Social Interaction - today was great!

I love parks! They're a perfect place for kids to play, play, PLAY!!! And get all their busy little energy out. Mr. E loves parks because he's always loved slides. Watersides were his fixation for a couple of years but that.....is a whole other story.

Today I was happy to see him playing with other kids that were at the park. As he's gotten older he's wanted to play with other kids more and more but he still more often is content doing something by himself. At the park he would usually spend most his time at the slides and he's that kid not following the playground rules and is running back up the slide after he's just slid down.

1 if not 2 of the kids playing had to be about his same age which was also great because he tends to get along better and reach out more to kids younger.

I was entertained watching all of them run back and forth from the different play equipment. Mr. E would yell out, "I'm captain of this ship!" Then would run off yelling "hurry! A hurricane is coming, run for safety!" while the other kids followed yelling as well.

When I walked over to take pictures I noticed that he was yelling "all hells on deck! all hells on deck!" I started to laugh and told him that the phrase is suppose to be "all 'hands' on deck". I had to explain why they say that, and then I saw the light go on and he smiled and said "ohhhhhhh".

It wasn't until later that I started wondering if our consistency with Interactive metronome was what was making the difference with his social interaction.

Hobby Notebook

After Mr. E drew blueprints of buildings, he started drawing blueprints of some of his previous fixations like 'Forces of Nature' (as he puts it), and fireworks.

Fixation - Buildings blueprints

One night Mr. E came home SUPER excited from scouts because his scout master talked about how to build buildings and showed the boys how to make a blue print. (This amazing scout master knew Mr. E's latest fixation and he catered to that!)

Mr. E has a Hobby Notebook and these are some of his pictures....

Top 5 'E' isms

1 ~ This has always been our favorite 'E' ism :
While riding in the car a couple of years ago, Mr. E was staring out the window and was quiet most of the ride.Then out of the blue he said very seriously,
"Mom, did you know I'm sometimes taller than midgets."
I think he was introduced to midgets by watching 'Bedtime Stories'.... with this kid, who knows.

2 ~ A couple of times Mr. E asked me,
"Mom why aren't you happy?"
I usually responded saying
"Buddy I'm happy."
One day after he asked me the same thing again, I finally asked him why he didn't think I was happy and he said,
"Because you aren't smiling."
(Again an example of his literal thinking, he knows what he sees. After this experience I started talking to him more about facial expressions and people's responses and what they could mean.)


3 ~ While driving in the car one evening, Mr. E (in a serious tone) said "mom are you a witch?"
Me "No bud I'm not a witch"
Mr. E "Because if you are a witch you better not go down a water slide."
Me "............ummm is it because witches melt when they get wet like on The Wizard of Oz?"
Mr. E "Yeah if you go down a water slide you would be gone before you even hit the bottom right mom!?!"
Me "yes bud".


4 ~ His fascination with buildings includes apartments, hotels and motels but mostly he's interested because whenhe's trying to figure out which one the building is. As we were walking the other day, we walked past some apartments and he asked if it was a hotel, we told him they were apartments so he said, "Really!?! Apartments and hotels are like twins, like brother and sister!"

5. While at springs camp, the group played a song really well and Mr. E said, " that sounded like real music right!"

Fixation - Lego buildings

These are the only Legos we have left. His fascination for buildings has brought on this fascination for lego buildings which means... Mr. E wants more Legos. Not just Legos but lego buildings sets. He has already googled and found which ones he wants for his birthday and Christmas. Why do Legos have to be so expensive!?!

Top 5 'E' isms

1 ~ While watching basketball on TV with his dad,
"Dad why are there so many tan people playing?"

2 ~ Talking to his friend Jessie,
"I can't marry you because I'm already marrying Elle and she wants three kids and I want four or five kids so we need to go talk to the city and see which is good."

3 ~ The dogs ran out of the house before we could stop them so Mr. E threw his hands in the air and said, "Stupid Blops!" (Since we don't allow swearing in our home he has always made up his own words)

4 ~ Watching the chickens eat,
"That chicken just ate a whole glope!" (I assume 'glope' means 'a lot')

5 ~ Mr. E asked me,
"Why it is easier to balance a tall pole on your hand than to try to balance a short pole?" I told him that I didn't know and he responded very seriously and with some disappointment,
"Mom you should always know that." (That is his literal brain thinking. Though I'm flattered he thinks I know everything.)

LUNCH - what to feed this kid.

Mr E. isn't a super picky eater but there are things he doesn't care for and he definitely takes his time eating. This makes lunchtime at school very difficult. His pickiness actually comes more from the textures of the food than the taste.

School lunch.
I've always liked to go to the school and eat lunch with Mr. E from time to time, here are a few things I've noticed: He loves the chocolate milk and would drink it first but he would spend most of his lunchtime watching the chocolate milk go up and down the straw as he would suck on it.
Next he would pick the sweeter options like the fruit, which is good for you but he wouldn't ever make it to anything substantial then he wouldn't have much energy after lunch.

