The First Five Years- Here and Gone...

I can't believe my baby boy is no longer my baby boy!  He isn't even a toddler or preschooler.  There's something about getting past that 5 year mark that seems so grown up.  Six years! Where did the time go?!?  Bryce celebrated his sixth birthday with the family on December 2.  This is really the first year that he's understood about birthdays and Christmas.  He knows his birthday now if you ask him, and he's very good about telling you how old he is.  Although he still says 5 and then corrects himself to say 6.  Old habits die hard :) 

Every day he works with his therapist to decide what to tell me about his day when I pick him up from school.  She started with a script, then started giving him a choice between scripts, and now has moved on to just giving him visuals of the day and he chooses what to tell me.  Most of the sentences are in his own words, and he's doing great about stringing the words together properly.  On his birthday he told me, "Today, I got to play on the computer, because IT'S MY BIRTHDAY!" It's so great to see him understand what he's saying and desire to communicate with us! His ABA therapist is just so amazing- a huge blessing!  She truly likes him and loves to work with him.  She has even offered to barter ABA for piano lessons over the summer!

The experts say that the first five years of a child's life are critical learning years.  That is the case with a typical child, but especially with any kind of disability.  I used to be so worried that we lost so much critical time by having his diagnosis delayed for so long.  He was three before he started getting really consistent help and training.  But after seeing the amazing progress he's made in just one semester of kindergarten, I'm not worried at all.  I know this is still a critical time, and we're going to cram everything in that we can, but it's not the end at all- it feels like just the beginning!

Making Progress

I recently had Bryce's IEP meeting at his school.  For those of you not involved in the special education world, IEP stands for Individualized Educational Plan and is just a series of goals to be worked toward for your child specifically.  This meeting is very important as it determines what services Bryce will receive for the year.  I was happy to hear that he is very polite and well-mannered in class and loves to work hard.  He is testing at or above grade level in math and reading.  This is according to standard testing they do in class.  Yes, he has to have standard testing, even though he's in special education.  Can you believe it?  No wonder test scores get dragged down overall.  Anyway, he was given the tests with a "help" from the teacher.  She had to help him understand what they were asking for.  When she did, he was able to perform all the tasks given.  He just doesn't understand the initial directions unless shown an example.  So, long story short, he's doing well in rote academic areas (reads like you wouldn't believe and is doing 1st grade math) but he's way behind in the comprehension areas.  He is unable to answer "wh" questions about any given topic.  This is one of his goals, however, and we are seeing some progress in this area.  The abstract concepts are just not there for him.  But, he has a GREAT therapist that works with him every day after school, and boy does she make him work!  He's exhausted when he gets home, but it's helped so much with keeping his brain active and on task.  I see far less "stimming" (that's repetitive actions that help to calm him or block out the world around the world-he mostly engages in verbal stimming) and get more eye contact out of him than ever before.  As an example, on Sunday, Bryce was down the hall in church by himself and Jamie came in the door.  Unprompted, he said, "Hi, Aunt Jamie."  Jamie said hello and asked, How are you?  Bryce replied, "I'm fine, thank you."  All unprompted.  All scripted, but he is learning to take the scripts he's taught and generalize them in the proper settings.  Not a big deal to your typical kid's parent, but a blessing to me! :)

Bryce Burkholder: Style Critic

Last night at church, Bryce was sitting with Uncle Nathan and Aunt Carrie as Jared and I were on the platform.  He hadn't seen Carrie all day, and when he glanced up at her he did a double-take and whispered, "What a mess!"  Carrie crouched down to hear him better and asked him what he said.  He looked at her and said, "I got a haircut!"  (He meant she got a haircut, which she did this week and most of us didn't even notice)  Then he reached up and pushed her bangs to each side of her face and said, "That's better." Don't try to sneak anything by that boy- he WILL notice! :)

My little iPhone addict

While Jared would LOVE to own an iPhone, he unfortunately does not.  However, Uncle Ryan has both an iPhone and an iPad.  Bryce was introduced to the wonder of game apps while at summer camp this year.  He would play on Uncle Ryan's iPad for hours if I'd let him.  One night Ryan didn't have his iPad with him, so he let Bryce use his phone.  The only problem with that is now every time he sees an iPhone, he assumes it's for his gaming pleasure.  Doesn't matter who it belongs to- he tried to swipe the phone out of a realtor's hand while we were looking at a house yesterday!   The other night in church, he kept asking Aunt Carrie (who also has an iPhone) and Uncle Nathan for the "small monkey."  Unless you speak "Bryce", this is total nonsense.  When I heard what he was asking for, I realized he wanted to play a game that Ryan has on his phone that has a monkey in it.  He was asking for the small monkey, because the iPad is the big monkey and the iPhone is the small monkey. (makes sense in a weird sort of way)  It's times like these that I wonder how he'll ever get along in the world without me- the walking Bryce to English dictionary.  He does have creative ways of getting his point across, even if they aren't "normal."  I guess we'll just have to see where this adventure known as Bryce's life takes us!

