This Mom

The answer, at least, for us, so far...

So. I’m here. What’s the answer?

 

Oh. You mean, I’M supposed to have it??

La la!

Okay. I do have it. At least, the answer that is working for us.

So far.

It’s in this great book with the bad title: Transforming the Difficult Child; The Nurtured Heart Approach, by Howard Glasser.

It all started about a month ago, on my birthday week, my terrible, awful birthday when Dave and I were getting divorced and Fluffy was struggling in the much-anticipated theater/social skills group for the second week in a row, leaping on, grabbing at, and kicking the kids and generally losing possession of himself to such a degree that I knew we’d have to drop the class. Which made me feel a teeny tiny bit despairing.

The next day, I took Fluffy to OT and during our session, another boy came in with his team. This was fine. We often end up sharing the room for part of the time. The hospital-like curtain was closed but the other boy race over to our side to stand and stare at Fluffy who immediately yanked him to his chest in a sort of pro-wrestling hug and then threw him to the wall where the big fat cushy mat hanging there, thankfully, absorbed the blow. The boy seemed dazed but also, thankfully, fine as he was ushered back to his side.

But I was upset.

And tense. And frustrated. And worried. The words, STOP DOING THAT! JUST STOP IT! screamed inside my head. I jumped up and crouched in front of him, cupping his shoulders and said through clenched jaw, That is not okay. It’s not okay to grab and push other kids.

The OT said something cheerful about the next activity. I skulked back to my seat feeling out of control, ineffectual, and exposed. Fluffy laughed and climbed inside the big barrel. Later in the session, the OT said to me, Do you know about the Nurtured Heart Approach? The whole OT staff here took the training with the author. It’s really very effective.

Effective. Yes! That’s what I want to be!

I went home and ordered the book. When it came, I skimmed through the first few chapters and went straight to the section on what I was to actually DO. JUST GIMME THE BASICS, DAMMIT! I grumbled as I started to read.

I'm about halfway through the book. I’m going through it slowly, adding new techniques little by little. Dave got the dvd; he needs to see and hear things for them to sink in. But the wonderful news is that he’s on board. It’s not something I’m doing on my own and then hounding him to join. We’re truly partnered on this one, and I think that’s why it’s been working as well as it has.

So, what are we doing? We started with what they call Video Moments, observations that mirror what Fluffy is doing throughout the day. Short observations, four or five times an hour, every hour you’re with your child. That’s right, every 10-15 minutes.

These are observations with warmth and energy but without judgment. When Fluffy’s swinging on his swing, I say, Wow! I can see you are pumping with such energy! When he’s folding paper, Man, you are folding with such focus. I can tell you’re really motivated to finish that plane! When he’s complaining about going outside, I can see how hard it is for you to stop what you’re doing and get ready to go outside.

Whatever he’s doing, I play it back for him. All. Day. Long.

Of course, I’m sure I don’t really do it four or five times an hour for every hour. But I do it a lot. I catch myself, realizing it’s been a while since I last said something, look at him and really observe, and then play him back to himself. I beam my attention and focus and energy back without editorializing, without the, That’s great! Or Good job! Or I like that! Or that’s not okay! Or I’m getting frustrated with you! Or anything that's about praise or disapproval. Never about disapproval.

I do this even when he’s annoyed or angry, frustrated or disappointed. I can tell you are really mad about that, I say.  I can see you’re having really big feelings about this. I notice that you’re working very hard to use self-control. Wow, you are using incredible strength right now, I can really see that.

Etc etc.

After a few weeks, we added phase two. In phase two, you add your own positive feelings to your observations that are focused on your child’s success.  In addition to Video Moments, you now also make hearty and positive exclamations when your child has done something well, even when it’s not something for which you’ve explicitly asked.

So, when Fluffy and I go to the store to pick up a few things, I bring up what I noticed in the car on the way home, mentioning things even if they’ve not historically been a problem. I say, Wow, Fluffy! I am so proud of you! You were so well behaved in that store! You followed all the store rules. You didn’t take things off the shelves! You used an inside voice! That shows such maturity!

