during my research that I’m not immune to the Autism factor and a lot of things I struggled with in my childhood could probably be attributed to the fact that I’m also on the spectrum). We are the Aspy bunch and these are our stories.

The Care Bears were wrong

Sharing is not always caring :(

As a parent, one is constantly divided between self preservation (one of our most primal urges) and the fact that I could chew off my own arm if I had to to save one of my children. We happily put aside our own discomfort if it will make our kids smile.

This is why parents will act as furniture items for a poopy bottomed toddler. This is why we will accept soggy mushed up sandwich fists being shoved in our faces and say 'mmmmm, that's a great sandwich'. It is also how our children manage to make us quite ill.

Last week, around Tuesday, the little one started with tummy troubles and missed a day of school. We had hoped that it was all over and she had kept it to herself. Sadly, yesterday (Sunday) we got a call from the girls grandmother to cut their visit short as the big one had started being sick.

This morning I woke up feeling quite poorly. In fact, I am writing this post with one eye on the screen and one eye on the fastest route to the bathroom. It is not the first time my girls have shared a disease with me. It won't be the last. My main curiosity with this phenomenon is how other people cope and manage to not be constantly ill. Part of my science degree involved learning how to minimise the spread of diseases but I still manage to get sick quite regularly. Perhaps my immune system is defective?

Oh well, it's time to go lie down and feel sorry for myself now.

Chronic spider problem

It's safe to say that Australians dislike spiders often times. In my home, Husband is quite arachnaphobic due to several unpleasant encounters with our eight-legged friends, both girls fiercely dislike the creatures as well. That makes me the go-to person when there is a spider problem greater than a daddy long legs in the house.

A few days ago, I evicted a nasty-looking huntsman from Husband's car. It had terrified the big one last week when she was getting into the car and saw it on the door seal. I flicked the ugly thing out and asked Husband if he wanted me to squash it. He suggested we leave it to go live in the bushes near our house.

Yesterday morning, Husband and I were awoken by both girls standing next to our bed quietly announcing that there was a 'big scary spider' in the little one's bedroom. I am a very slow morning person so Husband was the first to go and look. His voice came from the other room 'Elie, I should have let you kill the spider from my car.' I went to look and it did look very similar (equally ugly) to the huntsman we had hoped would choose to live outside. It was a good 10cm long from longest leg to longest leg, with a big chunky body in the middle.

While looking for a method to trap the spider, I spotted the vacuum. Now Husband and both girls are almost as jumpy around the vacuum as the cats are. They're all convinced that the spider somehow survived and is plotting its revenge.

INSANELYstressfulBUSYtime

Well, 2013 turned out to be a nastier year than expected. The proverbial hit the rotating cooling device around the middle of the year and while it got better after July things have remained chaotic up until now.

In the family's most recent news, we have moved again. It was our first move in 4 years and it has been our biggest move yet. I have much updating to do and a lot of stuff to get off of my chest so (as usual) I intend to be more regular with posts this year... Wait and see.

That isn’t where that goes…

All humans, being live organisms, have sensitivities. These sensitivities differ between the sexes and between individuals. Long story short, having very handsy children with incredibly pointy fingers, I always make sure to buy heavy-duty, bomb-resistant, brassieres. The kind that stand up by themselves long after they’ve been taken off and, in my case, sloppily left on the bathroom floor.

One morning recently, as we were getting ready for school drop-offs, I heard a strange meowing sound coming from the bathroom. As I walked towards the sound the big one walked out of the bathroom, wearing the previously mentioned item of clothing on her head to make a delightful pair of cat ears, happily meowing to herself.

It was incredibly amusing and will definitely be remembered for an appropriate embarrassing moment in her future.

Tactlesness

I’ve been reading up on Asperger’s Syndrome in girls which is an incredibly interesting topic to me, strangely enough. One thing that is very hard as the parent of girls on the spectrum is teaching them what is/isn’t appropriate to say and do, whether it’s at home, out with friends or around total strangers. The hardest part is that you really have to pick it up at the time that it happens (like when you’re training a puppy) or the discussion about appropriate behaviour becomes irrelevant to the kids. The next hardest part (especially with the big one at the moment) is explaining the situation in a way that doesn’t damage her ego (as I’ve explained previously, the big one is incredibly sensitive this year and most corrections are received by her as if I’ve just explained that she is THE WORST PERSON ON EARTH – it’s quite distressing as a mother to be looked at by your child as if you’ve just verbally abused her).

Here is an example of some of the issues we’ve had recently:

At a playground, the little one walked up to a complete stranger (male) and head(face)butted him in the hip. The big one told her Kung Fu teacher that his voice sounded strange (it sounded the same as always to me). He explained that it was his normal voice so she told him that he has a strange voice. I explained that that was not exactly a polite thing to say, her response: “Well it ISSS"

At a one-year-old’s birthday party, while saying goodbye to the parents, the little one poked the mother in the belly (she’s still carrying a bit of extra weight – as many of us do after having kids) and asked if it was another baby. Luckily my friend is good with kids and very matter-of-fact so she explained that it wasn’t a baby, just some fat
 * I actually really appreciate that since ‘fat’ has become such a dirty word in our society, I’m trying to de-stigmatise it in my home. The last thing I need is 2 Aspie girls who are scared of fat. 

 My sister recently quit smoking and the big one was harping on at her about how she kept telling her to quit. My sister explained that, as an adult, her decisions are her own (fair enough) but the big one kept at it until I told her to stop. Roundabout explanations just don’t work.

And that’s all just in the last fortnight.

I’ve had to teach the little one to stop describing strangers when she sees them in the street (eg, ‘That man is very WIDE’). The big one used to point and yell when she saw smokers in public (‘That person is SMOKING!!! THAT’S BAAAAAD’).

I will keep working on them. Hopefully one day they’ll learn to keep their thoughts in their heads until an appropriate time comes up…