language
Summer of ’01, Week #2
I wonder who won on June 21.
June 18, 2001
Write in detail what YOU would do to save Ginger. What I would do to save Ginger is that when she was released from the leglocks and into the duct, I would catch her. If she fell into the duct, she will be made into a pie. Rocky came to save her before the pie machine was about to explode.
June 19, 2001
Do you have pets? Yes, I have two dogs and two cats. One of my dogs is a German Shepphard. The other one is a collie. Their names are Patch and Rex. Patch is the German Shepphard and Rex is the collie. You can play with them, but they bark for me when it’s time for me to come to school. My cats are both felines. Their names are Smokey and Wiskers. Smokey is a gray cat, often hungry and used to humans. Wiskers is a black and white cat, shy and afraid of humans. I often have a feeling Wiskers will run from my house.
June 21, 2001
The, This, These, That, Those, Thee, Throne, There, Throw, Threw, Three, Thousand, Thirteen, Thirty, They, Them, Then, Theme, Therefore, Than, Thursday, Thirty-one, They’re
June 22, 2001
The type of equipment that is needed for rock-climbing and to rock climb safely is tennis shoes. You can’t wear sandals over there because you might get your feet scraped while rock climbing. It’s also against the rules to wear sandals.
Summer of ’01, Week #1
In the summer of 2001, while I was writing about The Bus and lots of other things at the student newspaper, Sam was in summer school writing about whatever prompt was on the board that day. He was 13. That’s often thought of as an awkward age, but for Sam it meant a new, level playing field with lots of kids.
I’ve kept many of his writing journals from summer school. (They called it Summer Club when he was in elementary school.) You can look back at other entries if you’ve missed them (Smart as a Fifth Grader, Confessions of a Second Grader and Writing Prompts — search on the category “language”). Some, especially from his younger days, are a real hoot.
As summer school began, he wrote on only the right side of the journal. When he ran out of pages, he went back to the beginning and wrote on the left side pages, so from page to page, the journal has this odd progression of dates that collapse in on each other. However, we’ll roll them out by week here and you can infer what the writing prompt may have been. (And P.S. we have never had bedbugs, so that sounds like a truly terrifying nightmare to me.)
June 12, 2001
If I were a T.V. character, I’d choose to be Pikachu. I like to watch Pokemon because it appears to be my favorite. Pikachu is a mouse Pokemon with electric power. The evolved form is Raichu. Pikachu and Raichu are both Electric Pokemon.
June 13, 2001
As the sound got closer, I peeked out from under my blanket to see what it was. It was bedbugs. Bedbugs are terrible, horrible, no good, very bad bugs. These (good for nothing) bugs will bite you when you are asleep, so be extremely careful. What I did was that I got out of bed at midnight.
June 14, 2001
What happens when the health inspector opens the refrigerator? He discovers the secret. The health inspector finds an antibiotic and takes it with him to his place. He was surprised to see it. He needed it so he can make people get well. The antibiotic will help people’s bodies fight the germs.
June 15, 2001
One of the ways the chicken tried to escape is by the scarecrow. They built the scarecrow and they started creeping away with it, but the dogs stood nearby studying the scarecrow. Suddenly, the chickens accidentally took a part of the scarecrow off and then the dogs started after them, ready to knock the chickens down. They knocked the chickens down and the head off the scarecrow.
Best soundtrack ever …
Paige and her fellow American students studying in South Korea this summer take their first field trip to a Korean folk village museum.
If you click the “watch on YouTube” option you can enjoy the comments, too.
Fifty shades of attention
Sometimes the best conversations you have with your kids are in the car on the way somewhere, or while you’re working on something together. I don’t understand why it worked, but we’d get revelations from Michael as we did fence repairs for the goats, for example, or from Paige after we’d get going on sewing project together.
Only in the past few weeks did I come to realize that wasn’t really the case for Sam.
Of course, when he was little, and we discovered that giving him our full attention managed to coax more language and social development out of him, we gave it our all. Mark even took a square tabletop off its pedestal leg and put foot-high 2x2s under all four corners for a play table. We spent hours sitting at that play table with him. Sometimes, it became just like a family dinner table in Japan. We cleared off the toys and sandpaper letter cards and other learning materials and ate our meal there (usually in front of a baseball game, we weren’t saints.)
As Sam grew and his language and schooling caught up, there was much less direct time like that together. We chatted at the dinner table, in the car, just like we did with his brother and sister.
In recent years, though, we noticed that Sam often had false starts to his sentences. Paige mentioned her concerns that she might have to wait for him to start and re-start a sentence as much as four or five times until he could finish it.
I wondered if I needed to find a speech therapist to help him. Sam and I talked about it briefly, and he was amenable. He had speech therapy throughout elementary, middle and high school. We didn’t seek it after that. But I told myself, add it to the list, but not at the top. We’ve got bigger fish to fry (and that’s not a metaphor: we’ve been working on cooking and kitchen management this year.)
While reading a new book on mindfulness, Thich Nhat Hanh’s Peace is Every Step, I had a quiet revelation. (Reading it as part of my work with Shahla Ala’i-Rosales and our new book on mindful parenting for those who have children with autism) What if I gave Sam my full attention when he started a sentence with me? Would that diminish the false starts?
That meant if he started talking to me while I was filling the dishwasher, for example, I was going to have to stop in the middle of my work, not just keep talking and working at the same time. I’ve been in single mom mode for nearly six years now. I recognized this would be training for me, not for him.
