This weekend I went to a band trip with my 12 year old as a chaperone. It started with band performances, ended with them (and me) at an amusement park all day.
I met a bunch of Middle Schoolers who were friends / acquaintances with my daughter. They referred to me as "cool," "legendary," "icon," and one said I was "an icon on par with Madonna." But...but why?
I think about that day and all I can think is that I'm an adult, a parent who was willing to engage with these kids. I talked with them about music, their hobbies, anime, video games, whatever they wanted to talk about. I listened and interacted. Apparently, that's enough to make me an icon.
It feels very basic. But, the fact that just this level of interaction felt out of the norm for them from their friend's parents that it made them call me an icon, I feel that says more about the other adults in their lives than it does about my awesomeness.
Newest episode of #InTheKaleidoscope went up on Monday. A podcast wherein ND parent (me) and NT adult child (her) discover stuff about each other.
We got to a really interesting place. I'm fascinating with what I'm learning about her. And she says she always wanted to be autistic. Well, we didn't have that word back then. But she wanted to be like me. To have a brain like mine. Which I guess is a usual thing for a kid to want? To be like their parent? But how much she wanted it surprised me. That she even noticed what my brain was like surprised me. Anyway, give it a listen.
According to @Joysauce, fewer women in East Asia and Southeast Asia are choosing to have children — Taiwan has the world's lowest birth rate and South Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong, Macau and Japan aren't far behind (or ahead, depending on your point of view). Jiaying Grygiel takes a look at the societal and economic reasons for these steeply falling birth rates. “People are making a perfectly rational decision about childbearing under the circumstances,” says Stuart Gietel-Basten, a professor of social science at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.
Mostly for @KarenStrickholm -- look, I made it to the end of clue 2!
There was a moment where I thought I might catch up before clue 3 came out but then my kid was like, "Mom, I think I might be re-infected" and after explaining immunology for 6 year olds to him (aka, it's probably a new infection because your immune system is usually good at avoiding exactly the same thing right away) then we all got sick again. At least we got lots of sleep this weekend?
Pretty excited to see that second colour. I'm a bit worried it's going to be too variegated for the lace to come, but it looks great in this section!
Roomsharing can be done following safe infant sleep guidelines, which includes:
Placing the baby to sleep on a firm, flat sleep surface; in their parents’ room for the first 6 months on a separate sleep surface designed for infant sleep, close to the parents’ bed
Keeping the baby’s sleep space free of soft objects, such as pillows and loose bedding
Kolejna wizyta w hotelowym basenie utwierdza mnie w przekonaniu, ze wielu rodzicow ma wywalone na zachowanie i bezpieczenstwo swoich dzieci - czworo dzieciakow radosnie skacze sobie na bombe przy schodach do basenu, a ich rodzice.. w sumie to nawet nie wiem czy byli na tym basenie ;)
Training lunch break & watching vids as a brain palate cleanser of sorts. I found this fascinating. Such parenting supports weren't available 20 yrs ago. It's wonderful to see #autism#parenting#pda communities offering validation, support & education. This video reminded me of a time I visited my sister when my niece was a baby. She couldn't stop playing w/a toy that was frustrating her, she cried every time she hit it but kept doing it. #cognitivepsychology https://youtu.be/1ozg_e2XHvI?si=c_CebRLvpPZMvjOr
Hiya! I know I've been somewhat incognito since joining here, but now I'm launching a project that will show more of who I am.
It's a podcast I started with my daughter about being a #neurodivergent parent with a #neurotypical child. We talk about how the world was when I was raising her a million years ago and the things I wish I'd known then that I know now as a newly self-discovered #ActuallyAutistic person.
If anyone wants to give it a listen, I'd love to know what you think! There are four episodes so far. We are just getting started.
"James and Jennifer Crumbley, whose son murdered four classmates and shot seven other people at Oxford High School [Michigan] in 2021, were each sentenced Tuesday to between 10 and 15 years in prison."
NPR reports that some experts think the case "might set a precedent for charging parents with serious crimes because of actions taken by their child."
This poem I wrote those like me who are autistic parents of autistic kids, but perhaps it speaks to a wider audience.
To My Fellow Travelers
The rain made a reflective plane,
Connecting parking lot to road,
Ditch lurking deep below.
I stepped up to say hello
To her, when in a blur,
The spindly teen strode swiftly by,
Disappearing from the eye
In muddy depths. The briefest moment,
Shorter even than a sigh,
She stepped in after him,
As mothers everywhere have done.
I waited.
She did not arise.
Soaked to the bone, I stumbled
Down the side, nearly tumbled,
But my care could not the waters part,
Nor shine a light into the dark.
How swiftly could they now be gone?
Now should I sound a loud alarm?
It seemed so casual … expected,
Her gaze was so resigned. Sinking down
My panic rose, I froze,
Pounding in my ears my blood
Made distant frantic voices.
