She is a LPC (Licensed Professional Counselor), a NCC (National Certified Counselor) and a DCFC (Diplomat Clinical Forensic Counseling) as well as a LPC Board Certified Supervisor.
Phew!
But the more important thing is that I like her!
And for the purposes of this blog, we will call her Therapist Katie.
I am always nervous about meeting new therapists. I haven't had the best luck out there in therapy land and I'm never super optimistic about it. So I got to her office right on time and filled out all of the paperwork and then we talked for a little while.
I can't even begin to tell you how nice it is to have a conversation with someone who is knowledgeable about AS! My normal conversations about my daughter usually start with me prefacing them with ten minutes of Asperger info so to have someone jump in and bring up other AS traits was awesome. Someone who just gets it!
We talked about school and she told me that she doesn't believe Trin is even getting 10% of the in-school assistance that she should be getting. And you know what? It was so nice to hear! Because I always feel like I am being a pain and asking for too much. I always feel like I am playing the AS Card and there isn't anyone around to tell me whether I should be or not.
It was a good meeting. The only thing we disagreed on was medication.
It is my belief that Trin should decide whether to be medicated. And I feel like in the next few years she will be able to tell me if she needs it. The main medication is for anxiety and I just feel like she should be able to tell me that she wants something for her "tummy aches". It's is Therapist Katie's belief that AS children are not capable of making that decision. I'm thinking I will let them meet and work together and see what she thinks later.
I feel like we have made so much progress at home that Therapist Katie will just be floored and may change her mind about what my AS child is and isn't capable of. :)
Our next appointment is on Tuesday at 2:00p. I will let ya'll know how it goes!
Thursday, November 15, 2007
Wednesday, November 7, 2007
Letting her be exposed...
I have a tendency to be a wall between her and the world.
I am especially a wall when I know that she is more susceptible to a quick mood swing.
One of these times is in the morning. I know that when she wakes up she can very easily turn from Asleep to Holy Terror. Because of this I try to keep our morning routine exactly the same...
5:30a - Get her dressed while she is still asleep.
(this is helpful for two reasons - 1. She usually wakes up while I am doing this and 2. There isn't the huge indecisiveness of trying to figure out what to wear and changing her clothes nineteen times...)
5:45a - Take her to the couch and give her a glass of apple juice. She usually will wake up enough when drinking her juice to stay awake.
5:55a - Turn on Stanley. We sing the "Oooh & Ahhh" song together and then the Stanley song and on a good morning she is fine after that.
This morning though, she was pretty cranky and when I took her to the bathroom to brush her hair she was teetering between Good Day and Bad Day. My brother was in the bathroom brushing his teeth when we came in (he is doing wonderfully at adjusting to living with all us chics and only having one bathroom! lol). Well as I am brushing her hair, he starts humming at her while brushing his teeth.
I almost turned to him and told him to knock it off.
I was so close to saying it.
But I happened to look at her in the mirror first to see how she was taking this unscheduled noise in her morning and saw her smiling.
Smiling.
His humming, his out of our routine action, decided her mood and pushed her into Good Day.
But more importantly, she learned this morning that something out of our norm can be good.
I am especially a wall when I know that she is more susceptible to a quick mood swing.
One of these times is in the morning. I know that when she wakes up she can very easily turn from Asleep to Holy Terror. Because of this I try to keep our morning routine exactly the same...
5:30a - Get her dressed while she is still asleep.
(this is helpful for two reasons - 1. She usually wakes up while I am doing this and 2. There isn't the huge indecisiveness of trying to figure out what to wear and changing her clothes nineteen times...)
5:45a - Take her to the couch and give her a glass of apple juice. She usually will wake up enough when drinking her juice to stay awake.
5:55a - Turn on Stanley. We sing the "Oooh & Ahhh" song together and then the Stanley song and on a good morning she is fine after that.
This morning though, she was pretty cranky and when I took her to the bathroom to brush her hair she was teetering between Good Day and Bad Day. My brother was in the bathroom brushing his teeth when we came in (he is doing wonderfully at adjusting to living with all us chics and only having one bathroom! lol). Well as I am brushing her hair, he starts humming at her while brushing his teeth.
I almost turned to him and told him to knock it off.
I was so close to saying it.
But I happened to look at her in the mirror first to see how she was taking this unscheduled noise in her morning and saw her smiling.
Smiling.
His humming, his out of our routine action, decided her mood and pushed her into Good Day.
But more importantly, she learned this morning that something out of our norm can be good.
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
My greatest fear...
Taken from this article:
This gender dynamic doesn’t necessarily affect girls with Asperger’s when they are very young; if anything, they often fare better than boys at an early age because they tend to be less disruptive. In 1993, Catherine Lord, a veteran autism researcher, published a study of 21 boys and 21 girls. She found that when the children were between the ages of 3 and 5, parents more frequently described the girls as imitating typical kids and seeking out social contacts. Yet by age 10, none of the girls had reciprocal friendships while some of the boys did. “The girls often have the potential to really develop relationships,’ says Lord, a psychology and psychiatry professor and director of the Autism and Communication Disorders Center at the University of Michigan. “But by middle school, a subset of them is literally dumbstruck by anxiety. They do things like bursting into tears or lashing out in school, which make them very conspicuous. Their behavior really doesn’t jibe with what’s expected of girls. And that makes their lives very hard.”
After Trin's diagnosis last year, we stopped therapy.
