autism, autism Ryan, chris, deafness, Ryan, transcription

silence, and PDD

I think about what it must be like for Chris, not being able to hear or speak. I don’t think about it often, though, because it will make me cry and look at things that seem unfixable. But I know God has a plan and a purpose, though it’s hard to see what it is.

At times I forget that Chris can’t hear us, and I get so frustrated with his behavior! I don’t often know if the behavior is due to the deafness or the autism. The past few days he’s been hitting his ear, and with his having an ear infection recently I first start wondering if the ear infection’s back, but then with this behavior occurring at times randomly since he was a young child [with no ear infection] we just don’t know. We kept him home from school today though because he was hitting his ear this morning. If he would have continued we would have taken him the dr. but he stopped and seems fine.

Chris was up all last night. I stayed up with him until 1 and finally went to bed. He was still up when my mom (who was spending the night) got up. He spends his day showering, or looking at magazines, or eating, or sometimes standing at the door with his coat on wanting to go away. He doesn’t seem to enjoy games on the computer anymore. Though he does like to watch TV!

Chris is on antibiotics- and most of the time he stays up at least one whole night while on them. They just seem to affect his system that way.

I just hope we can find a method to reach him to get him to learn some new things and be more flexible – like we’d be able to take him out in public more and know that he would listen to our directions instead of doing things like refusing to get in or out of the car or in or out of the building/area we’re in, and that he won’t do things like take others’ food, etc.

Chris utterly refuses to wear his hearing aids at this time. Early in the school year he had a fit where they either made a loud noise or gave him a pain and he screamed out and started hitting his ears at school. Ever since then he will not wear them. It’s around the same time he started to refuse to go to speech therapy. Just completely balks and even runs out of the building. I know it was a funny picture the day I had to chase him through the parking lot to the car and then try to push him (200 pounds) back into the building, but it was not so funny — it was tragic. He hasn’t been back to speech therapy since.

I also wonder how Ryan’s world is now. He has not lost all his hearing. Unfortunately we HAVE lost his hearing aids though and I hope we find them soon or I’m afraid we’ll have to retrain his ears totally to wear them. He was wearing them consistently at school. He seems to hear fairly well though and often complains of things being too loud.

We are struggling with Ryan’s behavior and also potty training. He is throwing things, and having little success with #2 in the toilet. Smearing is a problem. He has been diagnosed with PDD and ADHD and started Focalyn XR 10 recently. We do see an improvement in the daytime (early on) with that med. But he falls apart around 5:00. I guess that’s probably normal.

Ryan being diagnosed with PDD/ADHD was not a surprise, but still hurt. He is very smart (as is Chris) and I hope we can somehow teach these boys what we need to teach them.

In other news, I have tested with a company called Speak-Write and am awaiting news of whether I will be working with them. I would work about 12 hours a month in addition to the approximately 12 hours a month I’m already working for Rapid text. So just a little to supplement.

Rog is doing great at Sunlark Research!

 

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *