File This, Baby.

Yeah, so, it's like this. About a year ago, I decided that if I couldn't hold down a j.o.b. due to the demands of caring for Conor, I would make like he would be my job. God knows there's enough work here for a full-time position, what with all the protocols and social stories and doctor visits and therapists and dietary shenanigans and whatnot Conor needs. Not to mention all the time wasted dealing with tantrums. I figured doing this would give me some emotional distance while also helping me deal with my bitterness at having to give up a career. Not that I had much of one to give up, seeing as I popped him out when I was but a child. (What? 29 years old is still a child, right?)

No sweat, boss. Want that alphabetical or chronological?

To be completely honest, though, I'm not really great at much except filing. Look, I don't mean to brag here, but I file like a beast, whether I'm punching paper for a 3-ring binder or placing the papers loose in a manila folder. 

Sha-ZAM, alphabetize that, suck-ah!

(I'm really terrible at the 2-hole puncher, though, so no doctor's office would ever hire me. Those things are extremely complicated. I blame the math involved.) 

And scanning? Don't even get me started on my whip-smart scanning ability. A broken automated document feeder doesn't even slow me down. True story.

I can always attempt laminating, but it's such a niche market that it's quite competitive. You have to have, like, a PhD in Laminating before anyone will even LOOK at your resume. (I'm self-taught, so no luck there.)

Sometimes I can put words together to form sentences people read (thanks, Mom and Dad, for reading, you're the best), but any editor would be wincing right now what with my sentence fragments, coarse language, and using terms like 'what with'. Additionally, I have a problem with rampant overuse of the comma. I know, I don't know why, it's like I'm a comma ADDICT.  My poor parents, when they read what I write, they must sound like they've just run a marathon what with all the pausing of breath and the stopping and starting and stuff.

('What with' is my new favorite phrase, I've just decided, that. Comma.)

Anyhoo, what with the rise of the Internet and the popularity of electronic documents and all, the job prospects of a comma addict that can file actual made-from-trees paper is seriously in decline. I know, right?! Progress sucks.

So, in order to fill all my (cough) spare time whilst Conor wiles away the hours in school, I decided that I would start locking myself in my home office and write social stories about not picking your nose (not you you, Conor, he picks his nose), and call doctors for appointments and results, and email behaviorists their (mostly completed) data sheets back, and manage his calendar, and whatnot. I go to the pharmacy a lot too. For both of us.

Hey baby, how much for your accountant calculator?
I'll give you whatever, as long as you love me.

(Conor has a remarkably complicated calendar, but that's for a later post. Suffice to say that we use it to help control his behavior and to manage his obsessive interests and desire to be out amongst the people.

He's just like Justin Beiber that way, enjoying time with the common man. And buying stuff.)

Right now, for example, I have to type up a chart that outlines for Conor the following things:

1.     Things That Conor Can Control
2.     Things That An Adult Controls
3.     Things That No One Can Control

(Yeah, we're having issues with control. OBVIOUSLY.)

I know! So very exciting!Thankfully, Conor's in-home aid, Paisley, put the actual list together when he was napping the other day, so I don't have to actually use my brain. I just type it up, print it out, and... FILE IT! Sha-ZAM!

Oh, wait, no, I actually have to go over the list with Conor. Might have to delegate that, not my area of expertise.

Hmmmm, what else is there? Oh, prepare for IEP meetings, manage in-home behavioral aids (they expect me to know things and train them and, you know, pay them), marathon conference calls and meetings with the behaviorist, and...

I know! In my spare time, I take care of things for my other kid. (Whew, almost forgot about him for a minute. He's so quiet.)

Despite the fact that there's no pay, no benefits, and the work environment is fairly isolating, there are definite perks to treating all my slaving away on providing supports for Conor as my job. The biggest one being that I totally get to sleep with my hot boss. He plays "boss man", and I get to play "secretary" and help him with his, um, filing.

This is a REALLY old picture. Sometimes I make him
put on a suit and pretend to be Don Draper.

So, yeah, it's like that.

What's That Smell?

“What’s that smell?” Conor asked, slamming into the kitchen one afternoon.

Quickly, I glanced at Conor’s in-home aid. Brian arrived just a few minutes before Conor came home from his earned outing with his dad, and he and I were seated at the kitchen table discussing his schedule.

Brian stared back at me with a slightly alarmed look on his face.

“Um, what smell, Conor?” I replied, surprised. It wasn’t me, I swear. Cross my heart and hope to die. I didn’t even smell anything. Truth.

