Of Playdates and Big Fears

January 22, 2015

It is almost the end of Lauren and Luke’s summer holidays in Australia. They tell me they are enjoying their holidays. Lauren had her first playdate (ever!) last week – yes! We managed to arrange one! January 15.

A lovely friend from her old class, 5J, with a wonderfully understanding mother. Thanks Erica!

So, Brooke came over to watch the new Disney movie called “Big Hero 6”. Of course Lauren had already had a preview of the movie and had to be reminded many times to not let the cat/s out of the bag, and narrate Brooke through the whole movie.

Anyways, the date was a decent success. Brooke and Lauren ended up watching two movies, since their conversation time ended in about 5 minutes after the first movie. They had nachos and pizza and then we said "see you at school"!

Meeting 7 with Dr Johann

Lauren’s latest visit to Dr Johann had her working on the table below.

The purpose of this exercise: How to change negative thoughts to positive thoughts.

This came about because Lauren has a big (gigantous) fear and dislike of water. She thinks she will drown in the pool. She tells us it is dirty. She hates the feeling of being splashed even with sprinkles of water. So she shuns swimming as much as possible.

Kevin and I, on the other hand are trying to get Lauren to understand that she must learn to swim, because it is a life-saving skill. She does not need to love it, but she should try to live with it.

So, for many years, we have been trying to get Lauren to swim – with and without her swimming cap, with and without her float. One time, she tried swimming without the float, and she felt herself sinking. That freaked her out even more!

And then there is the vomiting after the swimming. Intense emotions of triumph that she has managed to swim without her cap and float, coupled with even more intense anxiety…results in Lauren rushing to the toilet to vomit after her swims.

But she has agreed she will continue trying. She is a real trooper. Such resilience. And I must remind myself to continue to encourage her and be more patient.

So, our task the next two weeks is to identify negative thoughts eg.

I might drown if I swim at the deep end without my float.

My book will be destroyed if my friend touches it.

The movie I am watching will be gone if my brother uses the laptop

We discuss with Lauren the process that leads her to positive thoughts like

“You can practise swimming without your float at the shallow end first, so you know you won’t sink without the float.”

“Think about how you can operate the laptop and find the spot where you last stopped at the movie.”

This exercise hopefully helps Lauren (and all of us who are more pessimistic in nature) to build new pathways in her brain. From default negative thoughts to thought-out positive thinking.

Pray for us. Thanks.

No In-Betweens

Meeting 6 with Dr Johann

January 8, 2015

The ASD brain is an on-off switch when it comes to emotions. I am either happy or sad. I am either very angry or not angry at all. 

There are no in-betweens.

So how do we get them to try and recognize the “I am going to get angry” feeling?

Using a feelings temperature check and defining the different tangible changes their body feels can be one way. For example, heart beats faster. They start sweating. Fists start clenching.

Once they start recognizing these signs, then they can use strategies to calm down. 

Strategies that help them move their behaviour from primal instinct (fight or flight) to rational thought and rational behaviour.

Two strategies for Lauren, to help her calm down:

1. Count 1-100…backwards in multiples of two or four or six

Dr Johann advised that the more she has to use her brain to process something, the faster she can move from her primal instinct of explosive anger. This helps her use more of her pre-frontal cortex.

2. Breathing exercise

Breathe in, hold for 3 seconds. Then breathe out.  Do this until she feels less upset.

And finally, a holiday activity for Lauren: arrange a playdate for her where she can practise some of her social skills. Will let you know how that goes!

Putting the Jigsaw Together

Meeting 5 with Dr Johann

2 December 2014

Lauren's 5th session with Dr Johann had her put together everything she had learnt in the last four weeks:

Step 1: Greetings and introduce herself.

Step 2: Speak within an appropriate time frame. Use three pointers to keep her new friend from falling asleep!

Step 3: Paraphrase. Use this to show her friend that she is listening to her, and also to keep herself tuned in to her. We agreed on a sentence like “….so you like…., that’s cool!” to paraphrase appropriately.

