spectrumom

Nathan recently went through a period of the hardest handclapping I have ever seen or heard.  My husband (who builds audio equipment such as speakers and has some experience in this area) estimated it at at least 120dB.  It was explosive.  He clapped so hard he got calluses.  That then cracked open.  The more frustrated or angry he would get the longer and louder he would get.  When we were at home I would ask him to go to another room because I find the noise to be quite painful.  Once in the car with just me he began doing it.  The sound was excruciating to me in that closed space.  I tried holding his hands down and he looked daggers at me and snarled "Get your hands off me."  I was actually thrilled, although I told him that I would help him control his body until he could do it for himself.  Luckily with another med adjustment (we're in the middle of an extended phase of this right now) that has mostly gone away. One of the recent big stories in the autistic comm

We had Parent Teacher Conferences for both the High School and the Elementary School last night. When we got the schedules it looked like this: High School    6:10-6:20 Mrs. K    6:20-6:30 Mrs. W    6:30-6:40 Mr. M I was worried about having enough time to talk and also transition between classes.  But THEN we got Isaac's schedule: Elementary (3 miles away)    6:40-6:50 Mrs. S Yeah.  So I fired an email off to change that.  Here's what we found out. Our little Aspie is a math whiz.  He's in 2nd grade working at a 4.5 grade level.  I know that Paul and I met while getting our undergrad math degrees (nerd?!  How dare you.)  But still, it's not like we overtly teach him shit.  He can do multiplication and division.  Where the hell did he learn that? He's also reading at grade level according to the computer.  But I think it's higher.  He has a very measured way of speaking, and his first grade teacher told us people read the way they talk. Did