Thomas the Tank Engine

27 October 2014

Saturday Moment: Halloween Prep in Sodor Brings Some Surprises

IMG_0018He’s on a roll with drawings and decorating, and today the trains need Halloween prep. I never fail to marvel at the focus and precision he brings to these projects, which are totally his idea. Add to that he has positioned himself right in the middle of our own project of reorganizing part of the basement – we are working near and around him, going back and forth, calling to each other and generally making a racket. He is unperturbed. Add to this list of potential antecedents my request that he move part of his train set temporarily so that I can clean out and move a cabinet that holds various frames, craft supplies, toys and videos. I don’t really want him to see the things I intend to give away, but have already decided that I won’t give away anything he wants me to keep. We have finally learned to pick our battles.

IMG_0016I can tell he doesn’t want to move the train tracks out of my way, and I am prepared for him to declare that I am an Onion lady who is too full of organizing.  I wait a while to let the request sink in and focus on something else. Then he materializes in front of me, holding a box of videos: “I’m too old for these.” They are Richard Scarry ABC and counting videos. They are my favorites. But I take them and set them aside with the other “give away” things.

Then he appears with another box of videos, classic Disney this time. “We have all of these on DVD, which is more efficient.” Then I realize that, rather than move the tracks or allow me to navigate around them (which I couldn’t – I’m such a klutz I would definitely step on them) he is carefully removing everything from the cabinet himself.

IMG_0017So while he was constructing Halloween decorations for his trains, he was also making decisions about growing up, and managing change and doing it all beautifully, meticulously, and offering up explanations along the way. A task that would have been frought with emotion and behavior management (and that in younger years I would probably have attempted in the middle of the night or while he was somewhere else) had evolved so peacefully I almost didn’t notice – until I realized that he was having an easier time parting with things than I was (you don’t want that 12-foot train puzzle that you put together a thousand times, really?).

Not so long ago I wondered if he would ever grow out of some things and I concluded at the time that it didn’t hurt to wait. It’s not always true that all things come to those who wait, but on this day it is. As I was reminded by him more than once this week, “Patience is a virtue, Mom.” True, that.

13 June 2013

Developmental Dilemma: What To Keep

Part of me thinks that no one should ever have to outgrow Toy Story.

Part of me thinks that no one should ever have to outgrow Toy Story.

Ever since the 18th birthday earlier this spring, I’ve been in a state of emotional turmoil. It’s only a slight exaggeration. Now I try to make some sense of a teenager’s room that runs the gamut from Winnie-the-Pooh to Scooby Doo with everything in between. It’s a collector’s dream and a parent’s nightmare. I’ve learned the hard way that throwing the wrong thing out means I will be hounded eventually to replace it – it could be five weeks or 5 years from now, just long enough to make what cost me $1.99 in 2003 now cost $67.99 on Ebay today. I know parents who have purged their house of everything Thomas and Pixar to help their kids become adults but my problem is that I really am loath to replace Toy Story with the Man of Steel. To me, that’s just another kind of arrested development. More importantly, he’s not interested in that stuff – he sleeps soundly through superhero movies on a regular basis. He loves what he loves.

IMG_4800And the books. Which ones will he ever read? How can we know what will prove useful or interesting, just by waiting patiently for him to notice the ones placed where he sees them every day? To get rid of the easy readers seems mean, to get rid of the more advanced books seems pessimistic.

IMG_4804

Will he look beyond the action figures to the books behind them? Maybe.

Downstairs are the bins of paperwork that requires filing or tossing – one for school, one for insurance, one for general ASD stuff, one for transition, one for keepsakes and artwork that show developmental progress, or the lack thereof. But I only end up weeding things out I know are redundant – I just don’t know when a school or a court will need to see what we have and I’m afraid to get rid of something that could be a key piece of evidence of … I don’t know. And every bin or toys or papers brings a flood of memories and emotions that don’t want to stay on the shelf where I keep them. I am trying so hard to focus on the future that sifting through the past seems like a bad idea just now.