Step 4: Minimal encouragement cues. Nod her head (every 3 seconds), interject conversation with “u-huh, yes, ahh…” to indicate that she is still listening and interested in what her friend is saying. Keep hands unfolded – shows open-ness to listen and maintain eye contain.

Step 5: End conversations with “I have to go now. It was nice talking to you. Let’s talk again later”.

Dr Johann then told Lauren that they would string together all these steps in one conversation. He would talk to her about a really boring topic (eg. surfing!) and she would have to look interested the whole time.

The verdict? Lauren did extremely well. She was able to go through each step, sequentially. Practised all the things she had been taught. Only thing: she was not able to smile throughout the conversation! Lauren’s mind was so busy going through the steps and trying to remember each of them, smiling was completely forgotten:P

How we forget that social conversations are not as natural as breathing for Aspies!

Head in the Hole

28 November 2014

Yesterday, there was a group session for Lauren in her class.
Each student was to make a TRUE and FALSE statement. We aren't sure what the context was in making the sentences but one student (a boy) said, "I make out with my mom!". To which Lauren asks..."How?"...
Her group of friends laughed in response.

And Lauren burst into tears. She told us later she wanted to go to the school oval (school field) to dig a hole and hide her head in there! She was utterly embarrassed that she didn't know what it was and all her friend knew.

Meeting 4 with Dr Johann
Our assignment for this week from Dr Johann.
1. Help Lauren to paraphrase conversation points and end with "that's really cool!".
For example,..."so you like to play tennis and watch movies. That's really cool!".

2. Give compliments
Lauren learns to give compliments (appropriate ones, of course) to help make her friends comfortable and feel good.
For example,..."Hey Lanni, you look really pretty with those new ear-rings".

3. Finish conversations properly.
Lauren tends to leave her conversations hanging. Either her friends have not finished talking or she is done asking and then she just waltzes away!
So now she is to say..."Nice talking to you. See you later. Bye".

Reminders to continue practising:
Use comic strips to visually explain what other people are thinking of a certain behaviour of Lauren's.
Keep rehearsing and practising new social skills
Use tv (since she loves watching TV) as a good reference for appropriate Model Me behaviours
Remind Lauren to greet and give a warm smile, before jumping into a conversation. Say bye without her mini wave.

Update again next week.

Big presentation! And Big Scene!!!

28 November 2014

We had a very busy weekend last week. 

Lauren had to prepare for her school project on natural disasters (she had apparently forgotten to do it and we were informed on thursday, with just friday-sunday for her to research, complete the poster and memorise the talk). We helped a fair bit! Kevin did wonders with the visual poster and Lauren worked hard on how to present her work. Me? I helped to make her sentences simpler and easier to present. And Lauren was so good - she took in our comments, was willing to present so many times just to get her words, her action all right. 

On Monday, she presented her A2 poster and talk about the natural disaster to the whole class. She had to keep the audience interested for her 3-6 mins presentation. She scored an 'A' for it. A great morning for her.

Then came big break. 

A couple of kids were playing handball and Lauren accidentally got hit by a bouncing ball. She exploded. She reacted by shouting that she was going to 'hurt' them (not sure what the actual words were) and threw her book and pen to the ground. Her pen broke as a result, which made things worse. Sally, her Special Education -SEU - teacher heard her from the office and came to get her. Sally calmed her down. And another girl gave her pen - which was similar but not 100% the same - to Lauren to make her feel better. 

How do we help Lauren when she has an explosive outburst?

Can we prevent it?

Lauren felt really bad. We know because she tells us what she should have not done and what she should have done. After talking to Dr Johann about this, we are reminded that we must continue to run the right scenario of actions Lauren should do, practise them, and practise them and practise them until they become a habit. 

We are also reminded that our frontal lobes, which control rational behaviour and reasoning, do not mature until we are about 25 years old! So...we have a long long journey ahead of us.

