Julia's second day was better than her first! Her teachers and aides are all commenting on her good behavior. She was able to write a story and draw pictures with it, and then she wanted to share it (At the appropriate time) with her classmates. She read her story (yes, it is very simple. One very simple sentence on each of 4 pages.) to the class and then when she went to sit down, she told Ginny (one of her teachers) that "the kids like me." Oh, this touches my heart. She so wants friends but in the past her behavior could be pretty strange to some of the kids. Maybe putting her in a class with so many different kids will work very well and Julia will find some friends.
I was asked to find an article which can explain autism to the parents. Her teacher wants to send something home, and wants the discussion to be out in the open. This is a wonderful idea. I know of nothing off hand, but I am going to start looking.
We are adjusting to people in the house, the therapists, after school sometimes up to 7:30. There is a letting down and opening up. The chi, life force in our house, is changing. I don't mean to be all mystical but I feel a shifting
3 comments:
What about the articles that autistic people themselves write? I'm sure you can find some from a very cool site called OASIS. One of my own favourites is called What autism means to me by a woman named May.
Also, there is Voices and Choices of Autism. I could give you several of my favourite articles from there.
MAAP services is good too. Try to look under the section called School.
Here is something from Catherine Faherty I'm sure it could help Julia's friends understand her.
And also there is an article called: Kids Called Nerds which is about mild (!) PDDs. It talks about holistic and sequential thinking.
There are very cool blogs on the Autistable and Autism Hub. And one of my own current favourite blogs is:
Lydia's blog called Autistics Speak. It is a blog from a 21-year-old Christian teacher who is on the spectrum.
Another one is called Orangeboy and his Antagonists, which is about a boy from China a few years older than Julia. His abilities are a counterpoint to hers, as he simply loves maths and counting.
Adelaide --
Thanks for all these sites. My plate is pretty full these days and I don't get a chance to troll the internet as much as I'd like. You've given me a whole bunch of new sites to explore.
Who are you? Sorry about the bluntness, but you seem to know a bit about what I am interested in.
Suzanne
Dear Suzanne:
Yes, you can be blunt.
I like blunt. After 20 years of Anglo-Saxon walk-on-eggshells to do just the opposite ...
I grant that it was a little presumptious of me coming in without introducing myself, or at least giving a tiny outline of who I am and why I am here.
I am an author, lifelong learner, expatriate and humanitarian. While my experience and affiliations have been with Europe "from the Atlantic to the Urals" (Winston Churchill), I am open to the Asia-Pacific as well (especially perhaps Japan, South Korea, Vietnam and Indonesia: I've been involved on some level with some of these nations). And now that China is a world power economically and morally, along with the US, I would be extremely foolish to not be interested in it.
I dropped into the site last week because of Arthur Becker-Weidmann's follow marks. The title and the look of the blog attracted me. When you wrote about chi/qi, it reminded me of an early interest in feng shui.
My current interests include immigration in South America.
Perhaps my first interest in Chinese adoption came in 1990-1991 when there was a girl named Tracey B in my class. She had some great Chinoise looks, with this very English surname.
Some ten years later I began a study about language, creativity and imagination in people with Reactive Attachment Disorder, after following the field very generally from 1998 onwards. The young lady involved (then a tween) copied the phrases of her developmentally and communicatively delayed brother. This was in May 2001.
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