problem-solving
Buh-Bye, PFY 478
I stood in line at the tax office for a reasonable amount of time, about 15 minutes, which was made merrier because Monte Borders came in halfway through the wait. Monte lights up every room he enters.
Then, I told Sam’s sad story to the clerk, handed over his registration sticker and $7 — again, not too bad — to get him on the road again without having his license plate pop up in every police scan he drove by.
This was something Sam could have done, but I didn’t want him to miss work and I’m just down the street. I’d already planned on spending the day addressing other people’s screw-ups (this means you, Bank of America), so I was ready to make a party of it today.
I asked the clerk whether this happened very often, whether she had given anyone else new plates because their plate number was in the warrant database. She said not very often, but it wasn’t uncommon either.
And she agreed, this was the best way to fix the problem.
Sam got a new 7-digit plate. I remember when California went from six digits to seven digits on their plates.
That’s about when we left California. Too many people.
Hmm.
Explaining the Unexplainable
Throughout Sam’s life, the things he’s needed to learn had to be taught directly. You cannot imagine how important learning from context is until you are confronted with the inefficiency of hours and hours and hours of direct teaching.
As Sam has grown, he’s learned to generalize. He’s picked up more from context — but he had to be taught how to do that, too. Taught to imitate, taught to read context, taught to recognize idioms, taught to generalize.
I get tired just thinking about it.
Now, Sam is struggling mightily with a new problem. And I have to figure out how to explain what civil rights are. Do you know how often we toss out that phrase and we have no idea what it means?
That violates my civil rights.
Read him his rights.
They marched for civil rights.
Google it yourself, and see what a mess you get. Dear readers, can you help?
When a test is a barrier
Sam is taking two online classes this fall, one in word processing, another in spreadsheets. I’ve written before about the requirements he needs to “upgrade” from a certificate to an associate’s degree in computer technology. He’s just four classes away. It’s very exciting.
Both of this fall’s classes are in another department at the community college, and both required him to thoroughly read the syllabus and take a quiz over its contents. The students have to get a 100 on the quiz (they have unlimited attempts) before they can start the class. In a way, its a brilliant way to underscore the importance of reading and understanding the course requirements. In some of the larger lecture classes I’ve seen, professors spend the first day of class reading the syllabus to the students. And I’ve seen students drop once they realize the expectations.
Sam sailed through the syllabus quiz for one class but not the other. We’re not quite sure what has happened — we suspect, actually, there is a scoring problem — but it is yet to be resolved. I sat with him yesterday as he tried, again and again and again and again, to secure that perfect score. Before I helped him devise some evaluation strategies, he had no idea how to figure out what he was doing wrong.
It was like being thrown into the ocean with no clue where to swim to safety. You can imagine how wild and panicked a person’s thinking might get. And then, when you consider the true stakes how angry you could get.
He can’t get the keys to the rest of the online kingdom of the class until he does. An email to the professor about the problem has brought only the suggestion that he drop the class.
And that brings me to the point of this post — there is testing and then there are barriers.
When I was in junior high school, a gymnastics unit was added to our curriculum, probably in part because of the wildly popular Olga Korbut and the amazing things she did at the 1972 Olympics.
I saved those Seventeen magazine pages with a story and photo about her for ages.
Our instruction was pathetic. Our teacher couldn’t do any of the moves, and was continually recruiting a student to demonstrate a move to the others (with that student likely demonstrating that move to the teacher for the first time about 90 seconds earlier.)
Once “demonstrated,” we could practice on the equipment, serving as spotters for each other. At the end of the unit, we had to perform the different moves for our grade. We were scored on our ability to do the moves — nothing about the rhythm and composition of a routine, our body poise, or other criteria used to evaluate a gymnast.
The test was sequential and, theoretically, based on difficulty. Our teacher had no idea what was a hard move and what was easy, in my opinion. But, you couldn’t test for a B if you couldn’t do all the moves needed for a C.
Because I couldn’t go from a crouch on the beam to a standing position using only one leg — a “C” level move — I was not allowed to test for any other grade levels, even though I’d been working on all of them, as were my classmates, for six weeks.
Lots of girls didn’t get the grade they deserved for having taught themselves gymnastics.
That’s not instruction, and that’s not testing, so don’t make like its the bar exam.
Overheard in the Wolfe House #126
Sam: I have some shocking news.
Peggy: What’s that?
Sam: I have my first quiz and I have to get a 100.
Peggy: Really? How many chances do you get?
Sam: It’s unlimited.
Probably Not Probable Cause
Sam started asking me a lot of questions about when might a police officer pull you over, so many that I asked him whether he got pulled over recently.
He had. In Flower Mound.
As far as I can deduce, he got pulled over because the kind of car he was driving and his license plate closely matched someone the police were looking for.
And what was the probable cause, you ask?
Sam still has a frame around his license plate.
He wondered if his identity had been stolen and whether he should turn his car in. We had a long talk about first amendment rights, and private property rights, and who the police work for. I have no idea how much of that sank in.
