And back to our regularly scheduled Asperger's

TH continues with his Pokemon obsession. This obsession, while slightly expensive, has yielded a few interesting surprises and advances in TH's development. The first is that this child, who still lacks executive function to the point that he continues to forget that most pants with buttons also have zippers, has organized his thousands of Pokemon cards.

I use the term "organized" loosely.

About two years ago, we bought him large notebooks with hundreds of plastic sheets into which one can insert a total of 18 cards, baseball, Pokemon, Chaotic, whatever. They spilled about the room for years. We slipped on them and almost died. Pokemon cards littered every surface of our home. I was heartily sick of Pokemon cards.

Then, for some reason, this summer in June, he discovered the notebook and the plastic pockets and piled up all of his cards and inserted every single last one of those things (minus those useless "energy" cards) into slots. It's not organized in any way, and the duplicates are legion and not grouped together (am I uptight much or what?), but...all of the cards are now in this big, fat notebook.

Except for the ones he bought yesterday. TH has recently devised a new form of relaxation for himself. We've never told him that he has to wear headphones while on the computer, but he does. I think he likes the way they feel on his head. He'll sit there with his enormous headhphones on and search YouTube for Pokemon and Chaotic videos and watch them intently. And he's stumbled across a cottage industry of videos in which other avid Pokemon card users film themselves turning over the cards from a stack, one by one, and describing them in terms of "species" and "HP." (FYI, a high HP is good, apparently.) I didn't realize we'd have to be applying parental controls online at this early date, but here we are. I'm worried that he'll type in some Pokemon name but introduce some kind of typo that takes him to Poke-something else...and then we'd be in trouble.

Inspired by his friends in Pokemon obsessions, TH has now made his own Pokemon video. This is his second advance in development--he actually planned and executed a complete project from beginning to end. We rushed home with yesterday's card purchase and broke out our sad little digital camera and...yes, it's true...filmed a stack of Pokemon cards. They're uploaded on my YouTube account as we speak, and to my surprise, he's gotten seven views. Who are these people?

His facility with reading the names, identifying species, and citing HP testifies to his obsession. He constantly reads books that simply list the different Pokemon characters and their specifics, carrying these things from the bathroom to the couch to the car to the bed. He watches the videos of people turning cards over, one by one. He thinks all the time about buying new cards. And as I type this, he's now writing a blog post for me to put up on his blog. Guess what it's about?

On diets and other things

Given that Dubya exhibits the trifecta of Tourette's (diagnosed ADHD and tic disorder, precocious development of OCD behaviors) and cannot take medications for any of it because one feature of the trifecta contradicts another, we're going the biomed route for him. (NB: One of my favorite discussions and descriptions of Tourette's is here. If you're interested, you should read it. There is also this great doc from HBO. Don't let anyone tell you that what we view as ASD and ADHD and Tourette's, et al., isn't one big spectrum of dopamine dysregulation. Put most succinctly, "Tourette Syndrome was considered rare and exotic at one time (however now,) Tourette's syndrome is a relatively common childhood-onset disorder defined by persistent motor and vocal tics and frequently associated with obsessions, compulsions, and attentional difficulties"). Why, hello, Dubya!

Anyway, yep, the biomed route. We've been doing biomed all along, in our way, for all of the boys, mostly consisting of daily fish oil, something arising from Mr. DMFP's obsession with DHA, a multivitamin, and acidophilus. We started flaxseed oil a long time ago because of TH's issues with constipation, which a new study seems to indicate occurs at higher rates among children with autism. That doesn't surprise me, given the intense anxiety that goes along with being a child on the spectrum. The flaxseed oil took care of that in about a day, and even though we've lapsed a few times in administering it, he's never had a problem since.

That study also found that there are no differences regarding GI issues in general between populations of children with autism and children without. In other words, no science-based rationale for special diets based on assumed intolerances, no higher rates of Crohn's (one child in the 100 with autism and none in the 200 without) and no celiac disease in either group.

We've considered knocking out wheat or something for Dubya, but he doesn't consume that much wheat, anyway, and his tics track more to situations (movies, times when he's "supposed" to be still, times when his dad, whom he worships, is around) rather than to dietary fluctuations. But when Mr. DMFP asked me this weekend if Dubya'd ever "grow out of" having the tics and when his nose tic kicked up in intensity along with some late-night guilt/anxiety spasms burdening Dubya's conscience, I decided that we needed to investigate some avenues of biomed intervention. Mr. DMFP, who's always good at these things, tracked down this list of recommendations, which we sifted and extracted based on our own understanding and information.

