Notes on the life, times, and development of Miss Zoë Bromage, as recorded by her mother. Also includes minor notes on updates to this website.
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Just in case you're unaware, Zoë is mildly autistic, so a lot of what is written here has to do with her development and therapies and so forth. More information on Zoë's autism and a number of helpful links can be found on the About Me page of this very website.
New School
Zoë will be attending a new school in a few weeks. This is through her current school, which, as I've mentioned, is a specialty school for autistic spectrum disorder kids. This is an integration program, which is why the new school. Three of the children from her class are going to participate, though others may join later. Two of the teachers from her class will be in attendance all the time, even on the playground, so none of the kids from Zoë's school will ever be unsupervised on the playground or anywhere else.
I went to visit the school yesterday and it's pretty remarkable. They're a bilingual school, and all the signs are actually in German. This is good, because Andrew did four years of German (he went to Lutheran school!), I lived in Germany for three years (my German isn't very good, but I'm at least familiar with the language), and Miranda's school has German as their second language.
You might think that kids who have trouble learning language at all would have even more trouble learning a second language, but there are other autistic kids at this school (mainstreamed, rather than on an integrated program) and apparently they do catch on without too much trouble. One of the kids even says that German is his favourite class.
The school also has free range chickens! There's a nice, open air chicken coop big enough to walk into easily, and the chickens can get out and go in as they wish. The chickens, I'm told, all come out at break times to look for food. Smart chickens.
In the science room, they have all kinds of reptiles, including lizards and a long-necked turtle. There's also a garden patch that the kids are cultivating, and they'll use the produce in the science lab for various projects and possibly to feed the reptiles.
And this won't bother Zoë at all, but the school has a ton of stairs. Ugh. The school is built into a hillside, and has lots of different buildings that go right up the hill, with stairs to connect them in various places. If you're able-bodied, I'm sure it's not a big deal at all, but I've got bad knees (one more than the other, but they're both pretty much shot), and I found the stairs quite exhausting. There's absolutely no way that a physically disabled child could attend that school, and I suspect that a blind child would also have a lot of problems, which is probably why they have provisions for autistic kids. (Most schools can take some kinds of special needs kids; the one where Zoë's Nanna taught had a program for the deaf, for example, and Miranda's school is ramped and mostly on one level and can take kids with physical handicaps easily.)
So, this will be a big change for Zoë. I don't know how long she'll take to adjust to it. I think in the long run it will be really good for her, and I'm sad that her best friend isn't going to the new school (yet, anyway), but one of the other kids who is going has been in her class since the start of school. She'll also be able to continue with the "Girls Friendship Group" which has five little girls in it (including Zoë's best friend) and which is run by the speech therapist. Not sure about the logistics of that yet, but the two schools are pretty close an they have a small fleet of buses so it's not hard to transport kids back and forth.
Being a person who doesn't really like change much, I'm still a little bit apprehensive about this, but it is my genuine belief that after the initial adjustment period, this will be really good for Zoë's development. One of her biggest challenges, now that her speech is on track (she's still behind and needs speech therapy, but she can now speak in full sentences and tell lies and answer and ask questions and demand to be taken to McDonald's and lots of other good stuff), she really needs to get some of the social interaction going. She does well enough in an environment with just specialty teachers and other auties, but around neurotypical kids with age-appropriate social skills, she still sticks out like a sticky outy thing.
All in all, I think this is a good step forward. I'm in no hurry to see her mainstreamed, and we can take her out of this program if it seems to be too much for her or it's just not working out. Now all we need to do is buy a bunch of new school uniforms. The new school has completely different school colours...
Gots my jewelleries
We went to church this evening for a sausage and pancake dinner (well, it is Shrove Tuesday, after all). Before we went, I went into my room to have a poke through my jewellery box. Zoë came to see what I was doing and then went to her own room and got her jewellery box. She emerged a few minutes later wearing a bracelet, a ring, a necklace, and, of course, earrings (she has pierced ears now and wears sleeper hoop earrings most of the time; she knows not to try to change them by herself).
Announced Zoë, "I gots my jewelleries for to go to church!"
And she put her "jewelleries" away when she got ready for bed, too!
Hooray, school is here!
It's been a long summer/Christmas break. We didn't go away on holiday, and while we did have a number of crafty type activities and a bunch of new DVDs, the kids were understandably bored and frequently fighting with each other, presumably to alleviate the boredom and drive me up the wall (also good for a laugh, ha ha, let's drive our mother insane with our incessant, pointless bickering, it's so funny when her eyes pop out of her head and the top of her head blows off and steam comes out of her ears, ha ha).
We had a lot of the usual physical stuff like sitting on each other and taking things away from each other, and a couple incidents of kicking, hitting, pushing down, and so forth. We also had a spate of spitting (ugh), this from Zoë. At one point she climbed up into Miranda's bed (Miranda has the top bunk) and spat on her arm for no apparent reason. Another time, I gave them each a drink of juice and Zoë leaned over and spat right in Miranda's drink! (I made them switch drinks.) Some days I wondered if there were any circuses around that had need of a fat, nearsighted, formerly American geekwoman with bad joints and a missing gallbladder, so that I could run away (I couldn't think of any act I could do, other than writing mildly amusing blog entries, and I didn't think the circus would hire me to do that, so I gave up on that idea).