But tomorrow, we’ll pull the frame off the plate.
Overheard in the Wolfe House #122
Sam (as Microsoft Office 2010 gets loaded on his Dell via the digital river): …. and so if you need to chat with them, here’s where you turn that on ….
Peggy: I’m sure it will be fine. I’m happy to keep an eye on it for you so you can go to work.
Sam: Well, I’m very sorry I got you into this, Mom.
Extreme banking with Sam in the international marketplace, or how I got another 100 gray hairs in the last 24 hours
Last night I sat down to the computer to do a little scanning and the first document that opened up told me that Sam had scanned the front and back of his bank card and driver’s license for Avangate — something akin to PayPal in Canada.
I haven’t scrambled so hard in a 24-hour period since he left his wallet on a chair in the waiting room at the dentist’s office. That day, someone picked it up and bought gas in Gainesville, about 30 miles away, before we could cancel the card. And Sam had realized the error within the hour.
We did all the usual things — fraud alerts, card changes, getting the driver’s license re-issued.
This time, I wasn’t so concerned about Sam having made an error, but that he had left himself too vulnerable.
His intentions were spot on. He upgraded us to OS Lion. We needed Tuxera NTS, a file system that lets the Mac get backed up on an external drive. And probably some other amazing tasks that Sam knows that I don’t.
But Tuxera is in Finland. So he had to pay through Avangate. The bank blocked it. That’s an international transaction. Avangate sent him an email with several ways to get the payment through. He chose the offline pay and cajoled the bank into authorizing it. Everything seems to have gone through alright.
But, Hey, Martha. I tell ya. If that information got in the wrong hands, someone could drain his bank account.
I went to the bank and ordered him a new bank card. He applied for a credit card. As the good guys at DATCU said, better he shops with the bank’s money than his own.
I agree. He manages his money well enough that I know it will be paid off at the end of each month.
Then I called a good friend who I know has LifeLock. She explained it. I persuaded Sam to sign up.
Maybe the rest of us can get in the ring and fight the financial fraud matadors, but Sam is just too much like Ferdinand for that.
Brainstorming 101: Fixing the Garage Door
After Sam finished fixing problems that came with the Lion upgrade, he suggested that we tackle the garage door. We have an automatic door opener that works when it wants to.
And it doesn’t want to very often.
It’s been a great chance to brainstorm solutions. We’ve watched videos on YouTube. We’ve called Uncle Matt. We’ve taken turns trying things and watching the trouble spots to come up with ideas.
And because it’s primarily a mechanical system, it seems that each thing we try brings a small reward, whether it’s knocking down wasp nests to remove a blocked pathway or lubricating parts to lessen the drag on the motor. Each step brings progress.
Sam has decided that we still have some kind of electrical problem, though. He says because we have to hold the button down for it to open there must be some kind of wear in the wires. I told him I’d like to replace the sensors — they look like they’ve just about had the life kicked out of them, they’ve been bumped and bustled so much — and he’s agreed.
And if that doesn’t do the trick, he’s going after the wiring.
Expert Consultation Coming
I hope.
The ARC sent me a link to a website that is supposed provide self-help for adults with autism in the work force, called JobTIPS.
I asked Sam to take a look at it. Some of the pages are about interacting with the supervisor and how to keep a job, so it applies.
I think it looks good and the information is helpful, and clearly presented.
He said he’d take a look at it this weekend and let me know what he thought — I’m hoping to blog it.
Stay tuned.
First Things First
Sam and I spent a good portion of last Saturday afternoon talking about Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. The house is going up for sale and he’s very upset about it.
We are about to become another in what is sure to be a long exodus of refugees from the Barnett Shale. An operator has built a gas processing plant next door. I’m not sure we can even sell the place, but I have to try.
My brother-in-law is an attorney for a pipeline company in another state. Even his eyes popped when he saw what we’re being asked to put up with.
(image borrowed from Wikipedia)
Sam has known this has been coming for a long time, but struggled to see the new order of things once we leave. I’m not surprised. People with autism can barely understand our cryptic social orders to begin with. Upend the whole thing and he doesn’t know what to do.
Well, the wise Mr. Maslow said that first comes things like breathing and food and water. Breathable air is already in short supply around here, having a next door neighbor dehydrating gas, blowing off relief valves and burning raw gas to run thousands of horses every hour to keep that 16-inch line compressed adds serious insult to injury.
Not to mention, if that 16-inch line ever goes, we go with it.
Seeing it on the pyramid, along with things like food and water helped him understand.
He’s fretted for more than a year about what would happen to friendships if we aren’t living in the same place we’ve always been. Half his school chums are graduating, too, and getting jobs far from here. Somehow, Sam saw himself as the anchor in this changing storm.
But friendships are much higher on the pyramid. As a visual aid, Maslow scores for us. Sam finally understands why the exodus is necessary.
First things First.