Ten things we didn’t know about autism one year ago …

By Peggy | April 5, 2013 |

Autism Speaks ran a super cool top ten list this week.

I’ve re-arranged their list by topic. I think it’s more useful that way, but you can refer back to their order, too. (ASD means Autism Spectrum Disorder. Let’s all get used to the change of language again.)

Prevention

Prenatal folic acid, taken in the weeks before and after a woman becomes pregnant, may reduce the risk of autism. Here’s the story.

Early intervention

High-quality early intervention for autism can do more than improve behaviors, it can improve brain function. Read more.

Being nonverbal at age 4 does NOT mean children with autism will never speak. Research shows that most will, in fact, learn to use words, and nearly half will learn to speak fluently. Read more.

Though autism tends to be life long, some children with ASD make so much progress that they no longer meet the diagnostic criteria for autism. High quality early-intervention may be key. Read more.

Researchers can detect presymptom markers of autism as early as 6 months – a discovery that may lead to earlier intervention to improve outcomes. Read more.

The first medicines for treating autism’s core symptoms are showing promise in early clinical trials. Read more.

Many younger siblings of children with ASD have developmental delays and symptoms that fall short of an autism diagnosis, but still warrant early intervention.Read more.

Social skills

Research confirms what parents have been saying about wandering and bolting by children with autism: It’s common, it’s scary, and it doesn’t result from careless parenting. Read more.

One of the best ways to promote social skills in grade-schoolers with autism is to teach their classmates how to befriend a person with developmental disabilities. Read more.

Other signs of hope

Investors and product developers will enthusiastically respond to a call to develop products and services to address the unmet needs of the autism community. Read more.

Posted in early intervention, hope, problem-solving

Autism, cooking and inference

By Peggy | April 4, 2013 |

Like most parents of a child with a disability, I’m on way too many email lists. Sometimes I get the itch to get off a bunch of them. After all, my child isn’t a child, he’s a grown man. The kinds of things we worry about, the world is just beginning to worry about. Many times I’m convinced the answer to our problem isn’t going to be in that mountain. Just like when he was little, when he was 1 in 15,000, and not 1 in 88, my job is to ready the pilgrimage and go find Mohammed.

But then something flies across cyberspace and there it is. A solution.

This time the reward for sifting through the mountain of email was finding out about Penny Gill, and how she teaches adults with autism how to cook.

When I was younger, combing through some of the recipes my mother used, I would sometimes get frustrated with the instructions. A lot was inferred, little was written.

Inference is a difficult skill to master for people with autism.

Julia Child came along and helped with instructions for how to cook, but she and all those television chefs expect us to generalize what they do. Generalizing is also a difficult skill for people with autism to master.

Can you imagine writing the recipe that really has ALL the steps? Well, Penny Gill and her team have been doing just that. Check out the directions how to make Bumbleberry Squares.

They have a cooking class coming up in the middle of the day, May 7 at Central Market in Dallas (scroll down to find the registration instructions). That’s a rotten time for us in the Wolfe family.

But we ordered the cookbook, Coach in the Kitchen.

Stay tuned.

 

 

Posted in adults with autism, problem-solving, recipes

Dave’s FCS and the village

By Peggy | March 7, 2013 |

My friend, Lyndsay Knecht, gave a shout out on Facebook the other day to the auto shop that our family has patronized since we moved to the Denton area in 1993 — Dave’s Foreign Car Service. She was happy that Dave recognized although her engine light was on, there wasn’t really anything wrong with her car. And he didn’t charge her for the look-see to make sure.

Sam thinks Dave’s is great, too. “They tell me what’s happening,” Sam says. He knows what work they’ve done to his car and what’s coming up — like changing brake pads and the transmission fluid — so he can plan.

“They also let me know when it’s time to get new tires,” Sam says.

He doesn’t get the tires at Dave’s. He goes a few blocks down to Briscoe to get that taken care of.

Because I know most everyone at Dave’s (I wrote about one occasion where Dave talked me off the ledge not long after Mark died), and I know they keep an eye on others who get their referrals, I don’t feel like I have to backtrack to make sure nobody’s taking advantage of Sam as he takes care of his car.

Sometimes, when I think about why Sam wants to stay in Denton (believe me, the marginal quality of life in the Barnett Shale makes you think really hard about that — and I didn’t say “terrible quality of life” because that would be an affront to the people of the Eagle Ford), I know it’s all these small, reliable relationships he has in the community.

The restauranteurs near Albertsons know him, especially the guys at Luigi’s Pizza, where he’s been known to knock back a pie all by himself on a break from work. He schedules his own check-ups at the dentist and the doctor. Wayne Johnson takes good care of his diminishing hair line at Unique Barber Stylists. They know him DATCU credit union, too. And of course, there’s everyone at Born2Be.

Even for adults, it takes a village.

Posted in adults with autism, decision-making, hope, problem-solving, self-advocacy

What I did on my spring vacation

By Peggy | March 4, 2013 |

I’ve been home from work for the past week, burning off vacation time that I would have otherwise lost. I didn’t make any plans, other than to visit Mark’s Aunt Regina in East Texas. I was able to  stop by Born2Be Wednesday and watch Sam prepare for regional Special Olympics.

Here he is working on part of his trail pattern

Sam and I took Regina out to lunch and then we took her on a drive to, and through, Mrs. Lee’s Garden.

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Regina told us that, back in the garden’s heyday, there were many more daffodils than we saw on Friday. I can’t imagine. The Dallas Arboretum should have so many blooms.

Sam and I took turns taking photos of each other sitting on a rock in the sun. It was a beautiful day.

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Then we went back to Regina’s house and helped her change a handful of lightbulbs, something we do for her in about three out of every four visits. Sam put a CFL in one slot, and that bulb just keeps on shining. But we can’t talk her out of the incandescents in the other spots. I forget how frequently those burn out.

This week at home, I raised puttering to competitive sport. Well, maybe not puttering as much as spending time at the bottom of the to-do list, taking care of those things that always seem to languish. The loppers got fixed, for example, as did the hose to the shop vac. Then a whole bunch of stuff got lopped or vacuumed.

Inside the house, I went through my annual ritual of cleaning out files to make room for other paper. I figure if I don’t buy more filing cabinets, then I can keep the paper collection down. It’s hard. I see so many things as source material, holding the potential to be the start of another great story.

While tending the garden, I got plenty of thinking time in. Then turned that into more personal writing time. That always feels good.

About ten years ago, I read a magazine story about how to keep the spirit of a vacation going after returning to the daily grind. It really improved our family’s quality of life to find lazy time together, occasionally staying up late to watch a movie or make an otherwise ordinary meal a grand occasion. A week at home packs its own wisdom for the rest of your days. I think I finally caught on.

Posted in getting back on the horse, problem-solving