I had been searching for a reason for all of the madness and once one was found, we jumped off the roller coaster and started to focus on rebuilding our lives and including AS as one of the bricks. I read up on EVERYTHING I could find and picked a few things to try and just put one foot in front of the other until we were moving along at a reasonable speed.
But I am afraid.
I can see her starting to get upset often about not having friends. She has cried when someone has said something mean to her. School can be a scary place for her when it comes to kids and playing and their attempt at structure and knowing that I cannot make everything right has pushed me back towards therapy. So in the next two weeks, we will start seeing a new therapist, one recommended to us by Any Baby Can.
And I am hoping that with new therapy she will stand a chance at making some friends and fitting in socially because it breaks my heart to see her struggle.
This gender dynamic doesn’t necessarily affect girls with Asperger’s when they are very young; if anything, they often fare better than boys at an early age because they tend to be less disruptive. In 1993, Catherine Lord, a veteran autism researcher, published a study of 21 boys and 21 girls. She found that when the children were between the ages of 3 and 5, parents more frequently described the girls as imitating typical kids and seeking out social contacts. Yet by age 10, none of the girls had reciprocal friendships while some of the boys did. “The girls often have the potential to really develop relationships,’ says Lord, a psychology and psychiatry professor and director of the Autism and Communication Disorders Center at the University of Michigan. “But by middle school, a subset of them is literally dumbstruck by anxiety. They do things like bursting into tears or lashing out in school, which make them very conspicuous. Their behavior really doesn’t jibe with what’s expected of girls. And that makes their lives very hard.”
After Trin's diagnosis last year, we stopped therapy.
I had been searching for a reason for all of the madness and once one was found, we jumped off the roller coaster and started to focus on rebuilding our lives and including AS as one of the bricks. I read up on EVERYTHING I could find and picked a few things to try and just put one foot in front of the other until we were moving along at a reasonable speed.
But I am afraid.
I can see her starting to get upset often about not having friends. She has cried when someone has said something mean to her. School can be a scary place for her when it comes to kids and playing and their attempt at structure and knowing that I cannot make everything right has pushed me back towards therapy. So in the next two weeks, we will start seeing a new therapist, one recommended to us by Any Baby Can.
And I am hoping that with new therapy she will stand a chance at making some friends and fitting in socially because it breaks my heart to see her struggle.
Monday, November 5, 2007
One day at a time...
Reason other parents will think I am insane:
I sent her to school today in a princess costume. It wasn't anything too frilly, just a dress made by my half sister's grandmother for my oldest daughter to wear on Halloween a few years ago. I made her wear shorts under it as well as an undershirt and I had to safety pin the back to make sure it would fall down off of her shoulders.
Reason I don't care that the other parents will think I am insane:
We got out of the house this morning without incident. In fact, she was smiling all morning.
I sent her to school today in a princess costume. It wasn't anything too frilly, just a dress made by my half sister's grandmother for my oldest daughter to wear on Halloween a few years ago. I made her wear shorts under it as well as an undershirt and I had to safety pin the back to make sure it would fall down off of her shoulders.
Reason I don't care that the other parents will think I am insane:
We got out of the house this morning without incident. In fact, she was smiling all morning.
Saturday, November 3, 2007
Hope For The Hopeless - A Fine Frenzy
This song always reminds me a little of Trin:
Stitch in your knitted brow
and you don't know how
you're gonna get it out
crushed under heavy chest
trying to catch your breath
but it always beats you by a step, all right now
making the best of it
playing the hand you get
you're not alone in this
there's hope for the hopeless
there's hope for the hopeless
there's hope
cold in a summer breeze
yeah, you're shivering
on your bended knee
still, when you're heart is sore
and the heavens pour
like a willow bending with the storm, you'll make it
running against the wind
playing the cards you get
something is bound to give
there's hope for the hopeless
there's hope for the hopeless
there's hope
there's hope
there's hope
there's hope
Stitch in your knitted brow
and you don't know how
you're gonna get it out
crushed under heavy chest
trying to catch your breath
but it always beats you by a step, all right now
making the best of it
playing the hand you get
you're not alone in this
there's hope for the hopeless
there's hope for the hopeless
there's hope
cold in a summer breeze
yeah, you're shivering
on your bended knee
still, when you're heart is sore
and the heavens pour
like a willow bending with the storm, you'll make it
running against the wind
playing the cards you get
something is bound to give
there's hope for the hopeless
there's hope for the hopeless
there's hope
there's hope
there's hope
there's hope
Friday, November 2, 2007
Book Review: The Asperger Parent by Jeffrey Cohen
This was a fantastic book.
It was written for the parent who has a good idea of what they're dealing with so you aren't having to read again all the diagnostic criteria and history of AS... and it's just such a supportive book to read.
When my daughter was diagnosed, everyone thought I was nuts. They thought that I was over-reacting and that her behavior wasn't really as bad as I had made it out to be. They heard the same word that I initially heard: Autism. And they thought the same thing I initially though: no way! But instead of getting on board with me, instead of having to do all of the follow up research, they got to just walk away with their initial "no way" thoughts and I had to hang out with the reality of it all.
Like it wasn't hard enough to receive that news without having everyone tell you that what you didn't want to hear couldn't possibly be true.
Yeah, because that helps.
The book was written in such a "been there, done that, you're doing the right things" kind of way. And from someone who has actually been there and done that before you. And not by someone in the medical field, but from a parent who went through everything the same way you did.
It's a wonderful book and I highly, highly recommend that you get it and read it and then pass it on to someone else who you might know could use it. It helps you exhale some of the breath you've been holding since you first found out that your child has AS.
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