Helping HistoryBoy Mange Stress

I can't just go up to him and say HistoryBoy Stop being so stressed out. If it were that simple, none of us would get stressed out, but I did some research. In doing so, I found our important skills to help him manage in stressful situations. These skills are awareness, acceptance, coping and dealing. Each skill has its own value in different situations. I will try to better explain them and how they apply to real life situation from what I have read and how we have used them with HistoryBoy.

Awareness

This is simply getting a better understanding of the situation at hand and their role in it. Basically what *is* going on? What am I *supposed* to be doing right now? It is amazing how often I can ask my son this question and his answer will be, I don't know. I have to keep reminding him to pay attention and be aware.

Acceptance

This is realizing that some things are within your control and somethings are not. You are only in control of you. You cannot control what someone else is doing or the noises they are making or whatever it is that might bother you and cause you stress. None of that is within your control. Only what you do is in your control. You have to accept that. This is a big one for our Aspies. My son gets very upset because sometimes he can't even control himself. Basically he feels he is fighting himself to keep control, and it is very hard for an 11 year old.

Coping

If you feel know you are going to be entering a stressful situation, prepare for it. This is where the strategies you have learned to help you cope will help. Will a walk before you help you settle down to work? Can a pair of sound-blocking headphones (these are AMAZING for HistoryBoy) enable you to be more productive in the classroom because the noise is overwhelming?

Dealing (Plan of Action)

This stage is where you make changes in your behavior to counteract or reduce the level of stress. What steps did you decide would help you cope better? Put that plan into action and stick with it. You will notice a HUGE difference in your child. I know I did. We were able to go out to eat at restaurants, go shopping in stores. We could do things that were previously impossible for him without these guides in place. It is amazing was a little (A LOT really) of structure can do for these kids.

Picture of the Week ~ Math!

This cartoon is great!
Who doesn't love Peanuts!?

So What, My Son Doesn't Like Your Noise, DEAL With It!

HistoryBoy has a bad habit of telling people to shut up, in public. Ok, we have gotten him to MOSTLY not say shut up but he still turns to me and ask me, "Can you please make them BE QUIET?!," as if I have some magic noise control over the universe and the people in it. In his world I do, I guess, up until now, I have modulated the noises as necessary, kept us away from the noisiest venues, brought along his head set when I thought he might need them.

But he is adapting on his own now, for the most part. He has been doing well. He has those headsets, but he doesn't use them all that much unless it is going to be REALLY loud. He knows how to modulate the noise for himself to a certain extent, but sometimes, a baby crying, or a couple arguing, and he just can't take it. It's as if his brain reached critical mass and is going to explode if you do not shut up right now. LOL

I feel bad for the mom of the baby, it's not her fault my son can't handle it. My son was probably that baby or that screaming kid at one point, and I point that out to my son. He tries to cope but I guess there are just certain noises that he just CANNOT tolerate for more than a certain amount of time. It is to the point where I am not going to force the issue, I just let HistoryBoy move on. Get out of this area HB. I am not done shopping for what I need but You can go stand at the end of the aisle and wait for me. He is old enough now.

As he gets older, I hope it gets better. I really do not want to see him doing this a few years from now, but he is 11 and it's a progressive thing right? So for now, everyone will just have to deal with the fact that my son doesn't want to deal with your noise.

Seriously... I'm Speechless!

So my little HistoryBoy comes home from school. He is doing well in school. He is getting good grades, and from all reports, he is doing well. Then I get a phone call. HistoryBoy isn't talking to the teacher in class. ?HUH? My kid? Not talking? Are you sure you mean my son? This is the kid we can't get to be quiet once he gets started so what is going on?

I try to sit down and talk to him. He sits down to eat lunch with me and I ask him about it. So HistoryBoy, are you not talking in class? He says Yes. Why aren't you talking? "I decided to be the quiet one." I nearly choked on my pizza. My kid the quiet one? I am not sure where this is all coming from and before I could get more out of him, he changed the topic and wouldn't answer anymore questions.

I talked to his teacher and yep, he isn't talking to her, he will talk to the other teacher, the aid, the other kids, but not to her. He will only give her hand signals and nod. I am trying to figure this out. There seems to be more going on here. I am wondering if my son is trying to drive his teacher insane, or if his aid told him to be quiet and he took it a little too seriously. So now I have to have a little sit down with him and get him to talk in class. Who would have thought I would actually have to ask my son to talk in class. Don't we usually want out children to be quiet in school, and I know that in the past my son has been one of those who cannot stop his flow of information. So we will see where this takes us.

