Summer time is all about sunshine, swimming pools and rides on rollercoasters. Well, our life is always a rollercoaster! This week my daughter Patti comes to visit.
I mention my daughter Patti a lot in my videos because she is a Teacher for Autistic Children. Growing up with a brother with Autism gave her on the job training her whole life! She is exceptional at what she does. She has a natural intuition with her kids that you would probably expect.
In "Patti's Visit" she flies in from North Carolina with her husband, and on Tuesday we spent the day at the beach. She talked about teaching and mentioned how she is lucky enough to have a meeting room attached to her classroom that she has converted into a break room for her kids. They can earn breaks after doing school work, but it's also used for when they get overloaded and have behaviors and meltdowns. One of her students likes to rip things when he gets upset and she had an idea, "Maybe we could come up with alternative things he could rip when he's upset". If you saw my "Father's Day in the ER" episode, he had ripped the shirt of an aide, and when he came home with me, he ripped my shirt too.
Patti and I met with Biancha, Robbie's Behavior Specialist to brainstorm and come up with alternatives for Robbie. Patti really stressed how well her break room was working, so we are hoping that as they are building Robbie's new house, maybe we can get them to create break room. I don't know if this will happen, but it can't hurt to try. Patti and I then went shopping to come up with an idea for a "ripping toy". You'll have to watch the video to see what we came up with.
Patti's Visit
The big activity we had planned was to take Robbie to Dorney Park, which is a Water/Amusement Park in Pennsylvania. They give special passes for people with Special Needs so they don't have to wait in line! Woo hoo! But unfortunately Robbie had a seizure, and needed to see his Neurologist.
So instead of fun footage, I decided to talk about Robbie's seizures. I'm hoping there is some useful information for parents in this one. Robbie never had any seizures until he turned 17. I thought we had successfully avoided that part of Autism, but unfortunately not.
If you have a child with Autism and you're following us, I hope your child never has a seizure because it's the most frightening thing I have ever seen. But if, God forbid, it does happen some day, remember the information that I share with you in this video about meds.
I had to leave work early to pick him up and take him out. He had no snow boots so I took him shopping. He was OK in the beginning, and let me play with him. But after a while, he just had had enough. He attacked me in Target. I kind of wish I had the camera on to show it. He pulled me to the floor as we walked in the door. As I watched this back, I can see that I pushed him over his limit. He was getting annoyed and I should have known when to quit.
Episode 20-"Moving Target"
The next day, he was still grouchy. But a ride in the car always cheers him up. So we got in the car and drove..........and drove and drove, all the way to Pennsylvania! My Grandparents lived in Hellertown, PA so we went all the way to their house. It's a typical old restored PA stone house.
They belonged to the Saucon Valley Country Club, which is such a beautiful place. So we drove through the club, and then turned around and came all the way back! We killed a couple hours in the car. After that he was hungry, so we hit the BK in NJ.
