{"id":2790,"date":"2014-04-22T08:00:29","date_gmt":"2014-04-22T12:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/graftonblog.com\/?p=2790"},"modified":"2015-04-02T13:07:29","modified_gmt":"2015-04-02T17:07:29","slug":"words","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.grafton.org\/words\/","title":{"rendered":"Words"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bonnie Zampino assumed her position as ABA Practice Manager for Grafton in November 2012.\u00a0 She has over 20 years of experience in the Human Resource Management field.\u00a0 Bonnie is also the founder and President of A Special Space, Inc., a nonprofit organization that offers therapeutic childcare for children with autism spectrum disorders and other special needs.\u00a0 She has developed a revolutionary experiential learning module called; \u201cExperience Autism\u201d that is receiving rave reviews.\u00a0 Bonnie is also a parent of a child with autism.\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n

<\/i>The alarm goes off by my bed at 5:45 a.m.\u00a0 I don\u2019t have to get up quite that early to get ready for work.\u00a0 But I get up this early so I can have an hour of quiet to drink coffee, catch up on Facebook, and take a hot shower.<\/p>\n

The silence is shattered as he walks into my bedroom.<\/p>\n

\u201cMom, its only 98 days until Disney Infinity comes out!\u201d<\/p>\n

I haven\u2019t had enough coffee to keep up with this.\u00a0 I think back to when Brendan was diagnosed with autism and how I thought that children with autism were all non-verbal.\u00a0 I remember wondering how I ended up with the only child with autism who never stopped talking.\u00a0 That was before I learned that autism is a communication disorder and even those individuals who can talk don\u2019t truly communicate.
\n<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the best video game!\u00a0 There are 3 main characters.\u00a0 They are Mr. Incredible, Sully and Jack Sparrow.\u00a0 There are other characters too.\u00a0 There\u2019s also the girl who can do the force field, Mr. Incredible\u2019s wife, and then, what\u2019s his name?\u00a0 The guy with one eye from Monster\u2019s Inc?\u00a0 But the rest are bonus characters.\u00a0 Like Wreck it Ralph.\u00a0 You put little spheres on the bottom of the figures and then you put them on, and you can play as that bonus character.\u00a0 There\u2019s a whole bunch of those.\u00a0 Buzz, Woody, Lightning McQueen, that villain from the Incredibles\u2026well, he\u2019s a character too. The last time I checked it was 104 days until Disney Infinity comes out.\u00a0 So it\u2019s been 6 days since I checked.\u00a0 This is going to be the best game ever.\u00a0 I can\u2019t believe Wreck it Ralph is going to be in it.\u00a0 So is Vanelope.\u00a0 And a whole bunch of other characters.\u00a0 It has bonus characters from Monster\u2019s Inc and Toy Story!\u00a0 The starter pack is just the video game and the 3 main characters.\u00a0 That\u2019s all the starter pack is.\u00a0 When you get higher you can collect more characters.\u00a0 It\u2019s a game for a bunch of things, including the Wii.\u00a0 But we can\u2019t get it yet.\u00a0 We have to wait for 98 more days and then we can probably go to GameStop and get it.\u00a0 Maybe we should get it for the Play Station instead of the Wii.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brendan cocks his head to the side and the words fade away as he retreats inside his own mind.\u00a0 I watch as he wanders back out into the hallway.<\/p>\n

\u201cGood Morning, Sweetie.\u00a0 How was your sleep?\u201d I call to him, desperate to connect.<\/p>\n

\u201cGood\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cDid you have any dreams?\u201d I ask.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo.\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cGuess what?\u201d\u00a0 I ask.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat?\u201d\u00a0 He replies.<\/p>\n

\u201cI love you.\u201d I say.<\/p>\n

\u201cI knew you were going to say that.\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

And then he is gone, headed downstairs for some computer time before school.<\/p>\n

Brendan was diagnosed before the age of 3. He was verbal only to recite books or movies. He did not make eye contact. He spun and watched fans and banged his head. He did not play with other children. He was fixated on trains and loved to line objects up.\u00a0 Early intervention services made a huge difference in his life. Brendan is mainstreamed now in 4th grade and has begun working with me to educate others about autism.<\/p>\n

Brendan is my hero and my teacher. The more I learn, the more I am humbled by Brendan\u2019s courage. He gets up every day and puts a smile on his face and walks into school which is a very uncomfortable and oftentimes painful place for him. His sweet spirit and kind heart overwhelm me. His tenacity astounds me.<\/p>\n

Through him, I have had the unique opportunity to catch glimpses inside the mind of people with autism.\u00a0 I have learned much.\u00a0 I know through the years I will continue to learn more.<\/p>\n