I try to be specific. I’ll mention a small moment like, I noticed at one point a woman we didn’t know was standing where you wanted to go and you waited until she moved. You exercised such patience and respect! Or, I saw your hand start to move to take this from me and then you stopped yourself. Wow! I really appreciated the effort you made! 

We haven’t gotten to the section in the book about consequences. For now, I’m sticking with Video Moments when Fluffy is struggling. I’m sticking with my own non-judgmental observations, taking care that I stay neutral. And you know what’s happening? The difficult moments don’t last, they don’t escalate. In fact, when Fluffy gets mad now, he storms out of the room usually yelling, maybe knocking over a chair or pushing books off the table top. But he goes to his room on his own self-imposed break. When he returns, I lay it on thick: Wow! I really love that you took a break and calmed down! That is not easy to do! A lot of kids have a really hard time doing that and you just did it all on your own! I am really impressed! In the old days, I would have taken the time for a ‘teaching moment’, going over what happened that wasn’t okay, the inciting incident, the yelling, the knocking over of furniture. I would have also mentioned that taking a break on his own was great but that would have gotten lost under all the other words, words that only reinforce what wasn't okay rather than what WAS.

We’re also not yet to the section about earning points. I’m not sure what we’re going to do when we get there. I’m not sure I want to add in points or play money as the prize for good behavior which is then traded in for treats (which could be anything) because what I notice is that Fluffy is already feeling good about himself. His own shifting self-image is the prize. He is earning his own sense of pride.

The premise in the Nurtured Heart Approach (NHA) is that kids notice where we are putting our energy and they respond, they move toward that energy. When they are acting well, when they are behaved, when they are doing what it expected of them, we may feel pleased or we may simply feel relieved but we often say nothing. When they are misbehaving, when they are not doing what we want, we bring varying degrees of our intensity in the form of negative attention. 

The NHA says we need to flip that—give very little or no energy to the behaviors we don’t want and give lots of energy to the behavior we want.

Behavior modification, anyone?

I know. I know! But you know what? It’s working!

Dave, always more of a behavior fan feels validated at long last. It’s like animal training, he says gleefully! It validates his long-held theory the self grows by the food of attention.

And frankly, it may be a behavioral approach but what I’m noticing is that the correction, if you will, is happening on a developmental level. Fluffy’s sense of self, his perception and perspective is changing. His ability to self-regulate is maturing. His self-control is emerging. He’ll now bring up his own behavior with a sense of pride. I was a help in the store, wasn’t I, mom? I put my coat away without being asked! Yesterday, I even put the water bottle back where it belonged and Dad was amazed!

Maybe you’re like I was at first and you’re pretty sure you’ve been doing this sort of thing all along and it hasn’t worked. But you know, as I read and as I began to try this, I realize it’s not quite what I’ve been doing. Even though I’ve always reflected Fluffy back to himself, always celebrated his efforts, always given him gobs of attention, there is something different here.

I’ve never paid as close attention to my own response when Fluffy is being difficult. And Fluffy can be difficult. I said this book has an bad title but the truth is, some kids are easy and some are not and the one’s that are not are, well, harder. So parenting them is harder. The regular stuff doesn’t work. And getting tougher doesn’t work either. These kids push. And push. And push more.    

And underneath that pushing is a big mass of swirling energy. I think these kids, certainly Fluffy, experiences energy differently, in their own body, mind, and heart. I think their energy often becomes intense, when they are excited, bored, anxious, worried, confused, hungry, tired, scared, sad, angry. And I think they are more affected by the energy of those around them. And I think (my my! so much thinking!) they struggle with filters, one of them being how much of what kind of messages are filtered back in from the things we say and do and the energy we bring when we say and do those things. 

