Another Great Day! · Friday May 25, 2007 by Abbie
We had great excitement this morning! Last night just before bed I had lifted up the cover on the resting compost heap, to see a large grass snake! I quickly left it as I didn’t want to disturb it.
So this morning first thing I asked Ram if he would like to see if it was still there, and if it was we would make a warning sign. We lifted the cover up carefully and there wasn’t one but two snakes! One was bigger than the other so we are hoping one is female and one is male and they will mate and lay eggs in the compost bin!
We immediately printed a sign and laminated it and pinned it to the outside of the compost bin. This is really exciting in more ways than one! First from the point of view of studying nature it is great, but it also means that the mice and rats will stay away from the compost bins too!
Just as we were finishing that the carpenter came to measure up for the shelves in the kitchen. Ram was a bit worried about this, but he took himself off to ‘his’ sofa and sad and quietly read while they measured! I was so pleased with that. It is so different to other times where he has clung to me and screamed for people to leave.
I do think that some of it has to do with how relaxed the people are that come in the house. I think Ram is like a dog, he can sense when people are nervous or are going to try to talk to him or make him do something. Somehow builders, plumbers and the like don’t have the problem!
We also tried to cook one of the yams this morning. People said just cook it like potato, but we did and it has turned from white to a gluey brown mass! It smells nice, but doesn’t look very appetizing so I am not sure whether we should eat it. I have a feeling that it has gone off somehow.
We then bounced on the trampoline and read a bit while waiting for the photographer to come and take photos for our newspaper interview. Ram was very anxious about it all, but I told him that the photographer will pretend that he isn’t there so we should just carry on as if he isn’t there.
When he arrived Ram went straight to the trampoline and started bouncing, and then said, ‘As he isn’t here we can talk about him.’ So I had to explain what I had said to Ram to the photographer. The photographer was pretty cool about it when Ram pretended that he wasn’t there and started joking about his intelligence!
We then did some bouncing together. It was a bit hard to get Ram to face the camera because if you tell him to face the camera he won’t! He did warm to the whole idea when the photographer showed him a shot where Ram was really high in the air! I don’t think Ram realised how high he jumps when he is on the trampoline!
Then we wanted a photo of something more gentle, and preferable educational. I always make a point to journalists that we don’t do school at home, so they won’t be getting a shot of that! I had discussed the ideas with Ram of either looking at the map of Africa that Dxh brought back, or doing some crafts or reading together. As we got off the trampoline, Ram came up with the idea of Scrabble! Brilliant!
We quickly got it out and set about putting a few words quickly on the board to make it look like we had been playing for a while. The photographer laughed and suggested that we should try to get ‘standard’ onto the board as that is the name of the paper. Ram immediately set about to spell standard. He did really well as we have never ‘taught’ spelling. He did it all right except that he missed the ‘r’ out of the end! Then we managed to put several more words on the board while the photographer snapped some lovely shots.
Next they wanted one of Ram and me together facing the camera. The photographer suggested we sit on the grass with Ram on my lap. Ram immediately curled up into a ball with his head tucked down and his bum sticking out! But we managed to get him turned round.
By then Ram was quite relaxed and to my amazement actually posed for a portrait shot on his own! I had to stand behind the photographer with my head just above the camera so that he was looking in the right direction. His smile wasn’t much so I started asking him how he felt inside when he thinks about how much he loves me. After a few encouraging works a natural smile finally came out!
Then it turned out that the photographer was a great lover of Lego too, we Ram took him upstairs to look at the Lego he had built. He said that a photo of Lego wouldn’t come out in the paper very well but he took a couple anyway.
The visit turned out really positive which is great for building up Ram’s confidence in coping with adults whom he has never met.
The rest of the day was spent on two different computer things. First he played on Scratch which is a freeware computer language that makes animations! At first it looked to difficult to use, so I suggested that he go to the tutorial videos, but he didn’t like the look of them either, so he just plunged in and tried a few buttons and got results! Then as he started to do things the tutorial videos made more sense and he watched some of them.
He really enjoyed the afternoon making his own animation of the cat, and watching and manipulating other peoples’ work. It is things like this that are so fun for him that he really learns the most from; things that make him feel that he isn’t doing anything educational and yet he is learning the art of computer programming!
After a while he had had enough so he went and explored all the Youtube Lego and Bionicle movies. We do have a little camera but he doesn’t seem ready to do things like that himself. I am hoping the I can get the Dxh interested in helping him as it would give them a nice boy and dad thing to do.
We ended the day on a rather sad note. I heard a huge bang on the patio doors. We often get birds going into them as they are so big (think barn doors big!) but this was much harder than usual. We went to investigate and found a Thrush laying there panting. I gently picked it up but it was clear it was not well. We left it just in case it was just a bad stun, but a few minutes later it was dead. We examined it and found that it had broken its neck. It is a shame as if it was just a leg or wing we might have been able to nurse it back to health.
Ram was very sad about this at bedtime. We were cleaning out teeth while he was talking about it. He still doesn’t feel comfortable about sad feelings. Then he suddenly said: ‘On of the gifts of autism is that we don’t understand emotions. I think that is sad.’ He then laughed at the joke of being sad at not understanding sadness!
With a visit from the carpenter and the photographer, and the death of a treasured bird, it could have been a very bad day, but amazingly, it wasn’t! We went to bed on a very happy note!