Given that the tics appear to become more frequent in times of stress, we're going the B vitamin route in hopes of alleviating some of the stress. B complex, niacin, choline--all shades of growing up with my biomed mother (an acolyte of Adelle Davis) and taking 14 vitamins a day, washed down with milk drinks made of raw milk, raw egg, brewer's yeast, bananas, lecithin, and orange juice. While I'm sure I owe whatever good health I have to this daily torture, it sure was nasty.

Thankfully, the biomed folk have caught up a bit with juvenile taste buds and made some more palatable stuff, including a powdered lecithin to add to Dubya's yogurt. He's getting the B complex (with C for better absorption!), lecithin, niacin, and whatever omega-something-something fat is currently the fat del dia, based on Mr. DMFP's fat research. Mr. DMFP is our fat dealer, and we rely on his ability to deal only in the best fats. All of this is what we'd consider to be evidence-based medicine, but results may vary, so we'll see if any changes pop up.

One thing that has also been recommended is antioxidant supplements, but huge trials have found no benefit of antioxidant supplements in general and have actually identified some fairly scary adverse associations. So, we're sticking with his usual high-antioxidant diet (lots of anthocyanins). Dietary suggestions included cutting out dyes, processed foods, aspartame (!), and caffeine (!), but our children don't get and never have gotten these things, so that's not a concern.

Our big biomed experiment targeting high stress arising from dopamine imbalances has begun. Yes, our n=1 and no, we haven't gotten clearance from our institutional ethics committee, but since we're his parents, we are providing de facto written, informed consent. Results to be published as they emerge.

Tourette's

Our oh-so-lucky middle son, Dubya, has Tourette's, complete with tics, OCD, and ADHD. His neurologist ID'd the tics and ADHD, and the OCD has always been clearly present. He can't take anything for ADHD because of the tics, and the tics aren't bad enough for him to have to suffer the side effects of the meds. He's got two primary tics, a nose/face twitch thing that reminds me of Samantha from "Bewitched," and a huge snort that (obscure literary reference alert!) reminds me of a character from Little Doritt. Not to elaborate too much, but Dickens equates the sound to a tugboat in full tug. Dubya does this prolonged snort sometimes more rapidly than by the second. That drives Mr. DMFP up the wall.

I have to say that his struggles with the ADHD, OCD, and tics are in many ways more difficult for us, as his parents, to witness than are the struggles TH has had with his Asperger's. Dubya gets in "trouble" because he can't sit still, because of his lack of impulse control. Sometimes, when the snorting gets to be too much, we crack and get irritated about it. His OCD tendencies are something we have to watch and monitor. Since he was a toddler and started showing these tendencies, I've done my best to keep him from lapsing into some of the ruts of OCD, but he still has huge problems with it. We've already had one battle with excessive handwashing that led to dry, scabby hands, and he will fixate on guilt over something he perceives as a transgression, usually one that took place in the far past. Luckily, he's comfortable enough to come to me and express his anxieties about this guilt, and we talk about looking at it more realistically. I also work hard to help him learn when perfectionism is useful and when it can be self defeating, and we've actually made some progress in helping him smooth out his mercuriality, swings in temper that are so painful to witness. Every time he has one of his extremes of anger, I can just visualize the stress hormones strafing his little insides, firing up inflammation all over.

He's started this stuff pretty early, well before the average age of onset, which is about age 7 to 10. He doesn't do what some people think is a classic Tourette's sign, the uncontrolled utterance of expletives (which is not really that classic or common). He does have a lot of trouble controlling verbal outbursts, and his lack of control emerges most obviously in movies, when he just cannot seem to whisper what he says but says everything in a loud, prosodically flat voice that telegraphs to anyone around us that things are likely a little "off." Between that and the snorting and my own obsession with not bothering people in movies, a visit to the multiplex can be a little tense, but I try to ameliorate it all by sitting next to him and issuing many many whispered reminders and nose pats, our nonverbal indicator to be more aware of one's nose noises.