Twerking

November 20, 2014 Today we found out that Lauren knows how to twerk. She learnt it yesterday and apparently showed all her classmates how twerking is done!

Funny? Yes. Horrified? Yes also. What must her classmates think of her? Well, according to her class teacher, a few of the boys said they felt rather uncomfortable. How did this happen? No one really knows except that Lauren told us one of her friends asked if she knew how to twerk, to which Lauren said, "Huh?"...and her friend proceeded to partially show her the starting stance for a twerk, and then explained the rest of Lauren. Lauren followed the steps to a T and the rest is history!

What is a twerk? Ahh, new word for me too. Wikipedia has it as: a type of dancing in which an individual, usually a female,[1] dances to music in a sexually provocative manner involving thrusting hip movements and a low squatting stance.

Oh My!, would likely be your expression! Anyways, we shared that with Dr Johann, and he came up with a fantastic way to help Lauren understand why it was not appropriate. See stick drawing below.

The other things we will work on for week 2 of social sessions:

1. Use comic strips to help Lauren understand the POV of other people, esp. her classmates.

2. Turn taking in conversations Lauren is making good progress in this area. We are reminded to praise her when she does good turn taking during conversations to emphasize that she is doing well. 

3. Getting to know her friends Check that Lauren - looks at people when talking to them (especially if they may be talking about things she is less interested in) - smiling at her friends when she meets them (to help put her friends at ease) - says Hello, how are you? when she meets them, as good manners and greetings.

Back again next week.

Social Skills for Lauren

November 13, 2014

We just had our second visit to our new Clinical Psychologist in Birtinya, Queensland. Dr Johann Eloff was introduced to us by Winnie Lau, our Clinical Psychologist who first diagnosed Lauren with Dr Tony Attwood way back in 2007. Lauren is now 12 years old, and fast becoming a teenager. Pimples on the forehead (thanks to my family genes:-)) and wearing trainer bras.

We met Dr Johann for the first time on the 4th of November. Lovely person and very pleasant demeanour. Lauren found him quite handsome and told us she used her high pitched "ha ha ha" laugh. Whatever that means!

We had agreed that we wanted Dr Johann to guide us and the school SEU (Special Education Unit) team and align our efforts in helping Lauren improve her social skills. Learn how to make friends, learn how to keep friends. Learn appropriate friendship behaviours.

Short of sounding like a school teacher, I am going to list down my to-do list, then I can also use this blog as my checklist. Like?

1. 3-things to talk about Being a typical Aspie, Lauren can talk quite endlessly about a topic of her choice, for now it is GLEE and every single thing about GLEE, and bore her audience to ?**%$#!.

So, when Dr Johann met her this week, he gave her two minutes to talk about what she wanted to talk about. When the two minutes was almost up, Lauren got very nervous and said she simply could not finish everything she wanted to talk about on GLEE. And Dr Johann assured her it was alright because she could tell him more next time and it was his turn to talk anyway.

To help Lauren keep to a 2-minute guide, Dr Johann has asked us to use a 3-point guide. Ie. when we talk to Lauren, we specify three things we want to tell her. When we have completed the 3 things, we ask her what she would like to talk about as a signal for her to start sharing, but keep it to three things. Hopefully this becomes a habit and in due time it becomes an internal clock to signal that it is her friend's turn to talk.

We'll let you know how this goes.

2. Getting to know friends All this while, Lauren has said she has friends, but she hasn't a clue what they like, where they stay, what movies they love. Simply because she has never thought of asking. Our second project is to have her get to know 5 friends over the course of one week asking them about their hobbies, fav books, movies, songs. To make it less daunting, we told Lauren that this is something she could do to help Colleen Koh-koh, who is visiting during the Dec/Jan school hols, know her friends. Especially since Koh koh comes during the holidays and will not get to meet any of her friends in person. She started yesterday and interviewed her first friend, Brooke.

3. And in the meantime, I need to call Autism Queensland to check if they have the Model Me videos. These videos can be used one on one to teach kids with Autism social skills.

More on this next time.