Mum Is Thinking

Oh, that’s right, I have a blog! I almost forgot.

We’ve been coasting along this last few weeks. There is paperwork to fill and home schooling to attend to. The usual creative endeavours of painting and cooking (in the last two weeks we’ve made homemade falafel, homemade sausages, sushi and steamed Chinese dumplings, biscotti among other less interesting things) and numerous art projects with the kids (currently working on a diorama of Japan). It’s pretty boring stuff to read about, though not so boring when you can get your hands dirty and dig in.

Probably the most interesting thing we’ve done lately was to take the boys to a local botanical garden for a picnic. We’ve been there so many times that we’re all comfortable with the area even though it’s quite large and can be confusing to the uninitiated. The one thing that impressed me the most about this visit was that I was able to tell the boys, after lunch, that they were allowed to explore from the boundaries of A to B to C and they knew exactly where I meant. Even better that I knew I could see them from my vantage point, even if there were brief times when it was only a flash of a red tee shirt shining through the bushes.

It’s interesting to find we’re now in the position that I’m seeking experiences for my youngest to roam further and further afield from me. There was a time when I wouldn’t have thought that would be possible, or even desirable. It feels I spent the first half of his life trying to get him to hold my hand and not run away into busy roads and old people tottering through the shops. There came a point, though, a couple of years ago when he was under considerable stress from a difficult school situation, that I started to notice he was clutching my hand like it was a life preserver everywhere we went. I don’t know if the stress he was dealing with was a factor in that, but it worried me no end at the time. It was when we resumed homeschooling last year that I started to realise I needed to work on building his confidence in himself, and start looking for ways to allow him more freedom to navigate by himself. It was a difficult leap for ME to make, especially considering the amount of worry and stress we had through those first 4 years but I think it is necessary.

In some ways this is harder for me than for him, I think. I have to remind myself often to stand back in many ways. It’s hard to get past those habits of jumping in to offer ‘assistance’.

Our experience of his finally learning to tie his shoes the day that mum wasn’t there to ‘help’ keeps coming to mind. I know in my heart that he needs space to explore and learn on his own and I can see that he is often accomplishing tasks with greater ease and pleasure when I allow him that. I remind myself often that he needs to find by himself the space between the words he writes and the people he passes as he walks through a crowd rather than having me steer him through.

I can relate my own experiences as a child to what I see him going through at the moment. The things I learned best were things I learned on my own. It’s true that I needed support and help, and so does he. But holding those laces in your own hand, and working out the steps to tie them in your own head without interference of ‘help’ is worth so much more than having someone else do it for you.

We made a poster for our wall. “Give a man a fish and you feed him for one day. Teach a man to fish and he’ll eat for life.” I know, it’s a quote that’s been done to death, but it’s apt for us at the moment.

So that’s where we are. He’s exploring, I’m trying to give the poor kid some distance.

I have my binoculars, though, heh.

Other news, I took out a DevArt account to keep my blog artwork in one gallery: http://mumisthinking.deviantart.com I like having it all in one place and I can play with the file size a bit more Fun.

My children are eating lunch and continuing a conversation started whilst I prepared their food.

It started like this:

“Mum, can I please have ice with my juice?” asked my 7 year old son.

“Yes, of course.”

“I asked nicely because it would give me a better chance of getting some.”

“Well, it worked! When you ask nicely, you will have a better chance of getting an answer you like, but even when you ask nicely you have to take a chance that the answer will be ‘no’.”

Silence for 5 minutes.

“Mum, if there were no chances we wouldn’t even be here, would we? Everything would be the same everywhere.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, if there were no chances, there wouldn’t be planets, or suns or solar systems. There wouldn’t be comets or meteors to hit the earth, which wouldn’t be here anyway, and there would be no chance for us to be here either. There would be no chances at all. Everything would be the same everywhere.”

After praising his interesting thought (and more than a little confounded at how he made the leap from “˜chances’ to something perhaps closer to chaos theory) I left the room to write here”¦the boys continued the conversation, and just as I started typing, I heard my youngest say “After all, we’re all made of stardust.”

These conversations make my head spin a bit, but I love my son’s playful way with ideas, much the same as his playful way of moving numbers around in his maths lessons. Reaching conclusions from unusual angles.

Who was it who said “Think 6 impossible things before breakfast.”? Was it from
Alice in Wonderland? Anyway

We try.

My son, like me, was a dirt and sand thrower in his younger years. He loved to throw the particles up and watch them fall back down. This caused us a lot of grief during his brief time at public school, where he once was formally accused of ‘assaulting’ a fellow student by throwing dirt ‘at’ her. He was horrified and unable to explain…I tried to explain, but no use– anyway, that’s all dirt dusted from my hands now thanks to homeschooling. The point is, there are reasons for these things. The lovely patterns of leaves and dirt and water falling can translate to helping us observe the more complex patterns we find all around us. The patterns of star dust, for instance.

