Haircuts and Sensitivity

Who would have thought that having children that cutting their hair was like pulling teeth! Metaphorically speaking of course. Literally speaking though, cutting a kid's hair when they are autistic makes them feel like their being tortured.

We have not even tried to take my son to a hair salon because he would freak out most likely. We considered "Fantastic Sams" but we changed our mind quickly after our shopping experience at Walgreens. He threw a fit and didn't want to leave the store. He ran around the aisle and was hard to catch. This was because we wouldn't let him get a new toy. We are trying to teach him that we can't buy him something everywhere we go just so he behaves.

I cut my own hair to save some dollars. In the meantime I have cut my dads and my brothers. I cut my son's just so he doesn't take out his frustration on the person cutting his hair. I don't think they would be able to handle him squirming and screaming that his hair hurts. He cries and tells me "All done!" I keep telling him, "Your doing so well. We can take a short break." One side is done and it looks like crap so I want to finish it. He does get back in the chair and it is painful to watch and clip trying not to hurt him.

I don't understand what hurts him. Is it the pulling of the clippers? I cut slow and the blades are sharp so they glide gently. Is it the buzzing noise of the clippers? Is it too loud for him? Or both? Apparently hair can be as sensitive as biting into a mouthful of frozen ice cream.

Sensory Problems

Some things parents want to watch for in their developing child are sensory issues.  Someone doesn't have to be on the spectrum to have sensory disorders.  The signs are there, you just have to watch for them.

With my son he would cup his ears to block out certain noises and still does. A flushing toilet and blow dryer for example. He would become finicky when we were in noisy and crowded places like the mall or restaurant.

Dane would tantrum over starting the microwave, toaster, dryer, flushing the toilet, flipping the light switch, turning on the ceiling fan.  He is to this day obsessed with pin wheels and fans.

Food is also something with certain textures that some children cannot endure.  I don't think my son had much problem with that area. He wasn't much of a picky eater until recently.

Dane would pull at his shirt neck line because the tag was always scratching at him.  A small drop of water on his shirt would have him take it off.

Speech delay a definite sign.  Dane didn't start talking until he was 4.  He is going to be 6 this November and he is hard to understand at times.

One question that really made me upset was when Birth to 3 would question why I think he is smart.  Do you think Dane is smart?  Of course I did.  It was strange.  He was 2 and a half.  He didn't speak but he knew all the animal noises.  You would ask him what noise this animal made and he would hit the nail on the head.  He wasn't talking but he could count.  One time he counted to 20 with Birth to 3. Is he smart?  Hell yes he is.  It's amazing to see him think outside the box.  Sometimes I think he's way ahead of his time while other children are learning to plant a seed.  Dane will say now that the seed will open and grow into a flower.  Then you can take the flower and put it in Grandma's vase.

I remember during his screening for his speech and he was only using a 2-3 word vocabulary.  The picture of a ball.  I was expecting him to say "ball"  he said "beach ball"  I was shocked!  I didn't think he knew what a beach ball even was.  Crazy.

Danes therapist was playing a sensory game with him with beans out of a bean bag chair.  That is when he told her about the seed sprouting and growing into a flower.  Most children his age are still just playing around with the beans and not thinking about the science behind it.  When kids on the playground are busy playing, he is looking up in the sky figuring out what shapes the clouds look like.  He gets mad when he tries telling me and he's pointing and I don't know what he is pointing at.  Eventually I figure it out.

Disturbing Article

I had just read a small article on the internet about a woman and her service dog along with her autistic children going into a McDonald's restaurant.  The manager of that food chain walked up to the woman in the parking lot and punched her in the face.  This happened in Atlanta.

Apparently the manager became disturbed about the service dog inside the restaurant.  She was charged with battery, assault and disorderly conduct.  Along side, she lost her job.

As if this woman having a disability and has a service dog to accompany her while raising autistic twins isn't hard enough for her.  Did punching her in the face in the parking lot put the icing on the cake?  WTF is wrong with people?

With the Americans with Disabilities Act that woman had her right to bring the dog inside the place.

