Dispatches from the sunburned wastelands

We had breakfast this morning at that nice organic cafe in the Belconnen Markets...The little monster is in the pic below, playing with his new toy. Martin's Ipod Touch was the best early Christmas present we ever could have bought. Several other blogs about autistic children have mentioned the effect it has, so we took the (financial) plunge and bought him one...And what a difference it has made. It's so easy to avert a meltdown now - just hand him his ipod. There are lots of free educational games to download from the Itunes store, like iWriteWords, which is just amazing, and really enhances his finger dexterity. We just have to ensure that he doesn't drop it from a great height, or bite through the casing...

Posted by HannesB at 1:48 PM Comments

Between the time of our first visit to the developmental paediatrician, and the time of the scheduled psychological assessment, we started reading everything we could find about autism. I mean, apart from the movie Rainman, who knew anything about autism, anyway? We certainly didn’t. So we waited, and read, and grew ever more anxious, because some of the stuff we were digging up on the internet were harrowing. This is (some) of what we learned:

• There is no “cure” for autism. Ever.
• Most autistic people with communication problems never learn to speak.
• Despite several extremely crackpot ideas out there, nobody knows what causes autism. A few decades ago, people thought it was caused by bad parenting (some still do). Now it’s thought to be genetic.
• The medical term is Autistic Spectrum Disrorder, or ASD, not autism.
• Even though the symptoms of ASD are mostly behavioural, it is now thought to be a neurological disability.

We also came across something called “applied behavioural modification” or ABA and “early intervention” , which sounded to us like a treatment...

Posted by HannesB at 2:34 PM Comments

Since the moment he stopped crawling, Martin was always running. It was as if he could not stop the urge to run. Whenever we would go somewhere - a park, or the mall, or anyplace new to him, he would immediately start running. The problem with this was, he never came back on his own. You could call and shout, but the little running man just kept on going. Oh, and he also did not want to be put in his stroller anymore - trying that resulted in some serious melt-downs. So we adapted. When we went to the mall, he got put into a shopping trolley. When going to a park we had to be prepared to run after him, and try "herding" techniques. And we stopped our attempts at leisurely family picnics, going to the markets, or going for a hike in the bush. At daycare, they started calling him "runaway martin", and put notices on the doors for unsuspecting people to be ware that small running boy might escape when a door is being kept open too long. I thought that it was funny, at first. Round about when he was eighteen months old, we started wondering about his hearing - because surely that must be the reason why he never responded to his name being called, and explained his delayed speech development. And the running? Well, that was just the way he expressed himself. After the hearing tests came back negative , we had to face the fact that there might be something else going on with him. We went to our family GP, and told him about our worries. He referred us to a developmental paediatrician. It took us ages to get in to see him (a common problem due to a lack of medical specialist in Canberra). When we finally went to see him, we were slightly embarrassed. Won't he just laugh at our worries, and tell us that our little boy is just being a normal toddler? Martin did his normal running routine when we went into the paediatrician's office, and after listening to our worries, he agreed that there might be something wrong and referred us to a developmental psychologist for an assessment. That evening, we felt shell-shocked. One the one hand, we were glad that it wasn't just our imaginations that something might be wrong with Martin, but on the other hand, who wants to be told that their little wonderful Boy might have a disability? To be continued.

Posted by HannesB at 10:49 AM Comments

Posted by HannesB at 9:00 PM Comments

About this time last year, we started to realize that the little monster was maybe a little different than most other kids his age. Although we had gotten over the initial worries of him walking, what with him being born with crooked feet an all, and he was now running around like a little energizer battery bunny, we were still a littler worried about his delayed speech development. 18 months old by then, he had lost most of his (admittedly few) earliest words. We were watching him with other kids his age, and where they were busy babbling away and using words like yes and no, he would be silent. No finger pointing t indicate what he wanted, and he also didn't come running at the sound of his name. "Oh, he'll be alright," everybody told us. Everyone seemed to know of someones children who took ages to develop speech. Round about this time, the LM was started being plagued by ear infections. Towards the end of last year, we decided that the constant ear problems must, must! have created some sort of hearing loss, and we decided to send him for a hearing test. By this time, it was also a major effort to take him to see any kind of medical professional. As soon as he entered a building that just vaguely resembled a doctor's chambers, he would start running, screaming and throwing tantrum's. The testing provided no explanation - his hearing was fine. Upon hearing the results, I pondered this for a moment, and then turned to Mrs B: "could there be something else wrong with him...like autism?" This was the first time that one of us uttered the dreaded "A"-word.

To be continued...

Posted by HannesB at 3:06 PM Comments

I know, I know, I haven't been keeping the blog up to date. I promise I'll try to post more. A new year's resolution, if you will. The last few weeks have been eventful, on a personal basis. The Little Monster has had several ear infections, and when we finally went to see the specialist ('only' a six week wait - funny how fast that seems, after two years in Aus), the LM decided that enough was enough, and threw a spectacular "wobbly" as the ozzies call a tantrum. And he's not even two yet. "Not to worry," the receptionist told me, "mine was worse: I couldn't leave the house with him for a full year, between his 2nd and 3rd birthdays!" I can't wait.

Mrs B set sail for the Coral Sea this afternoon, from the far northern port city of Townsville, in Northern Queensland. The Coral Sea is on the other side of the Great Barrier Reef. She will be spending the next two weeks doing research on shallow water spectra reflectance (that's remote sensing-talk for: what happens to the sunlight once it reaches the surface of the ocean, and how can we make use of that knowledge?). They will be sailing for two days (!) due east, before reaching the first of the sample areas...Here's a Google Earth location map of the area:

I'll occasionally report on my mental state, all alone with the LM...

Posted by HannesB at 8:11 PM Comments

We just wanted a life of serenity and calm. You know, peace, zen, tranquility. We'd go to Australia, we thought, land of surf and beaches and sun, and on Sundays we'd lie in hammocks all day, drinking tall cold glasses of something alcoholic and yummy, leisurely page through the no-doubt excellent Sunday papers, talk about politics and philosophy over a glass of delicate Chardonnay, and maybe throw something nice on the barbecue, if we get hungry.

....Instead, now, on Sundays, we get this:

Posted by HannesB at 8:46 PM Comments

He's in running mode at the moment - never walks, always runs. Usually with one of us behind him. But, in rare moments like these, don't you just want to love him to bits?

Posted by HannesB at 11:27 AM Comments