Why we can’t have nice things

Well the Nintendo Wii is a wonderful thing but the boxing portion of Wii Sports is more than just good exercise. Adam seems to have gotten a little too close to the new TV and since the attachment doesn't have a strap or padded guard his vigor had sad consequences. He was totally distraught, poor guy. There was nothing to be upset about, the natural consequences were harsher than anything we could have said.

Jack enjoyed the colorful lines in front of the picture and made a bad situation much worse by pushing on the screen and ruining it until it is unreadable and won't stay turned on anymore.

Now not only do we have to figure out how to pay for a new tv but how we are going to encase it so it will last more than a few months and still be viewable!

Giant Pickle!

My sister reminded me of some of the strange things that Jack says at the strangest times.

He is by no means mute like he was when he was little but he speaks in Echolalia. That means he echoes back phrases that he has heard in the past, kind of like a parrot might. But because he is so smart he uses his echoes to communicate instead of the words he can't find.

Unfortunately you often have to watch all the shows that he watches to get his full meaning but he is getting much better at picking only the most meaningful phrase.

Funerals seem to bring out his most mischievous side. He is not fond of church; with its uncomfortable clothes, shoes, long bouts of grownups talking, etc. Funerals to Jack just seem like extra church duty with overly emotional (and therefore even less understandable) grownups.

Just this last May at my grandpa Jackson's funeral service he kept trying to shout, 'Mission completion!' It is a phrase from the end of the Little Einstein's show on Disney channel and obviously he was hoping we would all get the hint. Of course it fits my grandpa to a tee and is exactly the sort of comment I can imagine him hoping for from one of the great grandkids. So the one loud shout only brought smiles.

My grandma Glissmeyer's funeral on the other hand was a bit more embarrassing. She had struggled with Alzheimer's disease for several years and could get pretty irritated with Jack because he made no sense at all. For his part Jack loved irritating her and when she stayed at our house several evening a week he would go out of his way to wander past muttering nonsense words to see if she would tell him to stop!

Just before they closed the casket for the services and in the middle of the family prayer, Jack announced quite loudly, 'Giant Pickle'! It is part of a Veggie Tales movie that he loves and also just the sort of nonsense that would get grandma to say something stern!

Jack

It has taken me a while to write this post. Jack is very dear to my heart but finding words to describe him can be difficult. He is just so different from the rest of this mundane world that it isn't fair to use our standards to measure him. He has very profound autism without having his intelligence affected negatively (in fact we suspect he is smarter than average but it can't be measured in any standard way). In our case he never regressed, he has been 'weird' since birth and that is the way we like him. I will never forget the time I picked him up turned toward me and he leaned in for a hug willingly and patted my back – I cried. That was almost a year after we started seeking help. He received a diagnosis of autism at the age of 2 yrs old and at the time he was mute. This is a collage I made of him when he was three.

He has made incredible progress since then and never ceases to amaze me. Socially he has progressed from the equivalent of 0 to 3 months at diagnosis to about 2 years. That is just measuring his social interactions of course; the rest is literally beyond measuring!

This summer he worked with my mom in a one on one summer school type of program. They had a blast together and she taught Jack how to draw (he hates holding anything in his hands with enough pressure to write or draw so those things have been major stumbling blocks for him).
As wonderful as that is it reminds me of the time his occupational therapist taught him how to take off his shoes. She warned me that I was going to hate it but that someone his age should be able to remove their shoes. His shoes haven't stayed on his feet since. Now that Jack can draw he has been attacking the walls with a vengeance, after all he has years of catching up to do!

Also, the picture of Elmo and Big Bird hanging out in the Shower caddy is Jack's handywork. We think of them as random Jack-a-stacks, turn the corner and you are likely to find something arranged in an intriguing way!

'S', 'T', circle, 'P'.

Just before I took the girls out to lunch on Saturday I was sitting in the front room with John who was playing some music for me to listen to. Jack gets very annoyed when his dad's music interferes with his own internal soundtrack. He came in the room, turned to the wall and started writing letters with his finger. As he did it he named his letters, S, T, circle, P and then turned around and looked at John and said 'Stop'. He is working on learning the letters in his name at school but they said they haven't discussed the word stop. But then they would have taught him to say 'O' instead of circle! I am just fascinated when I can get a glimpse of how he works things out in what must be a very confusing world to him. Here is an example of him writing his own name at school, it has taken us years to get him to hold a pencil for more than three seconds.

Jack and the Cat

Our neighbor's cat has been trying for a few months to get Jack's attention but is afraid of all the other children. Jack used to be terrified of the cat (figuring out people rules are hard enough he has always avoided animals).

He seems to have figured out how to get the cat to do what he wants now. Last week we found some boiled eggs missing and found Jack putting them to good use!

The cat even let Jack carefully pull on its hair and pet it with his foot until he got brave enough to use his hand. It is a good thing it isn't a stray we have to keep feeding, I have no idea how long Jack has been bribing it.