Home lunch.
He wouldn't always eat what we put in his home lunch. He again, would always go for the sweeter option first and then he'd take to long to eat it. He doesn't like PB sandwiches, which is crazy to me, what kid doesn't like PB & J's? He would only take a bite of a tuna fish sandwich at school yet he would eat the whole thing at home. He would never eat the soups, or pastas either. When we asked him what he would like in his lunch, he usually asked for a meat and cheese sandwich (as he calls it) but then many times would only finish part of it.

WE FINALLY FOUND THE ANSWER!!!!!

Home made luncheables!!!

As long as we put this in his lunch he would come home with an empty lunch pail. He also loves apples but a whole apple again, takes to long to eat and he won't eat the slices after they have browned. On pinterest : ) i found the answer to that dilema, we now cut them up and then drop some lemon juice or a drop of my lemon oil in the bag. They taste great and don't brown!

I win!!

Fixation - Buildings - Paper

Mr. E wanted to see youtube videos on how model buildings were built. We found some videos where they make the model buildings out of paper. He got started right away making his own paper city.

I found a fold-out brochure of a panoramic picture of New York, taken from Top of the Rock, from my New York trip last year. He was so excited when I gave it to him that he took it to school and showed his teacher and friends. He carried it around for a couple of weeks and would pull it out and look at it. He used the brochure to pick out the types of buildings to make for his paper model city. What was super cute is he decided to make a model city for himself and then got the idea to surprise his school teacher with a model city as well. She loved her model city and displayed it the rest of the school year.

Mr. E keeps asking if we can sell his little model city to the mayor of our city. I've told him that the mayor probably won't buy it but we can give it to him....

Fixation - Buildings and Earthquakes

Last fall Mr. E wanted to watch earthquakes on YouTube, I didn't know what kind of footage would be shown so I told him no. He asked if there are any lego earthquakes on there, not thinking there would be, I looked it up and low and behold there were tons of videos. Mr. E was in Mr. E Heaven!

This was great because the videos became a reward for homework and cello practice. Genius!

His fixation started evolving from earthquakes into buildings. He was becoming more and more fascinated with tall buildings and how buildings were built and wanting to see the tallest buildings in the world.

Everyday coming home from school, I would make sure to drive through downtown so that he could see the few tall buildings we have in our city. He asked me all kinds of questions I couldn't answer.

This picture is from his first attempts to build buildings. We only have a few Legos so he found other things to use instead. Once the buildings were built, he'd then ........of course, have an earthquake!

FORCES OF NATURE - Fixation, fascination, consternation

Today Mr. E has continued his 'what ifs' but instead of dinosaurs it is back to his good old Forces of Nature what ifs.
Back when he started kindergarten, he was completely undone by the fire alarm drill at his school. The alarm is was so loud that it even hurt my ears, but that was the year we started to learn about Mr. E's auditory sensitivities.
After that first incident, Mr. E started to ask questions about fires. When he finds a new fixation we have a hard time getting him to focus on anything else. It literally is an everyday fixation, a lot of 'what if' questions and he seems to see anything and everything that looks like or reminds him of the fixation.
Well over time fires turned into volcanoes then meteors then black holes then earthquakes then tornadoes and hurricanes then tsunamis ect. ect. ect. It would take about 45 min every night at bedtime to settle his mind down.
This is a small sample of how it would go down:

" mom, is there going to be a fire tonight"

We used to tell him that if there was a fire, we know what to do, but we quickly realized that the best thing was to say 'no there will not be a fire'

"Mom is there going to be an earthquake tonight?"
"No bud"
"Mom if there is an earthquake and we sleep through it are we all going to die?"
"Bud, there isn't going to be an earthquake tonight."
"Mom if there is an earthquake will grandma and grandpa feel it too?"
"Bud yes we all would feel it but there isn't going to be an earthquake."
"Mom would the earthquake scare Sally(our dog at the time)? Would she die or bark and wake us all up?"
"Bud, I promise there is to going to be an earthquake, we are safe"

"Mom is a meteor going to come down and hit our air conditioner and explode it?"

Preface: we had just moved into our new house and told curious Mr. E not to touch the utilities downstairs or the air conditioning unit outside. We didn't want him pushing buttons or taking things apart, we arned him that it could be dangerous if he touched it.

"No bud, no meteors are coming down"

" mom what if a boulder came down the mountain and crashed into our house"

Preface again: we made the big mistake of driving the kids up to see a house setting on the base of the mountain that had a boulder roll down and crash through it. The family had already moved out and you could still see the boulder.

" no a bolder could never reach our house, we are to far from the mountain and it would hit a whole bunch of houses before it ever hit ours."
"Mom what if it came down the mountain and jumped over all the houses and hit ours?"

(Well since we have a target on our house and boulders are alive..) so that is just a small sample of the conversation we would have every night before bed.

Tonight he started asking a lot of earthquake 'what ifs' and I wasn't doing so well at answering them all, plus I was tired and his mind was active, so I brought out one of his birthday presents I got him about 2 months ago and was saving for the actual day. I handed it to him and said "Happy early Birthday". He smiled and was excited to receive the forces of nature book. I told him that if he has questions then read the book. It seemed to really help and we sent him to bed with it.