It's going to be tough for him in class when students--especially those who might be a bit more aurally sensitive--start to notice this tic more. Tourette's is so misunderstood that probably even teachers won't recognize these facial and noise tics for what they are, since he's not barking out bad words involuntarily (something I tend to myself, but not in a tic-y way). I don't know if Dubya will ever need a circle of friends-type intervention to educate his classmates, but I came across this story today on CNN (you know, what folks in Texas call the "Communist News Network"). The now-grown counselor with Tourette's in the story, on the advice of an obviously compassionate, insightful, and prescient school principal, presented a sort of proto-circle of friends to his classmates, to great positive effect. The effects weren't just on his behalf--he has paid it forward as a teacher and now as director of a camp for kids with Tourette's, where they can twitch and tic with impunity.

We can't predict where this will go, but I'm relieved to read that after a peak in adolescence (yikes), the tics can fade, not necessarily completely but considerably. We've got a smart, extremely creative and interesting little fella on our hands, and I don't want this dopamine imbalance that we all suffer from as a family in one way or another to act as a barrier to his full success. His luck on the draw was not so great, pulling the dopamine-imbalance trifecta, but at least we're aware and knowledgeable and sympathetic.

TH will have a different opinion. Dubya's difference is named after a French neurologist, Dr. Georges Gilles de la Tourette, which is a far more mellifluous and less derrierre-conjuring appellation than Asperger's. I'm pretty sure this is going to make TH jealous.

They're lucky to have us

I just put our youngest down for a nap. He's almost three, and he does not want to nap, but he's also dead-dog exhausted after being up for six hours and going full bore the entire time. This combination yields epic meltdowns that remind me of the ones his oldest brother, TH, had except...I can easily discern the reason. TH's meltdowns would come over the most unpredictable (to us, at that time) things...the mere mention of a strawberry, the incorrect orientation of something in his bed...but these almost-three-year-old-doesn't-want-a-nap 30-minute extravanganzas...those, I can easily trace to the source.

So, I laid down with him on a grown-up bed, sang to him, soothed him, snuggled him into quiet, and after about a half hour (on top of the half-hour freakout), he was snoozing softly.

And as I watched that sweet baby drift away, what was I thinking? How sweet? Sure. How lucky I am to be able to take the time, to finally have the patience and appreciation, to lie there with my youngest and last child, doing what I'm best fit for as his mother? Sure. But I was also thinking how darned lucky all of our kids are to have us as parents. As I posted below, I think parents often tend to focus too much on what they view as their negatives and mistakes. I think it's OK every once in awhile to ponder what you do right. To be happy that you're the ones who are there for your kids, that in a world where so many children suffer, sometimes in horrible ways, you can at least do your best to buffer your children from that. And then blog about it, dammit.

It's true. They are lucky. We love them unconditionally. No conditions whatsoever, no bargains based on projected dreams or expectations (well, except that reading one, where applicable). We just love them. We don't physically or emotionally abuse them. We give them a home where the emphasis is on comfort over things, on creativity over electronics, on asking and being answered, on spending time together in quiet and noisy interactive ways, on being read to every night, on reasonable structure and promised consequences. We feed them the best food we can find, whole and fresh wherever possible, organic wherever reasonable, and usually what they like to eat. Their night wakenings don't bring on anything but sympathy and soothing, their sense of injury gets an airing, even if nothing much might happen after that. We encourage brotherly love and respect--and strangely enough, we get that more than you might think--and I personally have built my work life around their schedules so that they always have one of us present, there in their frequent times of need. We are ensuring that they are near the people who love them most, and that they get to see these people, who represent four generations, frequently. And their parents love and respect each other and enjoy one another's company and are brave enough to engage in mature disagreements and resolutions in front of them, in addition to showing their love for each other.

Wow. I think I'm going to go pat Mr. DMFP on the back now and see if I can get him to do the same for me. Try it for yourself. I bet you can find some backpatting things about your parenting to celebrate, too.

What about you?

The discussion on the post below about how people differ in their outlooks and behaviors and the description of the boy in the NYT blog post has me wondering. What traits of yours that you like about yourself do you also see in your child or children (or, if you're not a parent, what do you actually like about yourself)?

That's a tough one. It's so much easier for me, anyway, to have a laundry list of the things I do not like about me that I worry are popping up in my kids, but I'll hold onto that for the next post.

Traits I like about me that I think my children might have? Hmmm...one child at a time....

TH: His powers of observation, his comedic timing (he tries), his helpless enthusiasm even if it's not cool, his deep interest in all things biological, his compulsion to write, including very blunt letters to editors whom he wants to publish his cartoons, his impulse to create art (at which I'm not very good, but it's an impulse), his deep and abiding appreciation for chocolate, and his ability to sit and think sometimes, quietly and seriously, for long periods.