Oh what fun. Middle School.

Things You (And I) Can Do to Relax

We all need to pamper ourselves sometimes. Even in these tough economic times, a little pampering can go a loooong way. Stress sucks, and our bodies already take quite a beating from what we and the world puts them through. These are my recommendations for what you can do to pamper yourself. These work for me when I am feeling down on myself and need a pick-me-up and you don't need Lupus to need a pick-me-up or for these to work, although I think sometimes we need an extra pick-me-up ma little more often. These are easy and not too expensive, because we all need to go lighter on the pocketbook these days too.

#1: The easiest and best way to relax is just to do that. Take a nap. Let the rest of the world wait on you. Your body is telling you to rest, so let it. We all know the "oh I can push myself a little more" but listen to your body and give it the break it needs.

#2: Take a nice long soak. There is nothing better for soothing those achy joints than a nice warm (or hot bath). I love soaking in a hot tub. I feel so loose after. It's like a nice warm hug all over my body. Along with the soak, I recommend either some music to relax you or a good book or both. I have sat and soaked for an hour in a bathtub with a good book.

#3: Curling up with a good book is not limited to the bath tub. Take some alone time and get that book you have been wanting to read (or re-read) and just do it. This is all about you, so take the initiative and go or it.

#4: Get a manicure. Believe me, it will be the best $10-20 you spend in a month. For me, it makes me feel pretty. My nails look all nice and healthy. It costs $10 each time and I go every two weeks, just for a manicure, not fake nails or anything. They just trim my cuticles, and make my nails look pretty.

#5: That movie you have been wanting to see. Go see it! I know it can be hard to plan to go to a movie. I know. Especially since it it hard to know how I am going to feel tomorrow, and I know that at least for me nighttime movies are a no-go. I can't sit in a theater when my body would rather be in bed, but most theaters have afternoon showings. That is my "good" time, as long as I have had my nap already, LOL. Sometimes doing something you enjoy makes your body remember you used to enjoy it too. (And sometimes the movie just stinks and you wish to have that 2 hours of your life back but THAT is a whole other issue! LOL)

#6: Too tired to go out, ok, rent a movie. Curl up in your favorite chair or in your bed, by yourself or with whoever you want to and watch that movie you have been wanting to. Who cares if it's someone else doesn't like it. This time is about you and what you want and need to relax and find yourself. Give yourself the time you need to just enjoy.

#7: I'm not always up to it, but a night out always cheers me up. A nice dinner either with my hubby or just my mom and me makes me feels better. Even when I don't feel well, which is most of the time, there is always stuff to be done, like cleaning and laundry, just mundane life stuff that I struggle to keep up with and a night out every once in a while helps me remember me and balance all that. I am not alone, even if I feel it sometimes.

#8: Buy yourself something silly. Don't go crazy or extravagant but if you see a shirt, hat or purse you like and it makes your happy buy it. I wouldn't recommend this on a daily basis but leave yourself a small budget for fun. Don't feel the need to deprive yourself. You will end up feeling more stressed and stress isn't good for anyone but people with Lupus have to be extra careful. Stress can be a trigger.

So all in all my advice is to live more, laugh more, love more. Just relax. Don't sweat the small stuff. We all have enough big stuff to worry about in our lives.

HistoryBoy - The Teen Years - An Early Start

Shoot Me Now. He is 11. Puberty is setting in and I am ready to kill him. He is growing like a week which is ok and acceptable. It is the meltdowns and the mouth I can't talk. This weekend. Well technically, last night, wait was it the night before, yes the night before and this morning. It is all blending together...

To start things all I will say he had a great check up with the Nuero. He said he is doing great and as long as there are no problems stick with what we are doing. And oh by the way is he starting puberty yet? I said He is 11. Doc said "Mom, let me give him a check." He gives HB a physical and says yes and explains the physical changes to me which I could be aware. Since I do not a check on HB I would not know unless he told me something was wrong down there. Although it did kinda go in one ear and out the other, to me what I heard was oh YAY hormones. Great! Here come the fun times. Now that was Thursday.