I know in Fluffy's case, he seems to have this odd construct of himself: a startling cutout of 100% perfection behind which low self-esteem winces. He sometimes bites his own arm or punches his own head when he's done something he thinks was 'stupid', mumbling that we must think he's a 'terrible, awful' kid. It shocks us, every time.  I think the NHA is helping with this, allowing more of the positive messages through his filter, helping him SEE himself, more of his wonderful, passionate, curious, engaged, successful self, more of the time.

Okay. There’s my answer. Feel free to try it out or toss it aside.

We’ve got a few more chapters to go. I’ll keep you posted on what we do when it comes to consequences and rewards. In the meantime, I’m pouring my energy into every moment of success I see, staying neutral when negative behaviors rise up, and giving a steady stream of Video Moments, feeding them back to Fluffy, all day long.

 

How to honor the child without letting him run the household

I’m in a funny place with Fluffy and his homeschooling these days. It’s not really Ha Ha funny or Boo  Hoo funny so much as it’s free form funny, cooking without cookbooks, ingredients for main courses, appetizers and desserts strewn haphazardly on the counter, ovens on with nothing inside, burners lit with pots straddling the heating elements.

As I said in the last post, we are moving away from RDI, not because we have any issue with it, per se. In fact, we are taking the foundations with us, the parent as guide, the focus on learning happening within the context of relationship, the competence as the key to motivation, the importance of appropriate challenge—not too much or one shuts down from overwhelm and not too little or one shuts down from boredom.

We’re also moving away from Enki. No morning circles, no singing through transitions, no working with the story through beeswax crayon drawing, no recorder, no no no no! 

We’re taking materials from Enki and Moving Beyond the Page and MathStart, this series in Hands-on Learning in Science, Lego Mindstorms, origami, games, and books books and more books. We’re taking those things and doing a daily improvisation that is working better than anything has since we started 2^nd grade in early September.

At first it was a little hairy. I felt there was something wrong. Something wrong with the way I was doing things, something wrong with the way Fluffy was responding to things. Something wrong with Dave, the dog, the plan, the ‘shape of the day’ the angle of the earth, our place in the solar system. School is not right, the social skills theater class is not right, Enki is not right, RDI is not right. MY GOD! WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO!!!

At the same time, I was completely flummoxed about how to discipline my child. I’ve always been a groovy, co-sleeping, breast-feeding, baby-wearing type, attentive to his needs, honoring the intensity, seeing the whole thing as jello powder, as if my job was simply to keep adding water, mixing, and then waiting for the foundation to set.

Same with the discipline. I tried to embody the three C’s, being clear, calm, and consistent while also channeling the three F’s, being friendly, firm, and flexible. Rules are unavoidable and necessary. When they’re broken there are consequences. Yet there are instances where flexibility is called for but too much flexibility too much of the time renders the rules meaningless.

As the years progressed, I found that time-outs didn’t work, that 'tough love' set the stage for deeper resistance, that anxiety ignored turned into full-on hysteria, that open discussions turned into protracted and convoluted contests in verbal stamina.

Consequences were perplexing to me. I’d often gather up my mommy authority and calmly say, “If you do that one more time, you will get a consequence” knowing full well, I had no idea what the consequence would be, hoping that the mere mention of a consequence would make Fluffy stop whatever he was doing that wasn’t okay. Often that would work but when it didn’t, my brain would be a rabbit in the headlights, unable to find the consequence that would work, that would be felt immediately and not later when the infraction was long forgotten, one I could stick to when the great wails of protest rose up.

I’m a developmental gal, seeing things in terms of readiness. I don’t like the behavioral road, the charts and stickers, the stars accumulated and then traded in for goodies like extra computer time or a special toy. I also believe that Fluffy’s thoughts, opinions, ideas, challenges, and feelings are important and need to be considered. Most of the time, the ‘naughty’ behavior comes from the under-developed parts of him, his sensory confusion, a feeling of powerlessness, lack of self-control, problem solving, a general feeling of incompetence. Still, certain behavior simply isn’t okay. We can’t punch Mommy. It’s no good to violently bite your own arm when you can’t get a second dessert.