Dubya: His creativity and desire to create, his lateral-thinking skills, his strange, out-of-the-box insights, his love of all things tiny and cute, his enjoyment of rolling up in nice soft comforters like a big burrito, his appreciation of hot sauce, and his love of very very good music.

Little Da: His brown eyes, his loud laugh and great sense of humor, his quick wit and powers of observation, his inability to resist broad humor, and his love of books.

These lists seem so short to me compared to what I could list for negative traits, and just reading them makes me a bit embarrassed because it seems so...self congratulatory in a way. Are we all like that, more prone to focusing on the negative, or is it just me? My suspicion is that we're all that way. Apparently, emotional processing of negative events leaves a far more lasting imprint than a huge accumulation of positive experiences. In other words, yes, if you're human, the negative generally outweighs the positive.

Great to know that, isn't it? How is it for you?

Me, except different?

Kristina over at autism.change.org has blogged about a she says/she says parent/autistic blog-off in which the parent describes her life with her Aspie son and the autistic adult responds in defense of autistics.

The parent takes what she describes as "euphemisms" from a scientific study and parses them in the context of her experience with her five-year-old. My first thought was to say, in defense of people who have to write scientific papers, that (a) we have to use plain, unpurple language and (b) we often have difficult word-count limitations that preclude the addition of colorful detail.

With each "euphemism" with which the writer takes issue and with each description of her own experiences that she uses to expand the euphemism to reality and avoid, as she puts it, "sugar coating," I naturally made mental comparisons to our own experiences. It's been three years since TH was five, so memory is a bit fuzzy.

The first word she takes on is agitation. She describes her son as throwing tantrums, breaking glass, hitting, biting, kicking, and spitting. TH did this from about age 3 to 5. He never broke a glass on the wall, but he did these other things. And he hasn't done a thing like this in about three years. Nothing. He does not tantrum.

The mother writes that she and her husband were taught to hold their son in a restraining hold and that her son's response is to headbutt and bite. TH also had this response to efforts at restraint. We responded by stopping those efforts. Restraining just didn't work for us. It just made him madder.

She takes issue with the word irritable and says that "anxiety is a key component of Asperger's." (Can I get an "Amen!"?). She describes that he can be playing nicely with a child one minute, then physically harm them the next. Our son does not do this and never has. She also describes how her son craves schedules and predictability and how changes can agitate--oops, whatever isn't a euphemism there--him and "set him off." TH does do this. Yesterday, we threw away an old, cracked bowl. He was upset and wanted to dig it out of the trash. He resists even the slightest change to schedule or living arrangements. But you know what? We change things anyway. We push his envelope so that his envelope gets larger. It's one of my many deliberate ways of helping him learn to cope.

The author goes on to describe how her son responds to being overstimulated, especially by noise. He responds, surprise, by perseverating, and he repeats a phrase from a commercial over and over again. She should wait until he starts yelling "Butterbean dumplings" in a pig-squeal voice 50 times in a row. Anyway...yes, TH does this, too.

She devotes a paragraph to "crying," which she takes issue with as being euphemistic. She describes her son's crying jags, argumentativeness, shrieking. Minus the shrieking, these things use to last for hours around our house when TH was this age. He has not, however, had one of these in three years except for the perseverating/arguing, which he continues to do.

The terms "inappropriate speech" and "not able to follow the rules" also warrant her incredulity in their inability to cover the reality of the situation. Apparently, her son can mimic anything he hears anywhere. Every child I have does that, autistic or not. TH is unusual in that even though he will mimic to the specific syllabic emphasis many things that he hears, he will not repeat "bad words," because he instinctively somehow knows that they are bad. My other two children do not have this filter. She also describes her son as a "defiant little control freak who wants to set them (rules) himself and make everyone else...follow them." I live with three people like this. Part of it is OCD, part of it is childhood.

She takes issue with "impulsivity" as euphemistic, describing how her son has "stopped (her) heart several times by dashing across the street." We, too, have almost dropped dead from heart attacks in exactly these situations. At age 8, TH may finally be figuring out that he not only needs to look both ways but also actually look for cars while he's doing it. Oh, and one of our children is ADHD, so TH's impulsivity pales by comparison. In fact, much about Asperger's pales by comparison to ADHD.