Now, I could understand if the dog made a big dookie on the floor and she had to clean it up.  I believe the article said that she was off-duty even.  Really?  Your not even on the clock and want to express your discontent for a customer by punching her in front of her kids.  What is this world coming to?

autism story emailed to me

This story is from an email I received about a boy with autism with an IQ of 170.  Greater that of Albert Einstein.  

Kristine Barnett won't soon forget the "most devastating day in the life" of her son.

Jacob, called "Jake," her then 3-year-old, had recently stopped talking and had been diagnosed with autism. One day, she dropped him off at a gymnastics class, and, when she returned to pick him up, Barnett, 36, says she found all the other students sitting in a circle, while Jake was curled up and cowering in a corner.

"It was the day I knew Jake would never do sports or be like other kids later in life," the day care provider and mother of four tells ParentDish. "My heart broke, thinking he would be trapped inside this forever and never be able to talk to us."

But today, 12-year-old Jake is studying electromagnetic physics at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis and has an IQ of 170, higher than that of Albert Einstein. And he's astounding university professors by developing his own theory of relativity -- they're lining him up for a Ph.D research role, Barnett, of Noblesville, Ind., says.

When Jake was 8, he jumped from fifth grade to college after teaching himself all the high school math classes -- calculus, algebra, geometry and trigonometry -- in one week and testing at college-level mathematics, Barnett recalls.

Recently, the boy has embarked on his own expanded version of Einstein's theory of relativity. Barnett sent a video of his theory to the renowned Institute for Advanced Study near Princeton University.

She tells ParentDish she fears that because Jake "learns differently than traditional students," he will become bored with university-level courses and says she hopes "someone will take him on as an apprentice."

Barnett, married to Michael Barnett, a store manager for T-Mobile, says she drives her pre-teen son 50 minutes each way to the university. He calls her from his cell when it's time to pick him up at the end of the school day.

"We knew he was gifted, but we never realized to what a degree," she tells ParentDish.

Jake's classmates also marvel at the scrawny little kid in the front row of the calculus-based physics class he's taking this semester, the Indianapolis Star reports.

"When I first walked in and saw him, I thought, 'Oh, my God, I'm going to school with Doogie Howser,' " Wanda Anderson, a biochemistry major at IUPU, tells the newspaper.

Barnett says the journey has not been an easy one.

By the time Jake was 1 1/2, he was reciting the alphabet backwards and forwards and calculating the volume of his cereal box in his head, she tells ParentDish.

But soon after, at 18 months, she says he completely stopped talking and withdrew emotionally. A battery of physicians diagnosed him with autism, and later Asperger's syndrome.

Barnett says it was then that the family settled on a mission: "to help our son and to help other kids like him." The Barnetts held a small fundraiser in a friend's garage and founded MyJacobsPlace.com.

The Barnetts and MyJacobsPlace supporters have turned a dilapidated building into a recreation center, where children with autism and their families gather for movie nights, parent support groups, social gatherings and other events. The foundation has helped hundreds of families across Indiana and Ohio through its awareness and sports programs.

"We were so afraid Jake would be withdrawn from us forever, and so we set out to find out what was the spark that could light him up," Barnett recalls.

For Jake, that spark turned out to be astronomy. As a 3-year-old, Barnett says, he loved looking at books about stars, and so the family spent a lot of time at a nearby observatory and planetarium.

"He could teach himself to read, but couldn't answer a simple question like 'What did you do today?" she says. "But he loved the planetarium and astronomy, so I knew I had to figure out how to build on that. I called the university and practically begged a professor to let Jake audit a class and sit in the back. I was so afraid that he would lose himself in the autism. I was desperate."

That determination paid off.

So far, Jake is the only member of his immediate family to have these rare abilities, Barnett says.

"But my family and my husband's extended family all are quirky," she tells ParentDish. "My grandpa was an inventor and my sister was a child artistic prodigy, and everyone is entrepreneurial on my side of the family. We've never had normal desk jobs."

Looking ahead, Barnett says she doesn't know what the future holds for Jake, but she has learned some valuable lessons for other parents when it comes to focusing on "what your child can do, instead of what people tell you he can't."

"I'm thankful that Jake has become the person he is and feel that, for all children with autism, we need to find the place where there is a little spark inside them," Barnett says. "If we had listened to all the people that told us our son would always be in special ed, and would probably never escape the isolation of autism, how sad would that be?"