I don’t do Fluffy any favors by allowing inappropriate behavior but punishing without a path to new learning is no better.

My puzzle was: How to honor the child without letting him run the entire household?

To come: my answer!

every shade of gray imaginable

Fluffy and Dave, consulting a map; October 2008.

Hey, isn’t Obama dreamy??? Isn’t the win still making you swoon? Laugh out loud, smile, cry, hug strangers in the street?

I love the joyous reactions from all over the world. Love it! Science is being pulled from the toilet where it’s been disintegrating like old toilet paper for the last eight years. It’s slowly getting dried out and pieced back together. Hearts are healing. Hope has been restored. I know! I’ve totally drunk the Kool-Aid! In fact, I’m on a Kool-Aid intravenous drip!

I met a woman while canvassing in New Hampshire. She was a life-long Republican. She and her husband had met Ronald Reagan and both Bushes, had picture of them in their living room. Her name was on my list with the word, Persuade, beside it.

I talked to her for about ten minutes, standing in her doorway, her tiny white dog with the googley orange eyes racing in and out across the threshold, doing that little hyper circus walk on hind legs, working it for some attention or a treat.

She stayed on the line. I listened carefully for a way in and finally at the very end, I got one. She said, “Now, I’m not sayin’ I’m gonna vote for him, but that Obama, he’s got both black and white in him and so he’s got somethin’ to prove, you know, to the whites AND the blacks, that he can be fair, cause, you know, it’s IN him.”

I like to think she did vote for him.

So, now that the election is over, I’m weaning myself from my news show addiction but my infatuation with everything Obama has not waned. My sister, mom and I are planning our trip to Washington for the inauguration in January. And I have this feeling I’m going to meet him one day. Do I sound terribly grandiose?

I’m being pulled in a new direction in the world of autism and aspergers and education. I can’t say I’m actually OFF the ‘remediation’ path because I’ve come to think of that word as synonymous with learning and who could stray from the path of teaching when it comes to their child?

I can’t say I’m on board with the true Indigo line that speaks of our kids as descending from an other-wordly being in space.

But I’m certainly not on board with needing to ‘fix’ my child. My goal isn’t to get rid of the autism.

I am profoundly grateful that we found RDI when we did. I see how powerful that approach has been in how Fluffy has developed, how it shaped my role as his guide, and how fundamental competence is when it comes to motivation not just for our kids but for ALL all of us.

Yet, we’ve stepped away from RDI. We let our consultant go. I’m not sure if we’ll go back. It doesn’t feel right for us at this point.  I don’t want to look at my son in terms of a long list of objectives that we ‘work’ on and then check off.

I believe RDI is like magic and wish there were RDI schools in every district across the land.

And I still think Fluffy is Fluffy and not his Aspergers. 

I’m sorry that I spent so much time in a place of fear because what message did that send my son? About where he was and how he was? How much development can progress in an atmosphere of worry?

But I’m also sorry that I spent any time worrying about the worry or judging myself for the worry because I felt what I felt and it can from my love and my desire to provide the most I could for my child. I’m not in a place of worry now but I may be again one day. And I reserve the right to be there without having to hide it or justify it to anyone, least of all the ‘autism community’ whatever that means.

To be clear--RDI was not about coming from fear. In fact, it was through my experience with RDI, in the trainings, in the coaching from our consultant, and in my day to day experience, that I came out of the fear. RDI made sense. It taught me a way of being, a parenting style, that allowed for us to go back and 'redo' so Fluffy could learn what we didn't know how to teach him the first time around. 

Discussions of ‘energy’ comes closest to my current thoughts on autism, at least the version we have in this house, the Fluffy Aspergers 1.0 version.  I haven’t pieced it all together but it has to do with the way energy is experienced and expressed in Fluffy, the words he uses, the way his sensory system, digestive system, belief system and point of view are affected by atmosphere, temperature, food, activities, attitudes, feelings—his and those of the people around him.  