"Strong-willed" leads her to offer her child up to us for an hour. I live with four very strong-willed people, 24-7. Our only solution is to match our wills as parents to theirs as children without making it into a battle of wills. That's a fine line, but that's what we do.

There's more. She eats from depression. Grocery stores are difficult. Being in public is difficult, draws stares and comments. She feels socially isolated and people don't invite them to birthday parties and playdates. She gave up a career track to focus on her child's needs. She and her husband don't entirely agree about their child's issues or how to manage them. Money can be a problem. Except for eating from depression, she's essentially described my life story there.

After I read that piece, I had a lot of things to say, but I've distilled them down to a handful of observations. First of all, her son is five. When TH was five, he was a lot like this child, minus throwing a glass against the wall (although he did once spit on the window at the pediatrician's office). I hope that someone can counsel this mother to try to take the long view and realize that five-year-olds don't stay five forever. I hope that in a couple of years, things for her son and her family have settled out a bit, passed the five-year-old stage of development and some of this anger.

My second observation was that TH doesn't seem to have the rage that so many people describe in their autistic children. I have hypotheses for why that might be, but it's something I note again and again. He's just not an angry child.

My final observation is this: This mother has lived a life quite similar to my own, right down to the changing career and life plans on behalf of her children. We are the same in many ways...except one. I end with a quote from the end of her piece:

So don’t throw your euphemisms my way. Recognize that life with my son’s Asperger’s — life anywhere on the autism spectrum — can be at least a periodic nightmare, and respect my struggle enough to allow me to call it that. Know that not everything is bad — I am blessed with many moments of joy with our often adorable and cuddly boy. We share jokes and laugh together; we play and sing and dance; he holds my hand as I sing him to sleep each night, kisses me back and tells me, “I love you, Mommy.”

And I observe that life, in general, is at least a periodic nightmare and parenting is a struggle. I don't feel like I deserve some sort of special consideration for having chosen to parent a child, for better or for worse, for having made that decision and for accepting responsibility for whatever comes my way as a parent. It's probably my own personal issue or quirk or obsession, but I do not want people's sympathy. I also feel as though parents who accept their children for who they are and don't make the "reality" come across as gritty enough get accused of "sugar coating" things. In my mind...and I'm not targeting this particular writer, necessarily...there's a fine line between making people aware of the reality of something and having a major-league pity party.

I also don't feel like I can blame autism for the fact that life is a periodic nightmare, and I don't feel like my son's place on the autism spectrum worsens the "periodic nightmare, " although it is very similar to where her son appears to be. All I can do is appreciate what comes with life, or at least my life: sharing jokes and laughs, playing, giggling, snuggling, holding my son's hand, hearing him say, "Butterbean dumplings!" I can't expect these moments to come in a continual outpouring of sunshiny bliss every hour of every day. I can only balance them against the "periodic nightmare" that all of life is and thank God that at least they're there. And that doesn't seem like sugar coating to me.

My son, except British

My blog posts are just getting shorter and shorter here. The rule is that blog postings are supposed to be quick, fast reads that people can ingest, digest, and walk away from in a matter of seconds. A quick look over this blog will tell you that I don't adhere to that rule. Well, almost never.

But today, someone else has written, at great length, about her son who has Asperger's. She's writing in anger about the way Gary McKinnon is being treated in the UK and handed over to the US, but most of her article is about her son, Henry, an Aspie who is seven. It was almost too eerie. From the opening description of her son on the playground to the bullying girl's reaction to her son's reaction all the way to the end, I could have pretty much put "TH" in there anywhere she wrote "Henry," and it would have been accurate.

Give it a read. I couldn't have said it better, about my own son, myself. It's like reading about his doppelganger across the pond. If you live with an Aspie or are one, you may find some familiar things, as well.

Krigsman

I first post for your reading pleasure a link to a narrative about a parent who took her child to Thoughtful House. I post it without comment except to note that from the narrative, it appears that a certain medical practitioner concluded that a colonoscopy was in order based on a single phone intake:

On April 28th we had our initial phone consult (italics mine) with Dr. Krigsman to review my daughter Beth’s medical history and lab results. It was determined that the next steps would be having her scoped, pill cam, and biopsy procedure. These were scheduled for June 2nd in Austin, TX.

Then, I post for your reading pleasure the following documents, courtesy of Brian Deer.

Krigsman, Lenox Hill
Krigsman, Lawsuit
Krigsman, Texas Medical Board

Yikes.