JURASSIC PARK and the 'what ifs'

Mr. E's dad was super excited about the re-release of Jurassic Park in the theaters and wanted to take Mr. E's older sister and I suggested taking Mr. E also. When watching a movie or talking about an unpleasant topic, Mr. E doesn't seem to be as affected as his sisters. Often he looks at things more out of curiosity than putting himself into the shoes of the characters so I knew some parts of Jurassic Park would be scary for him, but I also knew he would be more fascinated than scared. We talked to him and told him about the movie and how scary it is and let him decide. He chose to go and loved it!! The next day he talked non-stop about the movie, and he even added dinosaurs to his scribblenauts DS game.

He told us about the parts that made him jump and the funny parts he liked. He started into his what ifs....
"Mom, what if we woke up and and there were 1000 Brontosaurus outside, what would we do?"
"Mom, what if we found a bunch of dinosaur eggs in our backyard?"
"Mom, what if
I always turn the question back on him, "I don't know Mr. E, what do you think?" And he will usually come up with something.

I feel he does the 'what ifs' because he is curious but also because he tries to create safety or a plan 'if' something were to happen.

Well, when bedtime came, I could not get the kid to go up to bed. Finally I asked why he wasn't going to bed and he said he wanted someone to be up there with him. I realized that the movie probably did scare him, which was expected, he is 10 yrs turning 11yrs and it was a PG 13 movie. It scared me at 14 yrs (forever ago). I told him that dad and I will be up there, and baby Zeek, and the girls are in the basement and the dogs are on the main floor in between so we are all here. That seemed to help some but I could still tell he felt a little uneasy. He still fell asleep.

He loved the movie but I probably should have showed him our DVD at home first so it wasn't in a big dark movie theater with the screen larger than life. We'll see how he does the next couple of days.

You want to do WHAT to earn money!?!

At Costco Mr. E saw the the tablets on sale and said in a whinny voice "awwwww those are probably $1000." I said "if you save $150 you can buy one". He said "but I need a pool table so I can earn money!" I asked him to explain and he told me that was going to compete and make money playing pool......I have no idea where he got that idea.

FIXATIONS GO EVERYWHERE.......even the cemetery.

Every year the day before Memorial Day, my grandma chooses a time to go put flowers on my grandpas grave and what makes it fun is the cousins, aunts, uncles ect who like to go at the same time. So while eating Sunday dinner we decided to prep the kids and tell them about visiting the cemetery after we eat and put flowers on great-grandpa Harward's grave. Of course they had questions so we chatted for a while, then cleaned up, climbed into the car and drove over to the cemetery. While there, Mr. E, who we thought understood our conversation at dinner, was standing next to my uncle behind the headstone trying to sound out the name (Harward).
"Har......Harwaaaa.....harrrrwwaaaarrrrrr.....ddd. Ohhh Harward!" Then while still looking at the headstone said "Harward. I miss Harward."
My uncle, also still looking at the headstone and finding humor in what Mr. E just said, responded with "yeah, I miss Harward too."
Mr. E then said "yeah....Harward was a good guy"
My uncle responded "yes he was a good guy".

There are so many times we will have a conversation with him or think he's listening and it goes in one ear and right out the other.....if it even goes in?
If there is something I need him to for sure hear, I will put my hand on his head and ask him to look me in the eyes. The contact seems to gain his focus.

Now for the fixations part.

His everyday fixation right now is buildings. He loves to build them out of Legos , toilet paper rolls, books, paper and really, just about anything he can find.

After the family gathering we walked through the cemetery and Ethan asked if he could have a really tall headstone that looked like a building or skyscraper. Then he spotted the perfect headstone and ran over to it and yelled back "just like this but with windows!" Then asked for a picture.
Yeahhh, I know, kind of funny to have your kid picking out his headstone.

Rifles shooting and auditory sensitivities.....not a good scenario.

Memorial Day: I decided to take the kids to the cemetery for the annual program the city puts on honoring the men and women that died serving our country. Thinking it would be a good experience for the kids, I soon discovered that I should have either prepared them better for it or waited until they were older. Mr. E and his sister Ems, who is only 18 months younger than him, kept fighting for the shady spot that the stroller gave. His 2yr old brother Zeek was restless so I gave him the IPad, but then Mr. E kept trying to play the games for Zeek which only made him scream. Embarrassed, I was tempted to leave but I knew Mr. E would really like to see the military guys shoot their guns. Mr. E's older sister Lou saved the day by offering to take Zeek and Ems for a walk around the cemetery.
When it came time for the guns to shoot, Mr. E plugged his ears and watched.......and I watched him to see how he would react. As soon as they were done, he said "that was cool!!" and ran over and grabbed from the ground a shell that flew out of one of the guns and ran back excited to show me. I was so proud of him, he didn't seem to be affected at all by the loud sound of the guns!!! He has done so well this year!