Brendan is honest to a fault and justice is incredibly important to him.\u00a0 His lack of social understanding, however, makes him believe that he is absolutely his brother\u2019s keeper.\u00a0 He won\u2019t hesitate to explain to someone the error of their ways.\u00a0 When they won\u2019t listen, he will tell an adult.\u00a0 Teachers tend to view this as tattling.\u00a0 It\u2019s not.\u00a0 It\u2019s his innate sense of justice and lack of understanding of how he is viewed.\u00a0 He needs to be listened to and then taught a more appropriate way of handling the situation.<\/p>\n

He is prone to sensory overload.\u00a0 He has explained that the same setting won\u2019t always produce the same results and he never knows when smells or lights or noise or crowds will become too much for him.\u00a0 But when they do, he explains that he wants to get up and run away from the situation.\u00a0 He knows that this is against the rules, so he will bang his head into the wall or hit himself or pull his hair out.\u00a0 We look at this as self-injuring.\u00a0 He looks at this as a way to calm himself.\u00a0 He needs someone to pay attention to the signs that he is in distress and to give him a break from this stimuli before he begins to hurt himself.<\/p>\n

When a situation is emotionally charged, his ability to communicate shuts down.\u00a0 Without words, he is left with actions and those are typically aggressive ones.\u00a0 He knows that hurting another person is wrong and so he feels intense shame after he is aggressive and often wants to punish himself.\u00a0 He also is unable to talk about what happened until he has calmed down for a period of hours.\u00a0 Teachers often view this as an unwillingness to talk.\u00a0 It\u2019s not.\u00a0 It\u2019s an inability to make sense of emotions and events at the moment.\u00a0 He needs comfort and time to gather his thoughts and needs to be loved and told that he is forgiven so that he doesn\u2019t punish himself.<\/p>\n

Brendan cares about others.\u00a0 A lot.\u00a0 He is not always capable of expressing it.\u00a0 It\u2019s OK to remind him to ask others about how they are doing and what they like.\u00a0 He doesn\u2019t take it personally.\u00a0 He just forgets.\u00a0 Brendan has friends and loves to spend time with them.\u00a0 He gravitates towards those who share his interests and are OK with him talking on and on about the things that fascinate him.\u00a0 His dream would be to have someone sitting next to him, watching him play video games.<\/p>\n

Brendan memorizes what he hears.\u00a0 TV shows, commercials and video games play on and on in his head.\u00a0 In order to stop the tape, he is compelled to repeat the dialogue, verbatim, complete with accents.\u00a0 While it\u2019s difficult to listen to this, he needs someone to hear him.\u00a0 Once he is able to repeat it out loud, he can move on.<\/p>\n

This need to repeat information is what is happening this morning.\u00a0 I go downstairs to refill my coffee cup and reach out to run my hand over Brendan\u2019s hair while he stares at the computer screen.<\/p>\n

\u201cMom, did you know that Sasquatches, well, I can\u2019t remember, but either their legs are long and their arms are short or their arms are long and their legs are short\u2026it\u2019s either one of those.\u00a0 They make howls and screams and stuff like that.\u00a0 They go in wooded areas mostly.\u00a0 Did you know that you can barely spot them when they are out but sometimes you can and they are located in Georgia, Australia, Ohio, and West Virginia?\u00a0 And Virginia, I think.\u00a0 A whole bunch of places.\u00a0 They can be three colors.\u00a0 Ummm, brown, black and white and they can escape pretty quickly from humans.\u00a0 Speaking of Sasquatches, Joseph believes in them now!\u00a0 I told him the story of the first time I saw one and he started believing me!\u00a0 He actually said that he would help me find one.\u00a0 Yeah.\u00a0 The highest they could be is at least 15 feet.\u00a0 Well, Sasquatches.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know how big a Big Foot is.\u00a0 I\u2019m not sure if that is for both.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know.\u00a0 But I have seen footprints before.\u00a0 I heard a howl once and I have seen eye shine before.\u00a0 Don\u2019t you remember when you found that huge footprint?\u00a0 The heel was sooo big.\u00a0 That was a Sasquatch for sure\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

I sip my coffee and tune out the words while I gaze at my beautiful boy.\u00a0 I interrupt.<\/p>\n

\u201cI love you, Brendan.\u201d I say.<\/p>\n

Still staring at the computer screen, he says \u201cI love you too, Mom.\u201d<\/p>\n

All the other words fade away and I hold those five very special ones in my heart as I begin my day.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The alarm goes off by my bed at 5:45 a.m. I don\u2019t have to get up quite that early to get ready for work. But I get up this early so I can have an hour of quiet to drink coffee, catch up on Facebook, and take a hot shower.<\/p>\n

The silence is shattered as he walks into my bedroom.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,30,35],"tags":[219,82,138],"class_list":["post-2790","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-autism","category-behavioral","category-mental-health-services","tag-autism","tag-evidence-based-practices","tag-treatment"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nWords - Grafton<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.grafton.org\/words\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Words - Grafton\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The alarm goes off by my bed at 5:45 a.m. I don\u2019t have to get up quite that early to get ready for work. 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