“That smell, what’s that smell?” he repeated emphatically, pointing at me.

I glanced again at Brian. 

“Uh, I don’t smell anything, Conor, but whatever you smell, it wasn’t me,” I protested, pointing at Brian.

“Hey, ho, it wasn’t me,” said Brian with a grin, throwing his hands up in the air. “I’m not taking the rap for that.”

“Maybe it was Linus,” I offered. Thank God we have a dog. Seriously, I think that’s half the reason people get dogs, to blame farts on them.

“Why did Linus fart?” Conor continued. “Why does Linus gots gas?”

“I don’t know, Conor,” I said. I got up to let the dog outside. “Let’s move on.” Poor Linus, I could tell he resented getting the blame for the nonexistent smell. It’s tough, a dog’s life.

Time was, we could fart with abandon around Conor. Throw caution to the wind, as it were. Not that I actually do that, no, I don’t do that. But if I did fart (though I never do), he certainly wasn’t going to tell anyone.

Quite frankly, with his own significant gastro-intestinal issues, Conor certainly shouldn’t be pointing fingers at anyone, being Farty McFarty Pants himself most of the time. Still, seeing as he was wrapped up in his head, in his mind, with his obsessions and sensory overloads and with limited expressive language, and whatnot, a person could let a big one rip and mum’s the word.

I mean, not that I would ever do that, but if I wanted to, I could. Conor certainly wasn’t going to go over his friend’s house and laugh about how his mom ripped a shotgun blast the day before. That would require friends and language and the sort.

(Again, I’m not saying I ever do that, just that if I did, hypothetically, Conor wouldn’t say anything about it.)

But over the past year, thanks to a pop in expressive language and increased relatedness, our son has become the Fart Police. A living, breathing Fart Alert if you will. 

I mean, for the love of Pete, he will not let one little SBD waft past his button-nose nostrils without crowing “What’s that smell? Who farted?”

I did, Conor, and it smells like roses, I want to say. (Not that I ever do that, but if I did, it would. Smell like roses, that is.)

Oh, but it gets better! Not only does Conor now proclaim it to everyone within earshot (not that I would ever fart in front of people, no, I don’t do that. Fart that is. Ever.) 

No, now he has to interrogate you on the gas you passed.

“Who farted? Daddy, who farted?” Conor crowed one evening.

“I did, Conor,” my husband sighed. It was late, and he was weary from travelling home from Miami that day.

“Why did Daddy fart?” Conor asked, pointing his finger at my husband. “Why?”

“Must’ve been that Cuban sandwich I ate in the Miami airport for lunch,” my husband laughed wryly. “It’s not sitting so well, thanks.”

“Why did Daddy eat a Cuban sandwich?” Conor continued his interrogation.

My husband sighed heavily, shaking his head.

“I’m asking myself the same thing, Conor. The same thing.”

An Artist At Work

Conor's self portrait in clay and mixed media

One weekend not too long ago, Mary Beth Marsden, a local journalist, interviewed me about Conor and his art for a video she was putting together for Real Look Autism. A nonprofit organization, Real Look Autism uses videos to share ideas for working with children who have Autism Spectrum Disorders. Her website and YouTube channel also serve as places to share insights.

Mary Beth and I chatted about Conor's interests, his art, our mutual friends, the autism community. (She has a child on the spectrum as well.) As we talked quietly in the next room, her cameraman, John, filmed one of Conor's art therapy sessions.

"Is Conor always this quiet?" she whispered as we watched Conor and his therapist from the next room.

"No," I replied. "It depends on the day."

Some days my ears ring from all his chattering and sing songs, requests and scripts. Other days, the silence deafens me and I strain to hear a murmured 'yes' or 'please'. I'm never quite sure why this is so. Why some days he seems to grasp language so easily, and other days it eludes him as he searches mightily for it. Sometimes you can actually see the struggle on his face. Other times, it's as if he can't be bothered; there are more interesting things going on inside his head.

Is he tired? Anxious? Noncompliant? Out of sorts? Overwhelmed?  Preoccupied? Do the words move around in there, so much so that he can't find them some days?

Yes. No. Maybe. I think so? Probably. Who knows.

It's a mystery to me, as much of my son is. I've always admired those parents, mostly moms, that proclaim that they know their child best. Know them so intimately, in fact, that they can tell you, without a shred of doubt, what their child is thinking and feeling, what the best approach involves.

Too often, for my comfort at least, I feel my son is hidden behind a shroud, obscured from my ever knowing him thoroughly and intimately. I'd like to lift that veil completely one day. For now, we're stuck with peeking under it once in awhile. It vexes me, to be honest. I want to know what's in there, what is in that brain? There has got to be more in there than he can ever express verbally.

Conor's airport. He says this is the Southwest terminal.
He has plans for an American Airlines terminal now too.

Perhaps that's what made me try art therapy with Conor so many years ago. I had read about it in one of the very first Pathfinders for Autism newsletters, and art therapy sounded like a fun-but-therapeutic way to fill 45 minutes. Or maybe I was in my 'throw something at the autism and see if it sticks' phase. (We tried horseback riding and massage as well. He liked massage; I liked the horses. We stuck with massage. I miss the barn and the sounds of the horses huffing at me.)

Oh yes, of course, we tried Applied Behavioral Analysis, Relationship Development Intervention, biomedical treatments and other things as well. All had their place.

But art therapy? Seeing Conor become an artist while improving his functional, life, and social skills has been a uniquely joyful experience for me.

I've included two videos. First, is the marvelous piece from Real Look Autism featuring his art therapist, Cathy Goucher. Cathy co-founded Make Studio, and she has been working with Conor since he was eight years old. They did a really wonderful job. You'll notice, however, that Conor doesn't talk much in the video. For some reason, that day, he didn't have much to say. In the end, I think he was tired, and he didn't like the fact that art therapy was on Saturday instead of Tuesday. I guess.




In the video below, I asked Conor to talk about the hotel he is building with Cathy. (Pardon the sound of running water, I neglected to turn off the filters for the fish tanks. Sigh.)

Sometimes he says he needs help thinking of the answer. And at one point, Conor starts to list numbers he somehow associates with using the treadmill.  I have no idea what it all means (something about how long you walk on the treadmill), but I think it provides some insight into how... odd his thinking and verbalizing seems sometimes. Hey, at least he corrects me when I'm wrong about the levels in his hotel. And why am I so loud?

Because I Said So

Yeah, I did it. I swore I never would, at least to Conor, but I did. It was inevitable, I suppose. I've spent years trying to structure things, and communicate things, and explain things in terms he can understand.

Years of speech therapy focusing on expressive and receptive language, social skills groups that never quite worked, reams of paper spent on social story after social story, doctors and diets geared toward better health, better behavior, increased language and learning, hours upon hours upon dollars of Applied Behavioral Analysis to break down every little task and academic goal.

All trying to integrate him more smoothly into our family, our community, into... our life. To help him understand the world and to help the world understand him.

At the end of the day, I just cracked.

"Mom?" Conor asked, squeezing his hands together in front of his ample belly. "Can Conor play the drums now?"

"No," I replied, sighing with exhaustion. "You can't play the drums now."

Conor had already eaten, that's true, but my husband and I were trying to get our dinner on the table and do homework with Aidan while simultaneously tripping over the dog with every step. (Poor Linus had been in the kennel while we were away, and he had what Aidan lovingly calls "kennel fever". Translation: the dog has lost his damn mind.)

It had been a long day, for reasons that are now unclear to me. But I was exhausted and wanted a modicum of quiet.

"Why?" Conor asked, continuing to wring his hands together. "Why can't Conor play the drums?"

"Because I said so, Conor. That's why."

Oh boy. There it is. Yeah, I said it.

We'd spent years trying to elicit the 'w' questions out of Conor. You know them from journalism class--who, what, where, when, why and how. (I don't know how 'how' got in there, but there it is at the end. It must be at the end, because Conor doesn't ask 'how' questions yet.) Finally, after gobs of intensive intervention ('gobs' being the clinical term for years and years), Conor began asking as many 'why' questions as a typical toddler.
For a kid who lost all his language for a good long while, asking 'why' is a huge deal.

HUGE. 

I loved it, I reveled in it. I swore I'd always give him an explanation to the 'why'. Until I started running out of answers.

Merry Christmas?

I should clarify that Conor's usually not asking 'why' questions about abstract concepts. You know the typical--why is the sky blue, Mummy? Why are the leaves green, Mummy? Why are there so many Kardashians, Mum?

Generally, Conor's asking 'why' in response to a decision we've made that affects him or when someone is showing a strong emotion. ("Why is that baby crying?" for example. Or, why the hell can't I play on the drums, lady?)

And so here I was, just too weary to explain to him that my ears were just too tired to hear him bang bang bang on his brother's drum set. How do I explain that to my son who never seems to tire of his own voice, loud music, slapping rubber balls against brick walls, the thwack thwack thwack of the basketball on the court?

But then again, I really can't believe I even said it to him. Because I said so. I mean, what's next?

Improved eye contact and joint attention? Don't you look at me like that! 

Modeling behavior from typical peers? If Johnny jumped off the bridge, would you jump off too?

Do it, man. It's totally RAD!

Having to explain an abstract concept more than just a few times so he understands it? How many times do I have to tell you?

Refuse to deal with noncompliant behavior? Wait until your father gets home! 

All because I was just too exhausted to explain to Conor why he couldn't crash away at the cymbals on his brother's drum set.

I suppose it's not that big of a deal. After all, most parents find themselves spitting out these words to their spawn eventually. Perhaps it's even inevitable, despite best intentions.

Come to think of it, I've got a few other parenting gems that I haven't pulled out yet when dealing with either of my boys.  

Phrases like--

You and me? We're going to have a come to Jesus if you don't straighten out.

Yeah, I'll give you somethin' to cry about.

Don't smile, your face will crack.

If you think you're going out in those clothes, you got a 'nother thing comin'.

And my favorite--

Sit your ass down in that chair, I'm not done talkin' yet.

Talk To The Hand

Talk to the hand

I don't want to be on CNN. I know they're gonna call and I'm gonna be all, like, no comment. I don't want to talk about it, just read my blog. I'm not a publicity hound, these things happen, and I just want to move on with the dysfunctional little life I've got going on here.

Ok, maybe Anderson Cooper 360 (he's so adorable) or even Morning Joe, although Joe Scarborough kind of tweaks me the wrong way. (He has a kid with Aspergers so I'll make allowances.) But I am avoiding that Nancy Grace like the plague.  Nothing good will come of that. At the end of everything, I may have to go see Dr. Drew but I certainly don't want to end up on The Situation Room.

We don't want a "situation".

See, on Thursday, Jim, Conor and I board a plane for Florida. Spring Break, you know. My anxiety about the flight has been off-the-charts awful.  I don't know why, we've flown with him before. All I can picture in my mind's eye is Conor having a tantrum on the flight. (I've had LASIK surgery so my mind's eye is very clear, especially when picturing bad behavior from Conor.) Can you imagine? I can, because I've been thinking about nothing else for the past few weeks.

And I can totally see the plane having to turnaround and make an emergency landing in Ohio or something, and then everyone would be mad at us 'cause Ohio is definitely NOT Florida, and we'd be on the news (maybe just Headline News?) and I'll look awful 'cause you KNOW I'll be crying my eyes out and I don't wear much make up when I travel.

All I can say is that Conor's lucky I bought nonrefundable airline tickets 'cause I would have sooooo cancelled this trip ten times last week.

It's gotten so bad that when I asked Conor's psychiatrist for some medication to knock him out if he becomes super-agitated on the plane (super-agitated is the clinical term), my husband asked her if there was something she could prescribe me as well.

"Thank you, honey," I replied smartly, "but I've already got my Xanax prescription filled."  (I don't ever actually take it, but I have it. You know, just in case.)

She prescribed Ativan. In addition, she outlined how to manipulate one of his daily medications for optimal sedative effect. Score!

Making sure Conor is ready for the extreme change in his routine when traveling is twice as hard as preparing him for the simple absence of a parent and sibling for a day or two. (Or four, whatever.) I've written two social stories (one is 12 pages long, I think, and the other is 14 pages long).

I've had to dissect each and every step of our journey. Dissecting can be quite messy and complicated, especially when it's a fetal pig. But I digress. For some reason, the resort time isn't bothering me quite as much, but I'm obsessed with the plane ride.

I can't argue with him. They're delicious.

Look, if you don't have a kid on the spectrum, you might not appreciate the fact that since we're flying American Airlines rather than our tried-and-true Southwest Airlines, Conor might not have his usual Auntie Anne's pretzel before he gets on the plane. Southwest flies out of a different terminal than American, and the American terminal does not have an Auntie Anne's.

I don't know, maybe they pissed Annie off or something. But if we're running for the plane (like last year, oh my gawd, whatta story), nobody's got time for that.

No pretzel could mean challenging behavior from Conor, so I have to make sure he knows about it ahead of time. On Southwest, we pre-board (mykidhasautismsocanwehavethebluepassplease?) and Conor can pick out his own seat. On American Airlines, the computer assigns the seat.  You know how it goes, I'm sure. I had a boss once who had a cow about where he sat almost every single flight I booked him on.

