Ethan loves the concept of Halloween: dressing in costume and trick or treating, parties at school, candy... what's not to like?
I'll tell you what's not to like: Every store, mall, and restaurant decked out like a haunted house. It freaks him out. He runs away screaming and trembling. Stuff like jack-o-lanterns/pumpkins and small decorations are fine, but these large displays with skeletons, monsters, and witches and not to mention anything that lights up or makes noise by sensor activation are terrifying to him.
We're having problems all over the place. It happened last year and the anxiety has built up even bigger this year. We go anywhere and he asks "are there going to be Halloween decorations?" Poor thing. He knows it's all "fake" and just decorations for fun, but still panics at the sight of it.
So we've decided to desensitize him as much as possible. We dragged him into the decoration display at Target and forced him to look and touch things and pick out things to decorate the house. We bought some of that cobweb stuff and he picked out little rubber skeletons and spiders. Then we picked out two "scary" skeleton things (a head and a pirate skeleton) and made him hold them. At first he held them away but then after a few minutes, he became more relaxed with them. Then we took the play tent and decorated the inside like a haunted house. He helped decorate and then sat inside it. He was nervous at first, but then became more comfortable. I'm still not sure how this will translate to being somewhere and seeing elaborate decorations, but we'll keep on making him get close and touch things. It's really a battle right now, because they're everywhere.
As far as 2nd grade: It's now the 4th week of school and he seems to be adjusting well. He has a regular group of friends that he's eating lunch with and playing with at recess. The aides are supposed to be facilitating his interactions and make sure he's not just wandering around the playground by himself. So far so good. The homework had been very easy (mostly review) until this week. He came home with some math that was logic and reason based problems. Wow - 2nd grade? It was difficult for him to know where to begin. I had to prompt/facilitate on quite a bit of it, but he did okay. He couldn't do it independently. He's going to need a lot of practice with it, but we knew that going into this year. I'll check in w/his resource specialist to see if she's working on that with him.
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chasethestars
chasethestars
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he's adjusting to the small stuff, we'll see how that translates to the big stuff
and I did put in a request for your books in the library... it wasn't at any of the San Jose libraries.
Lastly for this evening I wanted to comment on Halloween. I have a cousin who for the longest time would not go into my grandparents sun room where there were animated characters that would sing and dance. I like the way you handled your sons fear of the figures, but I want to put it into perspective. I do not neccesarily think that it is the fear of the figures that bother him but more the fear of the unknown. By putting him in a room or tent when he could get comfortable with the creatures in his own environment is good but that might not take away the fear completely. The creatures make noises and the noises may bother your sons ears depending on his sensory needs. The creatures also make different noises and therefore startle your son or pull him out of his world. This means that whatever he is currenly deeply thinking about startles or frightens him when he hears these noises. The other thing to keep in mind is that Halloween is once a year and exposure is the key. If your son likes to color have him color halloween pictures. There are also less scary things about Halloween such as pumpkin patches and hay rides. Im sure there are crafts on the internet for Halloween that he and his friends could create during their after school social group. An example of this is to make a spider.
Directions:
Break up the foam egg carton into the twelve sections. You need googly eyes, glue black paint, paint brushes, black pipe cleaner cut up. 8 legs per spider
Kids:
paint the foam black
glue on the googly eyes
poke the legs into the foam once the paint is dry.
Another idea is you carving pumpkins with your son and let him feek the seeds. If he does not like the feel gently place your hand over his and guide his hand over the guts of the pumpkin. I also wrote down the name of the book so thank you so much. I hope some of the ideas help and good luck with your son.
Thanks so much for your thoughts. Since you're interested in/studying, I'll share some more of mine.
Social interaction: I think the single most important thing we have done for Ethan is to help him foster social/peer relationships. We have immersed him in play-dates, social gatherings, birthday parties, school events, etc. He has gotten to know his peers and their families and they have come to know Ethan.
As far as school/education: Something I have observed among parents, educators, and people in the autism community is a very odd reluctance to talk about mental retardation. It's almost as if the words themselves are tabu. Autism has a huge overlap with mental retardation (some estimates as high as 70%). They are rather entwined in that you can't really separate one from the other within in the individual. The truth of the matter is that mental retardation (or rather lack there of) remains the main indicator of prognosis for autistic children. So I think that most children on the spectrum who have significant cognitive ability are going to function fairly well in a general education class. The sensory issues can be dealt with therapeutically and/or stratigically, but the child will need the inherent cognitive capability to do the schoolwork.
Halloween: Ethan's fine with crafts and pumpkins and things like that. We've carved jackolanterns the past 2 years. But thanks for the spider craft - looks like fun. I think he has a phobia of larger scary things (many kids do). The problem is how many stores, malls, restaurants, really every where we go decorate from mid September to Nov 1st. As much as it's an impractical issue in terms of not wanting to go to Applebee's because the entrance hall looks like a haunted house, it's a very dangerous situation. We were walking on the outside of the mall and as we passed a very elaborate halloween store window display, Ethan tried to run away (toward traffic). It took all my strength to grab his arm and hold him back. He was so frightened that he was not paying attention at all -strictly fight or flight reactopm. If it was one day a year, it wouldn't be a big deal. The problem is that it's about six weeks long and has permeated into our entire community. So it's something he's going to need to face. We're starting small and working our way up (and scarier). He may not ever "love" haunted houses, but we need to get him to the point that he can function in the world around him.
Thanks for taking the time to read. Good luck with your studies.