So I guess I’ll stick with The Wizard of Oz and The Sound of Music – at least they are live action – and wait a bit longer for the moment when we can at least move some stuff up to the attic. And we will know soon enough what schools, doctors, agencies and lawyers require and then, maybe then, we can let go of at least some of the past.

Remember Cats versus Dogs? They’re all in here.

8 April 2013

25+ Movies and Shows that Pass the Tests of Time, Patience, and Scripting – and 10+ that Don’t

Yes, we have a lot of movies.

Yes, we have a lot of movies.

In a nod to the late Roger Ebert, I’ve assembled a list of movies and shows that can endure the repeated watching that results with having an ASD person in the family. This list is highly personalized – you may find the movies I love are the ones you can’t  stand – still, I’ve tried to give a quick rationale for why I like or dislike each one. There is one universal truth: if you expose ASD kids to inappropriate language, they will repeat it – in public and loudly. SpongeBob Squarepants deserves a post all to itself. You’ll have to wait for that one. The Same goes for Finding Nemo. The jury is still out on Scooby Doo.

Do

All of the Scholastic/Weston Woods videos of classic books like Goodnight Gorilla, A Story A Story and Strega Nona

Having the paper books available and turning on the subtitles for each story clearly bolstered our boy’s verbal and sight reading skills.

Sesame Street/The Muppet Show/Muppet Movies

Inexplicably, we go through pro and anti-muppet phases and continue to have lengthy discussions about the “realness” of Muppets. The Muppets are also very useful in teaching about humor and jokes like puns – ASD kids seem to read the social cues of muppets better than in actual people.

Richard Scarry’s Busytown/Busy People

Lovely music and great ways to learn alphabets, rhyming and counting. Also good to have these books handy for reading/storytelling skills.

Dumbo

So many people think this movie is too sad, but there is no greater depiction of the mother-baby connection in animated film. The pink elephants and the crows are also objectionable to some people, but that Casey Junior Train is an icon that endures. It’s what inspired the artist in our boy. For years he would set paper, crayons and paint in front of me and make me (and his teachers) draw it over and over – and then one day he did it himself.

Kipper

His Kipper scripting was so spot-on that everyone at the local pool thought he was British. I could watch this forever. I may have to.

Wallace & Gromit/Shaun the Sheep

Hilarious. A Close Shave is a little scary, FYI. Shaun is a tiny non-verbal sheep – our boy identified strongly with him.

Thomas the Tank Engine/Thomas and the Magic Railroad

The older the better – Ringo, James Carlin and Alec Baldwin if you can find them. At one point I wrote to Baldwin telling him he should make videos as Mr. Conductor in which he eats a variety of foods to model good eating habits – the single act of eating celery and carrots in the Magic Railroad movie changed our lives. No, he didn’t write back.

Cars

The themes seem to resonate – loyalty, frustration, friendship, racing. Skip the second one.

The Wizard of Oz

Our boy’s favorite song: If I Only Had a Brain. Do not, under any circumstances, see Oz the Great and Powerful.

The Sound of Music

My favorite story about this movie: when we were doing cognitive testing, the examiner asked our boy who discovered America and the answer our boy gave him was, “Christopher Plummer.” Also, he drew the cathedral wedding scene using the characters from Scooby Doo.

The Polar Express

No explanation needed. Later this year I’ll do a more detailed post on Christmas viewing.

Live action Peter Pan (2003)

The Disney version pales in comparison to this visually stunning, complex version, in which Jason Issacs’ Hook is the perfect villain with a sympathetic edge. Old, alone, done for.

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang

Truly scrumptious. The child catcher scared the hell out of me when I was a kid, but made zero impact on my kids. Go figure.

The Lion King

I didn’t want to add it to the list, but I had to. It’s the Elton John/Nathan Lane/Jeremy Irons factor.

The Road to Eldorado

Totally underrated – visually stunning with dialogue and songs well worth repeating.

The Emperor’s New Groove

Boom, baby! The incomparable Eartha Kitt. Kronk and his own theme music. Possibly the highlight of David Spade’s career.