(If a grown man can't handle it, I suppose it's a stretch to think my adolescent with autism will make it easy. If I had known about social stories back then, I would've written my boss one in a minute. He had a whole book with every type of plane and their seating layouts that he would reference before each trip. He would have his own little tantrum if the travel department couldn't get him a preferred seat. I kid you not.)

But it's not as though I'm ignoring the time we're on the ground in Florida. I've reserved all the resort activities that could be reserved. I have to say, the phrase "first-come, first-serve" strikes fear in my heart. It's impossible to keep Conor occupied for hours while we camp out at 4am for the tennis court. He likes to "play" tennis, despite his loathing of actually running for the ball.

"Want Mommy to get the ball?!" 

Who do I look like, Serena Williams? Get your own ball, kid.

Conor doesn't like to wait, or to share to be honest. And those damn tennis players like to get up super early! And, they get pissed off when if I Conor hits a ball into their court by mistake. Go figure.

In any case, I'm done boring you with all my planning and obsessing. I could go on forever about all the minutiae we have to consider. Right now, I've moved on to figuring out when to give him the Ativan "test run". (I've got two days to try it and the doctor only just called it in this morning.) Yeah, you don't want to be giving Conor a new medication at 38,000 feet without having tried it first at home.

That could be a whole different situation. And that situation's not necessarily any better than the other situation. So we're just hopin' not to have any situation. Of any kind. At all.

Even this one--

Hey Mom & Dad, this is Mike "The Situation"
Sorrentino from MTV's Jersey Shore. (I figure
everyone else knows who he is.)

Bada Boom

Aidan, my 10 year-old typical kid, and I jetted down to Duck Key, Florida, this past week for a little respite on his Spring Break. Friends of ours spend a week at a resort there, and I just latch on to their vacation plans like a leech each year.

(Hey, what can I say? They're of Irish descent, and Aidan has red hair and freckles.  I just push him in the door of their rental house and figure they'll never notice they've got a fifth kid at the beach. I got to read two books before they even realized he was there.)

Duck Key is far to go for just four days, but I love these mini-vacations. It gives me enough time to disconnect from all the demands of parenting Conor and really enjoy concentrated time with Aidan.

After a two hour flight to Miami, we had a 100 mile commute to the Florida Keys. This gave us much needed quality time.

"Mom, why does that sign say 'Gentleman's Club' but has a picture of a lady on it?" Aidan inquired, looking at me rather quizzically.

((Who the hell taught that kid to read?!?))

"Because it's a place where men go to look at naked ladies dance around," I replied. Keep your eyes on the road, Alisa, eyes on the road.

I glanced at him quickly. Damn. Aidan, sitting in the passenger seat next to me, screwed his face up like he just ate a lemon. "I don't think I'd like that," he continued. He's currently mortified by anyone's nakedness, including his own.

"Wait until you're older.  I'm bettin' you change your mind," I countered.

"Does Dad go to those places?" he continued.

((Who the hell taught this kid to talk?!? And why isn't he playing on his iPhone?))

"Only with skanky clients twenty-five years ago," I replied.

No! Not really.  That's just what I thought.  What I really said was--

"You'll have to have that discussion with your father."

(Programming note:  my husband does not frequent strip clubs. What can I say?
I was like a deer in the headlights. I wanted to lob that hot one in my husband's side of the court tout-de-suite!)

 

See?  Quality time.

("The answer is NO!, Alisa," my friend laughed when I arrived and told her the story about the Gentleman's Club questions. "Just...No!" Damn, I always get the answers wrong to word problems.)

Bwa ha ha ha ha!  Just say no!

Getting Conor prepared for the disappearance of his mom and brother for four days took some finagling. I made sure we went during school days so his schedule remained structured. (My boys are in two separate school systems, so they have totally separate spring breaks. It works quite well for us.) I made sure all Conor's favorite foods were stocked up in the house so my husband wasn't caught off guard by a lack of inventory.  I forbade all of Conor's aids, therapists, and school personnel from getting sick or having a car breakdown for that week or otherwise having a life.

Ok, ok, I forgot to leave the check for Conor's art therapist but she was cool with it. She said she might come back.  Maybe.

It doesn't matter.  Conor wound up having a tantrum the day before, threw up the morning we left, and missed school that first day.

Sorry, honey, gotta go!  Don't want to miss my flight!

 



Bye! Love you!  Sorry about the vomit! Mwah!