First Day of Kindergarten

Excuse me, 2010, where did you come from?  Who is this giant child with missing teeth and a Wii addiction, and what have you done with my blue-eyed baby? Kindergarten? No.  Not yet.  Really?!?  I still can't wrap my mind around the fact that my firstborn is in "real school" and now we live our lives around a school schedule! Bryce, of course, is thrilled.  He loves school and it was a seamless transition to a new teacher and classroom today.  He jumped in line and put his hands behind his back like he'd been doing it for years. (Mrs. Walker, the preschool teacher, taught him well)  Henry, on the other hand, was a little upset that we were leaving Bryce and going back home this morning.  It won't be long before he's asking to go to school with big brother, I'm sure. 

Bryce is in a special class called the Learning Center.  There are a few other autistic kids in there.  They all are kids with special learning needs of some kind.  It's considered a class for "moderately" disabled kids.  There are no physical handicaps and the teacher was happy to report that this year she didn't have any with major behavioral issues either.  He'll stay in this class for Kindergarten, First and Second grades, unless he can be mainstreamed.  For the first six weeks or so, he'll stay in class and learn the new policies and procedures.  After that, he will start to go to a mainstream kindergarten class for either the math block or language arts block.  That way, he can be influenced by peer modeling and learn to interact with typical kids.  He also stays after school and has one on one ABA therapy for an hour.  He loves all the personal attention!

When he came home today, I didn't even have to ask, "How was school?"  He told me, "Did you have fun in class today? Mmhmm." I think it's going to be a great year.

Another milestone, Another meltdown

So often I think to myself, "I should write that down" when Bryce will say something to me that's funny, or special, or poignant.  Yet he's outgrown his baby book, and I know I'll never keep track of a notebook or loose papers.  I'm a bit behind with my scrap booking, too.  (Henry's birth is still waiting to be properly pasted, decorated and journaled.)  So I decided to start a blog to remember those moments and share them with others.  There are days when dealing with Bryce's disorder gets to be too much, and I know that there are others out there who feel just like me.  I regularly prowl the Internet looking for moms that are in my boat and may be willing to help bail with me.  And then there are days that the accomplishment is so sweet, and the victory so hard won, I just need to shout it from the housetops! So this is where I will come to do just that.  Unlike Jared's humorous, snarky blog (which I love reading as much as others do) this will just be a place for me to put my thoughts to paper (or screen, I guess) and hopefully help others along the way.

Yesterday, Bryce lost his first tooth.  What would normally be an exciting milestone in a child's life was a terrifying experience for him.  I saw him fiddling with it, and could tell it was about to come loose.  I really didn't want him to swallow it-that would have made explaining this process even worse! So after a little cajoling, I managed to get my fingers in his mouth and pull out the tooth.  Instead of the triumphant "Ta Da" that most kids get, Bryce started to sob uncontrollably.  He kept asking me to "fix it" and started to panic.  In these situations, it's really important to get control before he totally goes nuts.  There have been times when it's taken over an hour to get him settled back down after he gets upset over something.  Henry was also picking up on the tension and starting to cry as well.  I rinsed out Bryce's mouth and made him look me in the eye as I explained to him that a new tooth would grow in place of the old one.  As a matter of fact, it was already showing and I kept pointing it out to him.  He stopped crying and starting asking for a watering can.  "You need to get a watering can."  I thought, what?  I kept asking him why he needed a watering can, and finally he said, "You need to get a watering can and pour it in your mouth."  It finally hit me- he understood what I was saying about his new tooth GROWING and according to him, growing required water from a watering can and sunlight! It was so cute.  I told him we could use a water bottle instead and every day he should drink water and eat good food and we'll check on his tooth as it grows.  That seemed to please him.  What pleased him even more was when I told him we would put his old tooth under his pillow and when he woke up in the morning there would be a present there! (He has absolutely no concept of money whatsoever, so that won't work in this case.)  We borrowed the tooth pillow from Grandma and this morning Jared, er, I mean Bryce, was thrilled to find Wipeout for Wii under his pillow.  I believe this sets a dangerous precedent for tooth fairy fare, but Jared insisted, and I'm a sucker.  Besides, how many times do you lose a first tooth?