Now, however, thankfully, school is back on, and things are better. The routine is back, they're asleep by 8:30, they're not perpetually bored, they're starting to seem like happy children again, and they're not beating each other up or spitting or making my eyes pop out of my head as the steam shoots out of my ears. They are still being pests to each other, arguing over whose turn it is to play on the computer or (this is worse) standing behind the other who is on the computer and telling her what to do and how to do it (don't you love it when someone tells you how to play your game of Solitaire?), but overall, they're much happier now, and so am I.
School is good. It exercises your brain and you're tired when you come home so you haven't got the energy to torment your sister. Very much.
Zoëspeak
For the past couple of days, Zoë and Miranda have been playing pirates, which mostly means they've been searching for treasure. This, happily, is some trinket or the paper treasure chest Zoë constructed of pink paper and sticky tape (she's extremely clever that way), and they're not rummaging around in my jewellery boxes or the closets or anything.
Today, Zoë was playing with a tall, blue duster. You know, a stick with fuzzy stuff on it that you use to dust. One of those. I thought she was using it as a "feathersword" (like Capt Feathersword of The Wiggles), but as I watched her, she was holding it in front of her toward the ground and making a beeping noise. I finally asked her what it was. She informed me it was a "hunting finder". I then observed that when she "found" the treasure, it would beep much more rapidly. Yes, she was pretending it was a metal detector, but I kind of like "hunting finder".
I'd also like you to know that the earphone headset for the girls' computer is "a computer helmet".
And a final Zoëism for the day, we had a shower and I was doing my hair, which is currently fairly short. I put some gel through it and was running my fingers through to get it a bit tousled. Zoë asked me what I was doing, I said I was just fixing my hair. Then she asked, "Your fingers is pretend to be a brush?"
Toothy stuff
Zoë was complaining of a "hurty tooth". I had a look and there was what appeared to be a huge hole in one of her upper teeth. It looked like the filling had fallen out to me. Naturally, this happened over the holidays, so it's hard to find a dentist, and our family dentist is always booked weeks in advance, anyway. We did manage to get a local dentist who could see her and was good with children, and I took her there yesterday.
Turns out she did lose a filling, but not only that, she's got a lot of other small but growing cavities. Ugh. We're very conscientious about brushing teeth around here, honestly! We also limit sweets and so forth, but it seems not to have been enough... I fear that Zoë has inherited my acidic mouth and my tendency to dental caries. I hope she doesn't also inherit the tendency to gum disease...
Anyway, while in the waiting room, Zoë also pointed to a spot on her lower jaw, on the side (opposite where the tooth with the missing filling is). That was the first I'd heard of it... Turns out she had an abscess! It was so swollen that it had spread into her jaw, and there was a very large lump on her gum! ACK!
The dentist drained the abscess (Zoë didn't like that much, but she was very brave throughout) and we got a prescription for antibiotics to take the infection down, and Zoë has an appointment with our family dentist for later this month (we needed time to get the infection out of the tooth). She may end up losing that tooth, which can cause problems later on when the others become loose and/or the adult teeth grow in, but perhaps when the infection is gone there might be some other option other than extraction. She also got a temporary filling in the tooth that had lost the filling, and that will be taken care of at our dentist.
So how does this happen? I have no idea. I suspect that the abscess came up rather suddenly, although, of course, it had been "brewing" for some time.
There was an amusing Zoë-ism at the dentist. The dentist seeing her was a woman, who told Zoë her name and that she works with children a lot. This pleased Zoë, who was extremely cooperative and very brave, as noted. Later, another dentist came in to offer another opinion and provide the antibiotic prescription. He was a big, swarthy-skinned bloke with a beard. He came in and said hello and Zoë sat up and looked at him and demanded, "Are you a kid dentist?" He laughed and answered, "I work with children a lot, yes." She responded, "Okay," and lay back in the chair again. (You've gotta sort these things out, you know.)
And later, when telling Nanna about the visit to the dentist, Nanna asked, "What did the dentist do?" expecting to hear about the quite uncomfortable draining of the abscess or similar. Zoë, however, answered, "The dentist helped me." This is exactly what we want to hear. Yes, there was a bit of pain involved, but it was helping. I'm glad Zoë understands that.
She did score a helium balloon, a bag of goodies (including toothpaste and a toothbrush), and while there I picked up a couple of electric toothbrushes for them (the dentist suggested that it might help), so as far as she was concerned, the trip was mostly for the purpose of acquiring goodies.