It is Monday. Did his brain somehow learn that because it had hormones it had to use them to defy his mom? I would have sworn I was dealing with an alien version of my child. Or the Linda Blair exorcist version maybe. We were very nicely going out the door to school when suddenly it became like a war. He wasn't going to school. I was horrible, I was mean. He screwed himself up in a ball on the floor. Finally we are out the door. Now he did wait to scream at me until after we were outside because he knew if he was close enough for me to smack him I would have for mouthing off. He would say something mean and stay on the opposite side of the car from me. He also refused to get into the front seat of the car. He decided it would be in his best interest to sit in the back, away from me.

This yelling settled into an Asperger meltdown that I could make no heads/tails of. When we got to school, I was going to in and get his aide to come out and give me a hand. He says to me "Mom aren't you going to talk to me?" I ask him is that what he wants? He says "Yes" So I go open the back dorr and climb in with him. He wraps his arms around my waist and just cries and says he doesn't know why. I ask Why what? Why did you get so upset? He says "I don't know why. I couldn't help it.

I feel so bad. It shouldn't be so hard for him. He is only 11. How can I help him? I can only do so much, I try to help when I see him struggle but unfortunately at 11, he is faster and stronger than me, if he really had a thrasher meltdown, I can't intervene, I could get really hurt. I see him wanting to bang his head against the wall and he struggles not to do it because I have asked him not to because I don't want him to hurt himself. He is really struggling and I do not want it to be this hard for him this early, because I know it is only going to get harder.

History Boy's Reading List Part 2

As I talked about in my last blog (I apologize or the delay in posting, hopefully I will explain in tomorrow's blog), getting HistoryBoy and most Aspies to read fiction is often difficult. But I did give you some ideas.

Once you get past the Magic School Bus and Magic Tree House. I tried a lot of different stories with him. I finally decided on Encyclopedia Brown. I loved them at his age. What is great about these book if you didn't know is that each chapter is a relatively short story. YOu get about 10 of these short stories contained in one book. The stories are logical with some humor thrown in. You are given all the clues to solve the mystery and them asked how did he solve it.

I will give you a clue to helping your child getting involved in these books. My HistoryBoy doesn't always take to new books at first. Your Aspie might be the same way, however, even at 11, my son LOVES to be read to. He loves to snuggle down and hear a story. I started this a LOOOOONG time ago. I shared my love of Dr Suess with him that way. He still loves to hear Green Eggs and Ham (even if he won't admit it). He snuggled on the other side of me when I have read it to my nephew.

So it doesn't have to be fact, fact, fact for our Aspies to love it. Sometimes, it can just be US that makes them love it. My son wants to read Harry Potter because I loved it, but he wants to read it with me. I said that is fine by me. There will probably be magical mysteries that won't make sense to his logical mind and I am ok with explaining them to him and there are some silliness in the first ones that I am sure he will thoroughly enjoy before they start to get darker.

Right now at bedtime, we are reading Diary of a Wimpy Kid ~ The Last Straw, which is Book 3 in the Diary of a Wimpy Kid Series. We are reading it together. He can read it on his own and sometimes he does but he enjoys it some much more when he is there laughing beside me. Sometimes I will read to him, sometimes he reads to me and I am making faces or groaning over the kids antics. If this is what it takes to help my son enjoy fiction books, I am all for it.

This school year. HistoryBoy took a WONDERFUL step further, he joined a BOOK club in school where they will read books and DISCUSS them once a week after school. He recieved his first books and it was a fiction book and he had no problem with it. He did ask me if I thought they would read a Titanic book or a WWII book. I told him, he would have to ask the teacher in charge. LOL. That's my HistoryBoy

History Boy's Reading List Part 1

If you've lived with or known HistoryBoy long enough, you know what his taste in books runs to. LARGE non-fiction books. Because seriously, what library could be complete without the classics you see here. If there is a train, plain, submarines, tank, animal, type of book or encyclopedia. It is probably well read on a shelf at our house. You CAN borrow it. Just ask ME. I won't mind one bit.

Now to let you know. It takes work, ALOT of work, to get our Aspies interested in something other than non-fiction. I stuck with what worked for a loooooong time. Which meant, the above mentioned books, which expanded his mind greatly but bored me to tears, but were not fiction AND school does require some fiction reading.

To that end, I found several AWESOME series.