Hercules

Pegasus. Excellent soundtrack.

Toy Story

All of them – he literally grew up with them, and Andy’s going off to college is the best story we have yet on transition issues.

Looney Tunes

We did have to hide this one for awhile because his standard response to everything became “Beep! Beep!” but it’s back in circulation now. We simply cannot live without Wile E. Coyote, super genius.

What’s Up Doc?

Yes, Eunice. Our boy dressed as Howard Bannister regularly for months. Possibly my favorite movie ever.

Raiders of the Lost Ark and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

These are great – skip the other two.

Don’t

Up

I don’t know anyone who was not destroyed by the first 20 minutes of this movie – it actually triggered such anxiety in our boy that we had to see professional help.

Ice Age

Sorry, Scrat. No redeeming dialogue or plots, and scripted speech from Sid the Sloth is really, really bad.

Jurassic Park

We couldn’t really avoid it, and it really is a good movie but: too much screaming! Also, the only curse word our boy uses is a perfect imitation of Samuel L. Jackson’s “Damn!”

The Sword and the Stone

Yes, Merlin is a hoot, but if I hear “I’ve had enough of this nonsense!!” one more time I will blow myself to Bermuda.

Cinderella

Lucifer the cat was the bane of my existence for years. Too much meanness.

Beauty and the Beast

Gaston and the angry mob bring out all the worst qualities of scripted speech.

The Wolfman

We canceled our premium cable channels after he stumbled on this and became obsessed by both the sex scene and the transformation from man to beast. It did help us communicate at a  key point in his development because we realized that references to the Wolfman occurred when he experienced digestive pain.

Both lists could go on forever, but these are the ones that come to mind without a trip to the movie shelf. If you’ve found anything good, helpful or just fun for older kids and teens please post a comment – we are always looking for more adult content that is not too adult, in terms of language, sex and violence.

30 October 2012

A Different Kind of Storm

Hurricane Sandy may have passed, but clouds remain on our horizon. I’m not yet ready to post about our boy’s ordeal over the past couple of weeks, but as we stumble through the second day of weather-related school cancellations I see a furrowed brow and a short temper that prompts me to warn my younger son to cut his older brother a wide berth. Other families face much greater challenges from aggression than we, but I am so conflict-averse that even the rough and tumble of typical adolescent boys sets me on edge. We are all off kilter from too much TV storm coverage and howling wind and pouring rain, followed now by creepy cloudy silence and listless lack of routine. We know we are fortunate to have the power on and the trees intact – it wasn’t our turn this time but who knows what the winter will bring now that we have used two of our snow days.

We read on Facebook about some families taking delight in the drama of storm prep and others – the ones with kids on the spectrum – wary of how no power or school might unsettle their kids. We are somewhere between. My boy slept in the basement last night to protect his trains and animals from the perceived threat of the storm – his strong protective instincts run from cutting trees with Dad to carefully tending to his stuff: the Thomas trains stored in their sheds and Playmobil animals in the barns – even the portable DVD player that is the Sodor Drive-in theatre tucked safely away. Camping on the couch in his sleeping bag is part of what makes him such a beast today even though he came upstairs at dawn and finished his rest in our bed after Dad went to work, his feet looking for mine while he fidgeted in his sleep.

And as I write I hear the boys talk in warm tones and the sun emerges to cast a brighter, wintry light on wet fallen leaves and bare branches. The clouds are expected to come and go with maybe one more wallop of rain from the backside of the storm. We’ll proceed cautiously through today and look forward to the routine of tomorrow – which, I now realize, is Halloween. Oh boy.

15 April 2012

Before the Moment Passes

As the Easter Season winds down and we put the harbingers of Resurrection away, I must recognize the egg tradition as it plays out here.  This year, our boy chose to dedicate his annual painting of the wooden eggs to his trains and tugs.  Borne of my desire to avoid the smell and potential disaster of eggs and vinegar dyes, the wooden eggs painted by all of us over the past dozen years are scattered throughout the house.  Each year, it brings the renewal of the spirit home for us.