My Son Has Autism is a wonderfully written blog by, well, a woman whose son is autistic. She's a charming writer, and a lot of the things she writes about her son remind me of Zoë.
I tend not to write here about her in ways that I could. About how charming she can be, about how everyone who gets to know her comes to love her, about how loving she is, about what a remarkable little person she is. She's good at many things (getting the lock off the kitchen cabinet, for example; the lock is supposed to be childproof), and she's very, very clever in many areas.
She's limited in many areas, as well, that's certainly a fact, but she has her strengths as well as her weakeneses. She can be a right royal pain in the neck, but so can her gifted, neurotypical younger sister, so what's new in the "annoying child" department, anyway?
I just wanted to take the opportunity to write a little bit more about Zoë as a person, and not just about her progress and development. Because, after all, she is a person, with feelings and thoughts and ideas and creativity and a personality all her own. I got in the habit of writing about her progress because that's mostly what I have to provide as far as "updates" but perhaps it's time I started to write more about Zoë as the whole person she is.
The blog I linked at the beginning of this entry has inspired me.
This is a really good play dough with a really nice, firm texture. It lasts for a couple of weeks if stored in an airtight container (I like a big ziplock bag). My kids just love this stuff (and so do I).
Best Play Dough Ever
2 cups flour
1/2 cup salt
2 cups water
2 tablespoons oil
1/4 cup cream of tartar
Food coloring (totally optional)
1) Put water and salt in a saucepan, mix thoroughly until salt is dissolved. Add oil. If you're using food coloring, this is a good time to add that, generally several drops. You may find you need to use more coloring as the mixture is cooking (and you can knead in more later, though that's not as effective as putting it in from the start).
2) In a bowl, combine dry ingredients and mix well. Slowly add this mixture to the water mixture in the saucepan, stirring constantly to avoid lumps.
3) Cook and stir over low/medium heat until play dough is completely formed and no longer sticky. Cooked dough will look very like thick mashed potatoes.
4) Allow to cool somewhat. Turn dough onto a board and knead until smooth and cooled. Store in an air tight container or zip lock bag.
5) If you find that the dough is too sticky, knead a little more flour into it, and then microwave it to cook it further. You'll have to experiment as to how long to microwave, but I find that cooking for about 1.5 minutes, turning it over in the bowl, and cooking for another 1.5 minutes is generally quite helpful.
I've added both of those the the sidebar, as they both have information that I think describes Zoë's particular disability. It's very clear that there's nothing wrong with her intellectual ability. She's very definitely smart, and she puzzles out all kinds of things, purely by observation and/or experimentation. She also very clearly has an active and vivid imagination, and she's very affectionate and can be funny (she does have a very clear sense of humor).
She's just very severely speech delayed (and impaired; her ability to understand language/communication is clearly not normal) and has some pretty notable social impairments (for example, she tends to get too close to people and invade their "personal space"). She also has some pretty unpleasant reactions to change in routine sometimes, and when she's prevented from doing something she things "should be" done a certain way (yes, I'm talking about tantrums, although they're not as awful as they used to be, thankfully).
In other words, she's not "Rainman" or anything. She's entirely normal in most ways. She's got developmental problems, but the classic picture of the autistic as being mentally retarded or wholly unresponsive to the world around them or whatever is just wrong. In fact, as I'm typing this, I have to look around Zoë's head because she came over and climbed up on my lap and gave me a nice big cuddle, and now she's singing a song about how she'd like to have a tickle....