This series is great. It mixes fact and fiction together and your Aspie will LOVE it. I know mine did. And if you can find a TV station that is running the program and mix the TV program with the books. I found it was wonderful. He wanted to read the book. What they have also done with this series which is AWESOME is made it into chapter books, so when you child ages out of the first level of books, there is still a set he can read. I know it was wonderful for HistoryBoy. They weave the Science facts and fiction so seamlessly even if your child isn't an Aspie, they will love them.


Once your child has graduated from the Magic School Bus chapter books or you just need more to entertain them (or yourself), I HIGHLY recommend The Magic Tree House. These cover so many Science and Social Studies subjects, HistoryBoy went gaga. The great thing about this series is they also have reference guides to go with each of the books. So once you read the books (or before you read it), you can have your reference knowledge fill, and then read then story that goes with it. Another GREAT feature of this series is that they are available in CD/mp3 form. So if you Aspie is like mine and sometimes like to take his books on the go, I can pop an mp3 on his ipod and he can listen to as he reads. It is wonderful. Now this series is recommended up to 3rd grade but I think for Aspie children who need encouragement to read fiction, these are a good choice. HistoryBoy still enjoys them.

More on this tomorrow.

HistoryBoy Trying to Understand Emotions

HistoryBoy's Asperger's has its ups and downs, as we all know. My least favorite difficulty is his expressing emotion and understanding emotion in others. He will most likely have this difficulty all of his life. We are working hard to overcome it, helping to read other people, and understand why people say certain things and do certain things. But I even have to pause sometimes and think about why I said something or did something because to me it is second nature.

In all fairness, HistoryBoy has gotten so much better at expressing his emotions than he used to be. He also understands some nuances better than others. While this is a good thing he still doesn't understand when someone says something in anger they don't always mean it or how when someone says one thing, they mean something else.

Our little HistoryBoy and HyperGirl are growing up. A little while back, they have decided they were boyfriend and girlfriend. To everyone, all that means is that they hold hands on the way to the bus sometimes. HistoryBoy is ok with that, it means his best friend is his girl friend, so I guess to his mind, life is perfect.

The other day, I do not know exactly what happened, except the two of them had a fight. They do that from time to time. One will huff and puff and go home. But this time HistoryBoy didn't come home to me, he went off to play with some other kids in the neighborhood and at dinner time I had to go search him out. He was all wound up and I had to really work to get him calm. He told me HyperGirl had broken up with him. He was devastated. Now I know that they had a fight and I know that she probably said this to him. But now I need to explain that this is not the end of the world. HyperGirl and he will most likely be friends again tomorrow, as always.

He and I talk about their past fights and how someone usually goes home mad. I asked him if he ever considered not being her friend, "but she said" Ignore what she said. HyperGirl says things when she is angry and she apologizes when she sees you or she hugs you the next day, doesn't she? "Yes." She has some of the same troubles expressing her emotions. She just overflows with them sometimes. "Oh, I get it. I think, but that is what I like about her. She can understand me too."

Don't worry. Talk to HyperGirl. I bet she misses you already.

October is Lupus Awareness Month

Everyone who knows me, I think is aware of the fact that I have Lupus. It's hard to miss, especially when it gets in the way of the events I want to attend with them, or even the movie night we plan to have. At this

point in my life, I have lived longer with Lupus than I have lived without. I know I had a normal happy childhood, if I was a rather predisposed to picking up germs, maybe that was a sign of what was to come, but in terms of my life without Lupus, I really don't remember it.

Someone asked me to describe Lupus to them. To me, it is like wearing a prickly blanket. This blanket may seem to be just fine. Maybe one or two pricks here and there, totally manageable, then one wrong turn and it shows all of its prickles and you are down and out for the count. Unfortunately, this blanket also masks so many things. It can also mimic so many others. That is what it makes it so difficult to diagnose and so hard to cope with. Often Lupus patients are not dealing with just Lupus. Lupus patients also often have depression, migraines, Sjogren's, Reynaud's and Fibromyalgia. Lucky us. Me, I have only 3 out of 5 of those. Go me!

I am not asking or sympathy. I am asking that awareness and knowledge be spread far and wide so people know about this disease. So that maybe one day there will be a cure, and it will not just be about surviving.

Picture of the Week

In our community, the ducks have been showing no fear this year.

I was sitting on the lawn, brushing Madison and this group came up

and decided it would be a good idea to investigate her.

BAD IDEA!

She starting panting and whining and when she finally

BARKED!

I think they got the idea to leave.

Dumb ducks.