I finally got another roll of film developed and put on a disk. Here are the boys admiring the zoo map, hung up next to Henry's bed. Henry loves to hold on to the map and study it while we're at the zoo. Last time he noticed the 10-foot-tall version of the map near the front gate and said "you want that poster to hang in your room." Imagine if the zoo sold billboard-size posters of their map! If we all lived in Henry's world, they would. So, I offered to hang up the smaller size map. I was happy to catch them both admiring it together, and talking about the different areas we had visited. I have been in a reflective mood lately. (Is that the right word? Kind of sounds like I'm covered in reflective tape.) This month marks Tommy's 2nd birthday and the 13th (!!) anniversary my first date with my husband. It was also about a year ago that Henry left his first preschool and started attending the half-day special needs class, which was an equal disaster.
On that note, I will talk about our conference with Henry's teacher: It was a beautiful 40 minutes, filled with "he's doing really well. I love having him in my class. All the service providers agree that his behavior has improved 100%." Stuff like that. She feels that he is ready to start "inclusion" with the regular kindergarten class. They will start off by joining one of the special areas: art, music or gym. Ms. H asked Henry every day for a week which one he would like to attend, and every time he answered art. So he will start attending art class with the kindergartners ASAP. Ms. H will be with him the entire time.
His reading and math skills are coming along well, right in line with regular kindergarteners, according to Ms. H. And his aggression is almost totally gone. He did have one incident last week when he BIT another child! We've had lots of problems with scratching and pinching, but never biting. I asked Henry about it, and he said "you were being a snake!" So I mentioned that to Ms. H, that it sounded like Henry was pretending when he bit the other child. She kind of smiled in a knowing way (not unkindly) and said "I don't think he was pretending." So I can't figure that out- I know I'm a big sucker, but does he have me that fooled? Did he lie to me?
4 comments:
My thoughts here are not coherent, so I apologize for that, but this is what I'm thinking...
Did you ask Ms. H why she thought he wasn't pretending? It might be helpful for her to try to dissect the context of what led up to the biting. Maybe pretending was not the issue - but SOMETHING was. It seems to me that if she wants to keep it from happening again it's important to figure out what triggered it in the first place.
Did you get the sense that Henry felt bad about the incident? Was he saying "you were being a snake" as an excuse because he thought you were angry, or was it just as a point of information? If it was the latter I'd be VERY surprised if he was intentionally being deceptive. On the other hand, lying is a really good developmental indicator, so even if that's what was going on it's not all bad news.
Well, here's some more info--
I usually read the teacher's daily note aloud to Henry. That day I said "Ms. H said you bit one of your friends?" (She never mentions other children's names.) It was funny because Henry piped right up: "I bit Wesley." I think I asked "why did you do that?" and he replied "you were being a snake!" In an excited voice. So now that I think about it, maybe my question was unclear, or led him to think of the answer he thought would be proper- snakes bite, so I was being a snake.
He is getting better at using words to describe his feelings, but it would be too much to expect him to say "well, I was feeling frustrated because I was trying to hug Wesley and he didn't want me to." (This is what Ms. H said was happening at the time.)
I would not expect Henry to bite in that situation, however. But it's hard to know what else was going on, what had happened earlier in the day, etc.
She said that Henry apologized right away, without being prompted. And I should add that I think I brought this incident up during the conference. I don't believe she felt it was a big deal or a problem.
Thanks for helping me think this through. But how could I have better asked that question (why did you bite Wesley?) I don't want to put words in his mouth and say "were you feeling frustrated?" Because then Henry would just latch onto that and say "yes."
Following up on Mom-NOS and totally seconding her remarks!--Yes, it's necessary to know the exact thing that happened before and after the biting. Was the other child bothering Henry in some non-obvious way? Perhaps playing with a toy that he wanted a getting attention? Charlie had two biting incidents and the result, which was not made clear or "official" to me, was a reduction in the time he played around the other kids.
With or without words, Charlie felt bad about both incidents and I think there was something going on between him and the two kids---when their names have come up, he gets very panicky, his eyes open wide, and he looks all around him. I really think it's crucial to assume that our kids know exactly what is going on and to work on not letting it happen again! It was a tough thing for Charlie.
Oh I love the idea of integrating him one class at a time. I hope we can do something like that for India when she's ready.
As for the biting incident... I once heard a woman with Asperger's say that she remembers being a kid and wearing a shirt with Miss Piggy on it and thinking that as long as she had the shirt on, she could go shoving people and yelling at them like Piggy does. At age 6, she hadn't yet learned that it wasn't appropriate. Maybe he WAS just pretending to be a snake? Regardless of that incident, it sounds like he's doing GREAT. Now that the agression is out of the way, I bet he's learning more and more.
Sal
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