We were recently delighted to find that Apophysis 2.05b is now available for download. If you like playing with fractals and haven’t given them a go for a while, give this a try. It’s great fun”¦we’re still trying to figure out how some of the controls work, it’s quite different from the old 2.02 version we’ve been using till now. There’s something called ‘juliascope’ in the variations that I’m pretty sure works like a kalidescope somehow, and will be fun trying to figure it out. Here’s a link to their site where you can find downloads and tutorials and stuff : http://www.apophysis.org/

And a link to a fractal club on DevArt; have a browse through their gallery, ’tis loverly stuff: http://apophysis.deviantart.com/

I showed the kids the basics of using the editor and basic controls a couple of years ago, and they’ve ended up showing ME things about the program I didn’t know. Isn’t it funny how kids can figure these things out so much better than adults? Cool…

I want to be sure to say “thanks!” to Lisa-Jedi for posting the link to Pythagoras Switch snippets on YouTube. You can read her entry here: http://lisa-jedi.blogspot.com/2006/10/hooked-on-pythagoras-s witch.html  The boys and I enjoyed these so much! We are now the proud owners of a remote control made by my sons and inspired by the “˜Father Switch’ segments. We’ve had a great time as they take turns walking mum through complex operations, which usually leave me walking into walls and dropping items in the wrong place as I take their instructions VERY literally. It’s hugely funny and fun as are the other ideas on the show”¦thanks for sharing this, Lisa!

http://www.theonemillionmasterpiece.com/en/about01.php

I had the good fortune to wake up long before the family this morning, which gave me an oppurtunity to have a go at working on this little painting before all the chaos resumed

I found the link to this project through an art community I belong to, and am captivated by theconcept of this projectand the little painting program that goes along with it. It’salso fun to watch the painting process of the different works, if you go to an artists page and click the little arrow bottom left of the large image you can watch the entire painting process from start to finish…whee!

I’m sharing the link because I think some of you might be interested in this site, maybe for the fun doodle you can make, or perhaps to support the charities that will benefit from a donation, or maybe just to be part of the largest collaborative painting ever created. The 5 charities are Oxfam, WWF, Save the Children, World Cancer Research Fund, and ActionAid. You can choose to paint a little picture without contributing if you like, though, just select to paint without donating on the first page that comes upwhen you register.

I think this would be a good activity especially for those children who are home educating. This would make a goodaddition to a lesson on wildlife conservation for instance, something my son and I covered while studying the Amazon recently. We spent a couple of hours exploringsomewildlife charites, including the WWF…I wish I’d known about this then so he could have included a drawing and donation to them along with the lesson. Anyway,my kids will be adding their own paintings later this week

I hope very much that someone out there will enjoy this as much as I have!

BTW, you can view my painting at http://www.theonemillionmasterpiece.com/en/profile-447194, but I have to say I don’t really live in Bedrock Yabadabadoo.

This is my first real post on Autiblogger I think I’ll take the lazy girls way out and leave all my old stuff behind at Blogger rather than import it over…’cause…well…I’m lazy. Anyway, if you want the archives, they’re at http://shhmumisthinking.blogspot.com/

I’ve been a bit scarce lately from blogging. That’s partly due to the number of things I’ve been juggling. But ‘busy-ness’ isn’t the only reason. I’m having one of those overload periods I think, similar to when my son was going through his diagnosis. Back then I was staying up late every night reading books, papers, research, opinions”¦gorging myself on information till it felt like my head would burst and eventually none of it was making sense anymore.

Do you ever feel you’ve read so much stuff and have so many thoughts to sort through that your head is becoming the equivalent of the messiest cupboard in the house? Too much stuff in there, put in too quickly, shuffled through by searching fingers until nothing’s in the right place anymore. That’s how I feel lately.

One of the things I have bouncing around in my messy cupboard of a head has nothing to do with research papers and perhaps isn’t related directly to autism. It’s a story my husband repeated to me, something he heard last week from a workmate, and to me it seems very relevant.

Here it is:

Workmate, lets call him Fred, goes to a large science think-tank type place for a visit, for a reason not of any interest to this story. While there, he remembers there is a man working there who he very much admires. A scientist. A Great Man. Lets call him Barney

Fred says to his escort: “Oh, please, would it be ok if I meet Barney? I’ve always wanted to meet him, it would be such an honour.”

The escort says “Sure, he works over there” and points at an office.

Fred walks over. Looks in the door. The office is empty. He returns to his escort disappointed. “Darn, I must have missed him. He’s not there.” Escort stops in his tracks.”Oh, yeah, he’s there.” he says, and leads Fred back to the office of the great man. Escort walks into the empty room and knocks on top of the great man’s desk and Barney sticks his head out from underneath. They all greet each other. Fred was pretty happy to meet Barney Smiles all around.

Turns out Barney ALWAYS spent the first hour of his day under his desk. Sucking his thumb. He has to because it was the only way he could ready himself to deal with the world. He wasn’t particularly embarrassed about it and his workmates weren’t worried or upset by his *gasp!* ‘inappropriate behaviour’. That was just Barney. He was a great man, and great men can have their quirks. It was part of the package. If you want Barney, you take him quirks and all.

I don’t know if Barney is autistic, though I suppose it’s a distinct possibility. But, see, that’s not whats important about the story, at least to me. He could be bipolar or schizophrenic or even neurotypical. I dunno, I don’t care. The fact is he was able to contribute something to the world simply because his ‘quirks’ were tolerated and accepted by his fellow human beings.

This story has been bouncing off the walls of my head the last week, ever since my hubby shared it with me. I was so happy when I heard it, so happy to hear the evidence that it IS possible for people to accept the quirks of others. Even, perhaps, with affection!

But the more I thought about it the more frustrated I felt.

After all, why do you have to be a Great Man for your quirks to be tolerated? There are probably heaps of people out there that would be able to contribute to society and have a shot at supporting themselves or could simply live a happier, healthier life if only we were more willing to allow each other a few quirks. Personally I’d be a lot happier to see more quirky people around, they make me feel comfy. I’d be very happy to have a quirky cashier wait on me, or see a quirky doctor, or a quirky garbage man or have a quirky neighbor or…

It’s the social butterflies that make my heart sink, because I know they’re not going to think too highly of my own quirks.

Moving my blog across from blogger http://shhmumisthinking.blogspot.com/, hope to have it finished sometime this weekend

Very nice, Lori…thanks for providing Autiblogs!