10.16.2011

Autism: No Matter What, There's Always Trains


Last week was a comet ride, with more activity than I ever imagined could be fit into a mere six days -- it included an intense all-day conference (Hacking Autism's hackathon, more on that on TPGA tomorrow and Wed), meetups (Mali got to meet the excellent Bjorn of Toca Boca, followed by sharing panna cotta with my mom & Sr. Procopster), trips to Carmel to see the amazing Jordan Sadler speak on the intersection of Michelle Garcia Winner social thinking approaches and Unitarian Universalist principals, autism fundraisers (thanks to a furry blue monster), visitors (my mom from SoCal, Floyd & TLC from KY, whee!), inspirational open houses (Leo's), pumpkin patching (Leo's class), helping to finalize the Thinking Person's Guide to Autism manuscript (current heavy lifting by the unbelievably talented Jen Myers), trying to figure out why so many people are behaving badly while getting divorced (not us, not anyone you know, fairly stunned, no comment otherwise), Mali getting suspended from school for not just decking but threatening a fellow student (we will be enacting a behavioral contract with her; bit of irony there, completely on board), Iz touring a local high school so she can make informed choices for next year's transition (!!!!), and birthdays (mine, mostly an afterthought). (I can't even get into what Seymour gets to do for work tomorrow -- mostly because I'm so jealous -- but it's beyond stratospheric.)

Throughout it all -- and as you might imagine there have been schedule changes a-go-go -- Leo has been a good sport, cheerful and adaptable. He's been using great language, been intensely social, has demonstrated unprecedented awareness regarding self-care, and just yesterday upended everything I've been saying during my last few weeks' worth of iPad talks and workshops about him rarely doing non-iPad independent play by doing some fairly awesome non-iPad related independent play: He set up this entire train track by himself, using every last piece of track we own. Pretty damn cool, eh? He even let his godmother TLF play with him. Lovely. Love that boy.

6 comments:

  1. That is so awesome :) I love it when my girls step away from the electronics to engage in regular play.

    Go Leo.

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  2. Anonymous5:15 PM

    Very cool. It's always been one of my frustrations that I never quite managed (yes, as a 30+ year old) to set up my kids trains so that I used every piece.

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  3. My son is 13 and I still catch him playing with his little brother's train set. Great set up, BTW.

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  4. Yay for great weeks! Hugs!

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  5. I actually got a little bit tired just reading about all of it. Glad I wasn't LIVING it.

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  6. That really is true... No matter what, there's always trains.

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