I know you love Christmas
Zoë had a splendid Christmas. She got what she wanted from Santa (a small Mushabelly dog, which she has named "Fred", to be the puppy of her big Mushabelly dog, who is called Spot and is Fred's dad, or so she informed us), and a lot of other stuff, too, including some new doll house furniture and people, books, a new blanket with ponies on it, the usual assortment of pretty dresses (Nanna, you see, has three sons...), new building magnets, a Lego kit to build what she called "Future Car" (i.e., it looks just like the Delorean in Back to the Future), and various other goodies. A favourite is the small shopping trolley which she built herself, and which she now uses to carry her many "pets" all around the house. We were also amused when we asked her if she knew what the toy lawnmower was. She replied, "It's a... a grass machine!" (and so it is, too).
She was quite well-behaved at mealtimes and in the company of visitors, and when she had enough of being around people, she just removed herself to a quieter part of the house (a tactic I also employ).
She is also convinced that today is the first day of Christmas, and tomorrow is the second day of Christmas and so on. I'm wondering what she's going to do when we actually get to Twelfth Night (we're not planning a costume ball or anything, although it would be fun to celebrate Twelfth Night, I think, with, as the tradition goes, "much merriment").
At one point during the day she came up to me and gave me a big cuddle and said to me, "You say, I know you love Christmas." And I did. And I do.
Grandpop needs a shave
Zoë walked up to her grandfather, who was sitting without a shirt on a hot day (this is not a common practice for him). She looked at him and then rubbed the hair on his shoulder and said, "You got hair like Dad!" (She was referring specifically to having body hair; in fact her dad doesn't have hair on his shoulders, but he is pretty hairy.)
Grandpop agreed that he is, indeed, hairy. Zoë continued, "You need to shave?" Grandpop laughed and said, "No, not there." Zoë grinned and said, "Just your face?" to which Grandpop agreed. Just his face.
I later pointed out that Dad has hair all over his face, too. Zoë found this quite amusing, and she didn't suggest that Dad should shave his face (she's not at all impressed with pictures of him beardless!).
Stickers
Another Zoë story, that is, a story told by Zoë, which doesn't start where most people would think to start a story.
Miranda: Zoë has stickers on her dress.
Me: Zoë, what are the stickers for?
Zoë: For the winner.
Me: The winner? Did you win something?
Zoë: I won at bingo.
Me: Oh, bingo. Where you get the numbers in a row?
Zoë: Yes, I got the numbers in a row two times.
(And she had two stickers.)
Now, that seems pretty minor, I know, but it was a full conversation with a child who really didn't speak at all until she was well over three years old. That, however, is beside the point. The thing with the story is that most people would start the conversation with, "We played bingo today," or "I won playing bingo," or similar. Even if they didn't think to bring it up, when the stickers were noted, the usual thing would be to say something like, "I won them at bingo," rather than "They were for the winner." It's like Zoë and the rainbow lorikeet biting her finger, which began with, "I hurt my finger".
Zoë's dad has noted that she simply starts a story with whatever she considers the most important. In the case of the lorikeet, the most important part was that she hurt her finger. With the stickers, the most important part was that she got them as a prize, she got them for being the winner.
The more Zoë communicates, the more we can see glimpses of the inner workings of her thoughts and reasoning. And she thinks like a computer programmer, or maybe an engineer, but that's hard to say (I've known a lot more programmers than engineers). Go to what's important first, and go from there. Makes sense to a lot of people, including Zoë.
A New Baby
Zoë and I had an interesting conversation on Sunday, when it was just the two of us at home (Dad and sister went out to a concert Nanna was playing for; Zoë and I stayed home and chilled).
She informed me that we need "a new baby". After making sure she meant a real baby and not a baby doll, I asked her where she thought we might get a new baby. She pointed to my belly. I smiled and asked her why she thought we needed a new baby, and she said, "Because Miranda and I aren't babies any more." She suggest that, "Next weekend, you could go to hospital," (which, of course, is where most people get their new babies). I did tell her that it takes more than a week for a baby to grow, but I'm not sure she was that interested in my explanation.
She then went on to insist that the new baby must be a girl. I asked her about having a boy baby, and she was clear that it had to be a girl baby, not a boy baby.
Why, you might wonder. I know I did. After our conversation, which was good natured and involved a lot of giggling, cuddling, and smiling, I had a think about it. It seems that Zoë is under the impression that every house needs to have at least one baby girl in it, and since she and Miranda aren't babies any more, we need another. This is the "conservation of girl babies" theory, I think.
Happy Birthday Party
Zoë's birthday party went well, especially considering that all of the children present were on the autism spectrum (with the exception of Miranda). By the end of it, we had a few kids who were showing signs of being overstimulated or overwhelmed, but nobody got into a fight, had a meltdown, or otherwise misbehaved. A couple of the boys decided not to get their faces painted (which was okay with me), and one young man kept leaving the party room to sit with his parents (which was also okay; he obviously needed the time out). Overall, it was noisy and lots of fun for little kids, and Zoë got all kinds of lovely presents, most of them pink (all the kids know for sure, Zoë loves PINK).
The photo, by the way, is Zoë's face painting choice. She wanted to be, and I quote, "a pink dog" but she didn't want whiskers. So that's the best that the very helpful and charming young lady who was looking after us managed, and Zoë was happy with it, so, well, there you go. A pink, whiskerless dog!
Visit the archives for past Zoë Notes
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