Hi, Thoughtful House?

It's amazing what we can do these days with the Internets. For example, if someone were to, say, check out something I'd posted over at autism.change.org, get curious about me, and click on my profile over there, they'd find a link to here, Ye Olde Blogge o' Mine. And if they did that and initially spent, oh, say an hour and 10 minutes, give or take, viewing approximately 24 pages of the blog and then returned a couple of times after that, once by googling themselves, and then even clicking over briefly to my other blog, and being sure to click on a few links I've got here regarding a certain "practice" just down the road apiece...well, funny how them Internets can tell ya that entire story if you're paying attention.

Just can't quite figure out how it is that "Thoughtful House Center" has the state.tx.us domain name. Odd, that. I did briefly have visions of some state agency personnel hanging out there for an audit (crosses fingers) or something even more dire, using their laptop to log on through their domain from the Thoughtful House IP address and...

Oh, right. That was the CARE Clinics. Oh, well. I do tend to get them confused.

Trust in him

Last night, I laid awake, worrying. I don't actually do that much because I take a nice little drug called baclofen that makes me very sleepy. But the worry conquered the baclofen last night because it's a powerful worry that has built strength over many years, one that can overtake just about any sleep-inducing drug short of propofol.

It's about TH. I've noticed this summer that we've had a handful of playdates with...one friend. The one friend, the wonderful friend, he's had since kindergarten. From what I can tell, other children have been visiting and playdating like crazy, going to camps together, running up and down one another's streets to one another's houses, having epic overnight adventures in each other's media rooms, etc. Not TH. The one friend. A couple of times. No one has asked if he could go to camp with them or come over for a day or meet for a swim. Am I remiss myself in this? I'm reluctant to impose on people who seem uninterested in such overtures, and I can't tell if I'm being too cautious or not. The historical lack of reciprocation tells me I'm not.

And yesterday, on the Wii, he made a couple of Miis of two boys whom he thinks of as friends. Even though we have had one over a couple of times without reciprocation. Even though we haven't heard a word from either of them since school let out, despite the fact that I've seen the parents several times. He thinks of them as his friends. Even though, when it came time to sign yearbooks at school in the last week of May, he came home with a yearbook signed...by himself. Only. Secretly, foolishly, I had bought him that yearbook thinking, "This is the year." The Circle of Friends had seemed so successful. His teacher had such positive reports. Seeing that empty, unsigned yearbook come home was crushing to me in a juvenile, nonparental way. It was difficult to tell how it affected TH. I wouldn't know myself how that feels because when I was in school, I never bothered even to buy a yearbook.

This stuff just about kills me. So, I laid awake last night, worried that he'd go to school in August, starting third grade thinking that he has a list of friends but that they are really people who tolerate his presence, at best. That they may be nice to him because they're essentially nice children, but they are not truly friends in the sense of really liking or even loving or even needing him.

And as I laid there, somewhere, seemingly out of nowhere, in a way that made my eyes pop open, a voice said to me, "You need to trust him. Just trust him."

If I were Bernadette, I might have thought that was some angel telling me to trust in Him. But I think it was actually the most rational, unanxious part of me telling me to trust TH. I need to have faith in my son that the love and joy and enjoyment and hilarity that he inspires in me and others in his family will also naturally, without parental facilitation, inspire at least a couple of other people. People who, naturally, will truly be his friends.

I believe that TH will someday be doing things that he doesn't show much ability for right now. In fact, I believe it so powerfully that I'm almost sanguine about it. And what I obviously need to add to that list is a real belief that my son has or will have the capacity to make good, real friends, solely through his own abilities. Instead of worrying, instead of marking every little way that other children seem to have fun with other children while we are not included, I need to try to calm down, take the long view as I do with so many other things, and simply trust my son.

I need to do that. The question is, Is that a leap of faith I can make?

One local quack down, one to go

We've got more than one bunch of practitioners here in River City peddling unproven therapies to autism families. Well...we did. Now, we're down by one. Note the comments.

I guess that leaves one more to go. Hey, a girl can dream.

Robert Rodriguez and Thoughtful House?

The new movie, Shorts, is due to premier locally (in Austin) on August 16. One of Austin's own, Robert Rodriguez, directed the film. And guess what? The proceeds from the gala premier event, which is slated to involve carnival rides, the movie's young stars on the red carpet, and other festivities, go to Thoughtful House.

