Michelle Sagara

I've been absent for far longer than I intended, but while I was absent I made a little list of things that I wanted to write about, a continuation of the small posts about life with my ASD son.

I had been writing my way up to -- and through -- grade one, and I'll continue from there, although if anyone has any questions they want to ask, I'll also happily answer them if I can. I do want to make clear, though, that this is my perspective, my memories, and the things that I found either helpful or instructive; my son's memories of grade one are actually pretty dim at this point. He remembers Jane Fletcher, and he remembers his grade one teacher, but he doesn't remember very much with any specificity. So this is largely one parent's perspective. I know that ASD children frequently have many traits in common -- but those traits meld with personality, so some of the things that worked for us won't necessarily work for other ASD children.

With that caveat, I want to talk a little about Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. Or the Sorcerer's Stone, if you grew up reading the US version.
( Our attempt to read Harry Potter )
ETA: for some reason my LJ defaults were set to screen anonymous comments - a setting I've never previously used. So I've fixed that.

The store is moved, and two thirds of it is on the shelves; the computer that died (which was ancient) has been replaced with a computer that's less ancient, and it's now sitting on the new countertop in said store; I've finished contract negotiations for something upcoming in future (about which I'll speak more when things are completely firm), and I've been working at catching up on the writing I lost to the move and the convention.

I still have outstanding reading (not books, not reviews, but pre-pubbed things I really want to read), which I hope to catch up on in the week to follow.

Because it's heading into that time of year, I want to talk about Santa Claus in our ASD household.
( Why there is no Santa Claus in our house )

"Do you pity your son?"
( and an answer )

Having described the various problems facing a Teacher who is attempting to integrate my son into her classroom -- and given his particular stim behaviour, I think it was actually harder than it could have been with slightly less disruptive ASD behaviours -- I want to now say that I think the flat-out most important thing that she did in the classroom was simply this:

She accepted my son, in his entirety, as who he was. She didn't condescend to him, and she didn't spend most of her time berating him; she didn't complain about him. She accepted that my son was simply…my son.
( Grade one, and acceptance )

I need to get out of the house more often.

I had a wonderful, wonderful time at WFC in Columbus this year. My husband actually came with me, and it's apparently the first time he's been to WFC, which I didn't remember until he mentioned it when we entered the hotel's lobby.

My husband also had a wonderful time -- but he's used to me in all of my various inflections. I think I was possibly just a tiny bit hyper this weekend, and I may have left, if not the wrong impression, than perhaps the type of impression that's generally left by a runaway car on the unfortunate individuals who happen to also be in the road.
( Convention report )

ETA: Elaine and Eileen are NOT THE SAME NAME

There will be a delay in posting for a few days before I get back to Grade One (and yes, I'm aware that at this point it's unfolding as if it were real time.) I have half a post, but didn't finish it, as I spent the afternoon at the bookstore, which was closed because we are moving to 84 Harbord Street on the 30th. When I won't be here.

But: I wanted to thank everyone who's dropping by and leaving comments on these posts. I assumed that most of the people reading this LJ would find them only peripherally of interest -- or less. I've been really surprised by the number of people who've found the entries helpful, and it's certainly made me feel less self-conscious about writing them in what has, heretofore, been almost entirely a writing/publishing blog.

ETA: 'dropping to' is not the same as 'dropping by and leaving"

I want to talk a little bit about the concept of fairness or justice from an ASD child's point of view before I continue with grade one.

ASD children will hit the developmental marks that more neurotypical children do -- they just hit them later, and some of their earlier experiences, if not mediated or explained, harden the way they interact with the world even when they have developed the capacity to better understand it.
( Fairness and Justice and ASD child )

Something occurred to me while doing my page proofs -- because, face it, page proofs are miserable enough that my brain is always struggling to get away into the realm of Any Other Thought.

I think there's a lot of pressure to be a Perfect parent. (Yes, there's a lot of pressure to be perfect in general -- but I'm sort of thinking about parenting at the moment, rather than the general case).
( Anger management, sort of )
* The husband points out that I should mention my son's age when I began to build this: he was three years old at that point. There's no point at all in trying to reason with a six month old; you will only get ulcers and it won't stop the screaming. I reasoned that when he could talk in a meaningful way, when he could ask questions (although he started that much earlier), I had to start coming up with answers that he could understand.

At this point in the oldest son's kindergarten life, he had the parent volunteer coming into the class two days a week. Her daughter was no longer terrified of my son, and often found him amusing instead, although he hadn't changed too much; her perception, due in large part to her mother-in-the-classroom, had. He had his father chasing small children around the school yard before class (an activity in which my son could easily join), and a teacher's aide who asked him what happened whenever his name was put forth as a miscreant.

He was still fairly heavily disliked by the more socially hierarchical girls, but could live with that, although he never particularly enjoyed it. They were the wasps at the picnic.
( Heading toward grade one, when everything changes again )

ETA: has and had are not the same word. One day I will post something after multiple proof passes that still doesn't require correction.

Let me now take a moment to talk about the anatomy of social peer groups in school before I continue with the (long put off) next chapter in the school saga, because I think it's relevant. The roots of bullying as a social behaviour start here, and like any weed, it can be uprooted or it can be cultivated.
( A bit about the children who were problematic for my son )
I tried, very hard, to see my son as the other kids saw him--and at least in this, the whole process of writing, of thinking about viewpoint, was actually very, very useful.