Here's a copy of the social story I put together for Conor. (I saved the PowerPoint file as a movie, so I apologize for any technical issues. I'm pretty hopeless at these things.) I really emphasized staying on Level Three during my absence. He still screws up his pronouns so writing things in his voice--in a way he can understand things--can be tricky.



The day after Aidan and I returned from our respite, Conor had another tantrum, this time at school. Looks like we were back in the thick of things.

That's ok, though.  Aidan's back in school (finally! my God, fourteen days is forever) and preparing for the highlight of his fourth grade year--the PUBERTY and SEXUALITY unit. The way I see it, our little trip past the Gentleman's Club was a great start to his learning all about human sexuality, reproduction, and character development. I'm just a little ahead of the game. You know, because of all of our quality time.

Bada boom, bada bing.

Movin' Out. Or Not.

I want to buy a new house. I went on realtor.com today and searched for the ideal place. Four bedrooms, four bathrooms, granite kitchen countertops, wood floors, fireplace, in-ground heated pool and outdoor kitchen with fire pit, built-in/walk-in closets, finished basement, nice-size lot, fenced-in yard for the dog, central air conditioning and radiant heating, fitness room, mudroom for the kids and dog, mother-in-law suite, temperature-controlled wine cellar with cheese refrigerator, and a room dedicated solely to wrapping presents. Oh, and a supremely organized and uncluttered 3 car garage.

Hey, if you're gonna dream, dream big I say.

Yeah, there you go. Perfect. Probably more than 4 bedrooms, though.

So there I was this afternoon, plugging in the number of bedrooms, the number of bathrooms, the price range and bam!--there were 5 web pages of choices, none of which remotely interested me.

I don't want to buy a new house. The thought of moving makes me quite nauseous, if you must know the truth. Packing up thirteen years of this-n-that combined with the fact that we can't leave the city school district because of Conor's hard-won educational placement makes the idea of moving nonsensical and ridiculous and totally untenable. Preposterous, really.

And I can't leave my good friend, she plies me with wine when I'm bumming, and she lives, like, three streets over.  What if my new neighborhood doesn't have a funny woman who plies me with wine every time I feel down? I mean, seriously, the new neighbors might try to give me cookies when I'm sad and I'm gluten-free.  The horror, the horror.

Plus, the nationally-recognized Kennedy Krieger Institute is practically in my backyard (we have a big backyard) and people fly their kids in from all over to go there. So, you know, there's that.

I know this, I know moving would be moronic, and it wouldn't solve a damn thing. But it continues to bounce around my brain like a ping pong ball. Boing, boing, boing, boing. (Which explains why I was in therapy for three years. Magical thinking.)

It's just... I keep trying to find the answer to how to improve our situation. These tantrums that Conor has--they're like a weight that sits on our shoulders and we just can't seem to shake free of it.

This is what it feels like each time Conor has a tantrum.
We just can't seem to get out from under them.

Quite honestly, after a tantrum, we all--Jim, Aidan and I--walk around for days with our shoulders slouching. Quite literally.

I hate living like this, with the stress and chaos of these tantrums. And so I sit and stew. What to do, what to do. And listen, we aren't getting any younger, you know? My husband turns 55 this summer; we ain't no spring chickens.  It's not going to be long before we can't handle a tantrum, physically anyway.

My husband would probably
agree that I'm good at writing.
At writing checks, that is.

How do I fix this, how do I make it better? I'm a fixer. I see a problem, I figure out who to write a check to in order to get it fixed, and it's fixed. (Hey, I'm no DIY-er, you know. I'm incapable of doing much of anything other than writing, quite frankly, and even that's doubtful most days.)

The point is, we're doing everything we can--and he still has these tantrums. Still. (Matter of fact, he's had two just this past week.)

Behaviorist. Protocols. Routines. Schedules. Menus. Social stories. Appropriate educational placement. In-home aids. 1:1 school aids. A 36-page Individualized Education Plan complete with platinum Behavior Intervention Program. Tokens. Medications. Reinforcers and more reinforcers.

So, there you go. I have no idea what else to try. Some individuals on the spectrum have suggested the gluten-free diet but food is such a fight with Conor that I don't have the stomach for that. (Get it?  Stomach? I crack myself up.) 

We also did that when he was younger and, while it helped, it was not the magic bullet others have experienced. I don't know, the individuals who suggested it say it helps with the negative thoughts.

So that's it.  I don't know what else to do. What do you do when there's nothing new left to do?



The quality of this video stinks, but that hair! That hair is da BOMB! I bet you he really misses it.