Why do I include thoughts on autism with thoughts on President-Elect Obama? Maybe it has to do with Obama’s grasp of nuance, his willingness to see all sides of complex issues, his ability to truly listen to dissenting views. Maybe it has to do with the maturity and depth and wisdom he conveyed in his talk on racism.

I was never a believer in trickle down economics, but maybe I’m hoping for trickle down mindset when it comes to big topics like educating our kids, these beautiful kids, who aren't high functioning or low functioning, autistic or autists, Aspergers or quirky, painfully behind or way ahead of us, in other words, not black or white but every shade of gray imaginable.

What 'cha gotta be?

Despite my raspy Debra Winger voice, hacking cough and watery eyes, I joined the boys at a family concert in town this afternoon. 

We saw this cool cat: Secret Agent 23 Skidoo.

I wish you all had been there. He's a hip-hopper for the younger set. And, man, he rocks. You should have seen the little kids, arms behind in superman fly mode, stomping in circles, yelling out, "I gotta be me!". And you know, the adults yelled out right along with them.

 

From 23 Skidoo's Gotta Be Me:

see some people think 

making you feel bad 

will make them feel good 

and that's just sad

but no matter what they do or say 

it's just a game 

and you don't have to play

if they call you weird 

and you want them to stop you

well you can either say, 

"no, i'm not!"

or you can say, 

"yup! I'm as weird as can be and you know what? 

i love it! i gotta be me!"

what 'cha gotta be?

i gotta be me

what 'cha gotta be?

i gotta be me

Man, you said it, Secret Agent 23 Skidoo. 

So, what 'cha gotta be? 

Well, if you're like me

Skip on over here 

to buy his new CD.

Wonderful Idea

Fluffy at the start of a hike; October, 2008.

I went to the first meeting of a Spirit Group on Sunday. I didn't know what to expect other than we were going to speak to, and be guided by, our angels.

I'm all for vision work and prayer and tuning into the 'still small voice' inside, listening to one's intuition and using joy and inspiration as true north on our spiritual compasses. But I've never been a big angel gal, per se.

But why not? I love using magnetic poetry as a way to consult to the oracle. I stare, transfixed and unblinking as Miss Daisy the psychic, confers with my spirit guide (apparently assigned to me since birth) by name. I believe in the great mystery and if it's a mystery, then doesn't it follow that some of the details might include a few way out things? Like angels sprinkled about, floating at our sides, gently nudging us toward this and away from that, whispering words of comfort and insight during a commercial break from our usual internal loop?

So, off I went. 

I wrote to my angels, asking for guidance, and then wrote their answer back to me in the automatic writing style. Have you done this? You put pen to paper and let it fly. Don't think. Don't judge. Just write until it 'feels' done. Yes, it's very groovy and  you have to simply go with it. If you're sure you're making it all up, you're doing it right. If you're sure you're receiving dictation, you're doing it right. In other words, there is no doing it wrong.

I liked it. I liked the exercise, I liked the people, I liked the woman who led the group, the same woman who runs the new social skills group with an OT, the who believes our kids are Indigos, the 'new children', here to 'teach us'. The one who, years ago, I would have dismissed by saying, All kids are new! All kids are here to teach us!

I left the group feeling good. And then something cool happened. I began to feel better and better, lighter if you will, until I knew this good feeling was the truth about me, about us, about life. It was like I was a Chia Pet, sprouting spiritual calm like grass until I was wrapped in a blanket of green fuzz, like the moon encircled by a glowing mist. 

I met a woman there who is launching a fantastic website. It's called Hear To Inspire. She's collecting stories from every day people about every day moments that are transformed when we choose to respond with acceptance, honesty, kindness, love, and tolerance. She asked us to spread the word, contribute a story, and offer feedback. 

I'm here to spread the word. Go check it out. It's a wonderful idea.