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Wordle

Odds and Ends

by Trish on February 6, 2010 · View Comments

in My Little Guy,Reflections

I just thought I would wrap up the week with an assortment of the stuff that is floating around in my brain. It has not been a good decluttering week, although I am getting better at only saving the important school papers instead of throwing everything in the file box. I have spent a lot of time this week on various appointments and meetings, as well as following up with several insurance issues that had come to my attention.

My Sleep Goal

So, I said yesterday that I was making a goal of getting 8 hours of sleep every night. I managed to get 7 last night — I stayed up a bit too late after finding out that my weekend plans were changing and thinking about how I was going to work everything out. But tonight, I should be able to get 8 hours, and maybe even a bit of a nap tomorrow since we aren’t planning to go out due to the snow.

Anti-Depressants

Did anyone else see the article in Newsweek about anti-depressants? They are saying that they have not actually been shown to be effective in treating depression and that it hasn’t really been proven that raising serotonin levels affects mood. I have not heard this before and thought both of those things were accepted truth, so I am interested to find out more about this situation.

The article did say, however, that there has been some positive effect in treating more serious or long-term cases, so I’m not sure where exactly I fall in that continuum. And, of course, you should not stop taking anti-depressants without your doctor’s help because you can experience withdrawal effects (I know from personal experience this can be pretty bad).

Michael’s Progress

Well, it has been a long week, but I have been able to cross a few projects off my list at work – thanks in part to two coworkers who have been able to help with some of it. I also went to Michael’s parent-teacher conference today and was pleasantly surprised to see both the Learning Support teacher and the SLP at the meeting. I was able to let them know that he is due for a re-evaluation this year and will be receiving a Permission to Evaluate form soon.

Michael has been making good progress with his IEP goals, especially now that he has such a good TSS with him, and he seems to be handling the ups and downs of the day much better. There have been a couple of days in the last month that were rough for him, but overall we are seeing improvement. I am hoping we will see some lessening of his anxiety and some other issues once we get his supplements back on track with his current nutritional levels (we are going to a new place in March).

My Cute Story for the Week

Sometimes after I turn out Michael’s light, he still wants another story, and so I try to make one up for him. This is NOT a strong point of mine! The other night when I was struggling to think of what to say, he was trying encourage me and said, “It’s okay, Mommy, it can be anything–fantasy, non-fiction, human interest…”

Well, my ears perked up at that and I turned to him and asked, “What’s human interest?” I couldn’t wait to hear what he was going to say; sometimes I get some very interesting responses when I ask him to define something he just said.

“Touches the heart,” he says to me.

“Where did you learn about that?” I ask nonchalantly.

“Skills group,” he tells me.

He is in a second-grade reading group! I can’t even tell you how old I was before I knew what a human interest story was, and I probably couldn’t have described it in less than two sentences even a couple of days ago. How funny is that!

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This is a bit of a catch-up post, since I keep thinking of all the things I have been meaning to share but haven’t gotten to yet.  ‘Tis a bit long as well; my apologies – it was either this or four shorter posts and that would overwhelm even me!

First, the Wordle

The image at the top of this post is called a Wordle – have you seen these yet? They are very fun to play around with; you just enter some text or a URL with a feed and it creates a word cloud. Then you can play around with the font, colors and the layout until you get it how you like it. Yes, I know there’s no real reason for me to make one, but they are fun!

The Timer Revisited

I posted earlier at 5 Minutes for Special Needs about using a timer, and I wanted to also share a way that the staff at Michael’s summer program are using it with him.

When he is called to an activity such as art time and refuses to come, the staff, instead of arguing or giving a timeout, will simply tell him they are starting the timer. The timer is started and not stopped until he joins the activity. Then when free play starts, the staff member tells my son, “Oh, you owe me [x number] minutes of art time before you can start playing.”

The best part is that it’s working. :)   Now when they say they will start the timer if he doesn’t come, he will often say, “No, not the timer!” and come right away.

Root and Sprout

Root & SproutRoot and Sprout is a website dedicated to supporting moms and dads in providing “gentle, hands-on parenting” to their children.  New articles are published monthly, and the August Edition is now up.  Yours truly actually wrote one of the articles this month and am honored to have it accepted and published in the Wildflowers section.  If you scroll down, it is the second article. (Wait, what I meant to say was read the first article and then you will get to mine!)
Updated to add: Root & Sprout is now using a blogging platform so that each article has a permalink and you no longer have to scroll through each section.

Feel free to explore the other sections and consider submitting an article yourself.  It is a fairly painless procedure and the editor doesn’t bite (well, not that I am aware of, anyway!)

And Finally

Phew!  I am so happy to have all of that off my brain!  I need to clear the space because tomorrow will be my first day at the Penn State National Autism Conference. I wasn’t able to attend today’s opening sessions, but am all registered and ready to go in the morning.

Tomorrow I am scheduled for Asperger Syndrome: Strategies for Young Children in the morning.  This session deals primarily with self-regulation and social/emotional competence; I am figuring that Michael is high-functioning enough that a lot of this should apply to him, and if not I am sure I could use some help in this area.  My afternoon session is Strategies for Successful Inclusion of Learners with ASDs.  It is directed at teachers, but hopefully there will be some things I can offer to the team as we move forward.

To anyone who made it all the way to the bottom of this post, I really appreciate you!!

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