I got plenty of reinforcement for the change right away. The false starts diminished almost immediately. I told Michael about it and he was excited for us. He may even take data on my attention and Sam’s sentence starts next time he’s home, if it isn’t completely gone by then.
Shahla told me it makes sense. Many of us have learned that we can carry on a conversation with another person while they are doing something else. But Sam and others with autism may be less sure of the social cues. They may question whether they are communicating. They may think they are making a mistake, Shahla says.
Oh, no. That mistake was mine.
Words My Dog Knows
I have a Blue Lacy dog named Gus:
He will be 12 years old this year. Over the years, he has learned many words and phrases. He understands basic commands such as come, sit, stay, and down, of course. But let’s explore some of the more interesting words Gus knows.
Uh-oh. Gus knows when this is uttered in the kitchen to come a-running because something delicious just fell on the floor. Say it in another room and he ignores you.
Time for toothbrush. He follows you to the pantry for those chews that ostensibly clean his teeth.
Squirrel. Nothing more needs to be said.
Crow. Like squirrel, little more needs to be said, but he looks up in the sky.
Time for work. He barks at you until get your boots on. Same goes for, let’s get the paper, or walk, or outside, or take the trash up.
Tractor. Sam never says a word, but Gus knows when he puts in the ear protectors, it’s time to bark because the 2N is heading out into the orchard.
Get ’em up. This was very useful when we had more livestock here, for example, when Michael’s cashmere goats would get out of their pen or the chickens needed to be hustled back in the coop. In 2005, I thought about dispatching him to the Texas Legislature when they made one of many messes they’ve made with school financing at the same time they declared his breed the official state dog.
Given what’s going on in Austin this week, I may yet send him down there.
Get ’em up, Gus.
Overheard in the Wolfe House #229
Peggy: How was work today?
Sam: Work was subtle today.
Smart as a 5th grader #8
5-21-99
My plans about summer are having free time and playing games. I like playing games better than free time. On the last day of school I don’t get homework because on the day before the last day of school, I take my school supplies home! Wouldn’t that be something!
5-26-99
The best thing in 5th grade is that I work faster and get it done on time. Also, I was on the AB honor roll all year and I participated at Camp Summit. I also got a Circle of Friends award and I had a Circle of Friends party yesterday.
(Scroll down to the bottom of this page to learn more about Circle of Friends.)
Smart as a 5th grader #7
4-16-99
I like to go to the Grand Canyon. It’s in Arizona and it’s the best vacation ever! It’s pretty far down and you never get on top of it. It’s pretty fun to go there.
Paige, Mark, Sam and Michael get on top of the Grand Canyon
4-23-99
When you have a sub, you have to be extra good. Otherwise I would lose discipline. When all my discipline power is gone, I will go to sleep, or when my pin goes to the teacher. Each time I misbehave, I move my pin from green to yellow to red to a dark, paleless blue. If your pin is on blue, you lose your Friday recess and you’re about to receive a detention. When your pin goes to the teacher, you’ll receive a detention.
4-28-99
Our May activities will be Camp Summit. Camp Summit is in, I guess, Flower Mound. Camp Summit is through Bartonville or Double Oak. Nobody knows Bartonville, but everybody knows Flower Mound.
Smart as a 5th grader #6
3-5-99
At the middle school gym, I made 5 shots. They only give you 50 tries. But 5 shots is OK. Jamie made 25 shots, that is good. It’s pretty fun at the basketball hoop shoot.
3-22-99
This spring break I went to Colorado and there was snow. I went to my grandma’s house. I stood there from Monday to Saturday. It takes about a day to get there from my house.
3-26-99
This weekend, coming up, I will probably go places tomorrow. On Sunday, I’ll rest. I might go a lot of places, but I don’t know, but both the days, I will watch TV. I can’t go a lot of places on Sunday because Sunday is a day of rest.
3-29-99
Jake is 11 years old. I’m invited to his party. I don’t know where it will be, but it’ll be a good place to have a party. I’m gonna have fun!
4-1-99
Yesterday, I went on a field trip. I went to UNT. I described animals and did a dig. I also did fun stuff and went to the sky theater.
4-8-99
My favorite relative is Don Heinkel. I call him Grandpa because he’s my grandpa. I love him a lot. That’s why he’s my favorite relative.
Smart as a 5th grader #4
11-13-98
I saw Mrs. Newland’s puppy today! She’s eight weeks old. She has a short tail. She’s brown and white. She’s little. She has fur. She has sharp teeth! The puppy is soft. She’s not big, and she’s cute.
11-18-98
I am doing a president report on James Monroe. Right now he’s dead. He once died on a July 4. He’s famous. But he died a long time ago, a long time before I was born.
11-19-98
I am thankful for my own room. I am also thankful for my dogs. And I am thankful for Jon Greene, all the rest of my friends, and the 5th grade teachers.
12-2-98
On my vacation, I took my van trip to San Francisco and then I flew two airplanes. One airplane was from San Francisco to Maui. The other one was from Maui to Hawaii. In Hawaii, I rented a car and stayed in someone’s house named Nita. In Hawaii, I also swam in the Pacific Ocean. I also went to a wedding and I was in it. My Grandma, Grandpa, Aunts, Uncles and Cousins were there.
12-4-98
I am 11 years old! Today’s my birthday! I have 11-year-old behavior. I have 11-year-old reading. And I do 11-year-old work!