That pulled me up above the flood.
“The pump station,” he loud proclaimed,
“It pulled them in. Air trapped within,
It saved them.” The father’s face a rictus grin.
While I collapsed onto the floor,
Exhausted, sobbing, nothing more
Than years of tensing expectation —
Every day a chore, without vacation
Not the trip that I was planning for.
I thought to Italy I would fly,
Not inside dark currents trapped,
Lacking any arms or hands,
Remembering dry land,
Cold waters gripping chill
My nonexistent gills.
No tulips line this sodden floor.
We lined the booth, across the table,
Strewn with plastic toys, I gazed
At her or at beyond, so long
“What are you looking forward to?”
She had inquired, was it an hour?
Maybe more? Gone past,
Until her hand she raised,
“We can revisit this next week.”
I got the check and
With the child I then followed,
Their little hand in mine,
Oblivious to such a thing as time.
Someone had chalked a grand design
Annotations patrons added in a line
Suggesting happy days, connections
Crossing paths and minds.
Imagine finding just the right OT
Scrawled inside graffiti —
Is this the way we find like minds
As ours, or shall we always be alone?
I save the email to my phone,
This time the hope (and maybe its attendant loss)
Defeats despair, but know I not the cost.
They speak to me the way they do
And though it seems they never listened
To a word I said, I hear myself repeated
And see them mirror me in two.
One day soon they ask me once again to
Watch their favorite old cartoon
The hundredth time and I would
Gladly forego everything I could
To have that rare connection.
Love, I now have learned, can be
So quiet and so still —
Invisible but just as strong
As any choir’s song.
“She should have closer watched
Him, yes, she should have known”
Voices crossing by winds blown,
Their little shoulds across the lot
They splatter, on the ground, their chatter
Spoiling windscreens, shoulders, hair
Shoulding everywhere.
Away, murder, here you croak no more.
I wish my incantation would at once dispel
The vicious lies they like to tell.
I will not find you at the school
Nor at the doctor, as a rule.
We seek the open spaces or
The sensory-protected rooms.
Connected underground. Mushrooms.
Waiting for our time to bloom.
Like little spores upon the air we float
Like fishers three upon a little boat
That sails upon the silver sea
Our twinkling selves, our stars to be.
When storms subside,
One day, when panic ebbs away,
Into these arms we ride.
For we who know the magic,
We who eschew the tragic
That the world would soon bestow
Upon us, hostages,
Orderly aligned in rows
To carry out some grand design
Not mine.
We have no need of well-worn roads,
We do not follow forks on maps,
For this is where they’ve laid their traps
To catch us unaware inside their snares.
We travel and we rest elsewhere
And, yes, it shows.
The social norm is constructed: not naturally occurring but created by the society in which it is found.
Hence there are no actions which in themselves are inherently #abnormal or universally condemned by all societies at all times. Deviance is thus situational and contextual.
Rough contact and impact peak around the age of seven. This is gradually replaced by peer monitoring in the years that follow.
Isabelle Clair: "Adolescence is a very normative age. At middle school, "there's a very tough relationship to what's the right thing to do".
Margot Déage: "Physical violence is much more prevalent in elementary/primary school, then decreases in middle school, and progressively through high school."
Margot Déage: "A girl who does not belong to a boy or a man can fall into the category of whore at any time, whatever her clothes or sexual practices."
Margot Déage: "Being in a position to say who’s a whore and who’s a good girl is a power in itself within the girls’ group, a power that is strongly mobilised by certain girls. The ones who can fall, in general, are the hardest on the matter."
This was an impulse buy of Knitted Wit "puppet" yarn while I was getting a discount because of the dye class. I'd intended to make the "Kitty poof" pattern from Knit Picks because they gave away free copies some time ago. But then I opened the pattern file and it was basically "knit a tube" so I pulled out my plastic knitting machine and did the work in hardly any time at all. 😂 I think it took me more than three times as long to knit the tail during this month's #CraftClub meeting.
Probably would have been better with a tighter knit, but it's delightfully squishy with the remains of an old pillow inside, it's got the blep tongue that the Dread Pirate kid requested, and it's green (his favourite colour), so I think it's all set to join his menagerie.
My six-year-old has expressed an interest in learning how to program. I'm not really sure where to start. He definitely has the right kind of inquisitive mindset for it, though.
I taught a high school class for a little while, but that had a specific, very set curriculum.
And I taught myself when I was just a few years older than he is now. But that was with a Commodore 64 in BASIC. So I don't really want to start him there.
Anybody have any experience teaching young kids programming? I do know of the MIT Scratch language, but aside from that?
MDMRN Twin 1: Are they supposed to be fighting people?
MDMRNia: What's the word for after the world ends?
Me: Post-apocalyptic?
MDMRNia: Yea, that. This video is like that.