Yes, that Thoughtful House.

Is there no other autism-related organization that would experience or distribute greater benefit? Say, something for respite support or occupational therapies or early diagnosis or autistic teens transitioning into adulthood? Why does the colonoscopy factory figureheaded by a wealthy charlatan get these proceeds?

A damned shame. Guess which local autism family will not be attending this event?

Betrayal?

Until now, I had not seen any news media outlet fully articulate a stand on their inclusion of "vaccine-autism hypotheses" in news stories or their attitudes about "balance" when it comes to stories covering autism.

And I can't say that this is exactly a policy articulation, but it comes darned close. In the most recent issue of Time magazine, there is a front-of-the-book department called "10 Questions" in which a famous person of some kind answers random people's questions. This week's responder is Bill Keller, executive editor of the New York Times (and here, as a Texan, I suppose I should duly insert some sort of epithet involving "liberal" and "commie" ad nauseum). One of the questions he received was about whether or not journalists should present ideas as balanced, regardless of the weight of credibility each idea carries. Mr. Keller's response?

"I don't think fairness means that you give equal time to every point of view no matter how marginal....we don't treat creationism as science. Likewise, in the autism-vaccine debate, our reporting shows pretty clearly which side the science is on."

Obviously, I think this is a rational policy. But it got me to thinking. It really does defy so much of what we try to pigeonhole about people. Shouldn't the hypereducated readers of the NYT be the very people who think vaccines are toxic and cause autism? Is there a disconnect here between the NYT's apparent policy and its "elitist" (sorry, I'm channeling Texas here) readership if it doesn't treat "vaccines-are-the-devil" as having an equal weight of credibility with science? And did that guy just put people who think creationism is science in the same boat as people who think vaccines cause autism? The horror.

I can practically hear the hand wringing, the prolix, sesquipedalian keening and gnashing of teeth among the confused acolytes of the Grey Lady. Oh, NYT...what have ye wrought here with your rationality? What shall the "more educated than thou" folk do now for their fodder?

On biomed

I have one biomed observation to make. Back in the day, TH had...issues...when it came to toileting. There were angst-related plumbing problems, traceable to terror about the monstrous, loudly flushing appliance that threatened to drag everything within earshot to its sewery depths. There were prescription laxatives. There were, yes, in moments of extreme exigency, suppositories. There was Me, kneeling before a toilet with TH latched on to me like a huge, screaming barnacle. There was trauma.

And in the midst of this, we turned to the one biomed approach we really thought might work: Fish oil. I don't know what it is about fish and their oils--but the stuff was like magic. And really--have you ever heard of a constipated or autistic fish? No? Well, that's because of the oil. Toilet terror ended. To our surprise, a lot of the more difficult of TH's regulating behaviors or dysregulated behaviors ended or diminished right along with it. We started giving the entire family fish oil. We should have bought stock in fish oil, or at least moved to Norway, we've dropped so many benjamins on the stuff over the years (the good, clean, ahem...mercury-free... stuff ain't cheap).

This summer, we dysregulated somewhat as a family. Mr. DMFP used to give the boys their acidophilus, vitamin, and fish oil with their breakfasts every morning, like clockwork. For the summer, though, the works have jammed. Breakfast has become less about structure and more about wandering into the kitchen, opening a box of cereal, dumping it all over the kitchen while occasionally getting some in a bowl, pouring milk to the brim and then some, and then slogging to the table to hunker over the increasingly softening mess while watching Noggin. Somewhere in there, fish oil got lost.

OK...I admit it. It's my fault. I'm in charge of breakfast in the summer, and I keep forgetting to give it to them. In my defense, I also keep forgetting to give it to myself because that is also usually Mr. DMFP's domain. He's the family fish oil enabler.

And we've noticed lately a huge ramping up of squeals (like nails on a chalkboard), faces, flapping, vocalizations (a new favorite is "butterbean dumplings," which, if you think about it, does have a certain attractive mellifluity), and a diminished ability to hold regulation in abeyance in certain public situations.

So, in my sole concession to ancedotal biomed outcomes, I say the following as a mantra, hoping it will wander the halls of my neural circuitry until breakfast tomorrow. Must. Remember. Fish. Oil.

I have another blog

I've been considering it for awhile, and now that I'm knee deep in trying to entertain my children, be a WAHM, and save money all at the same time--ambitious, am I not?--I keep coming up with little tips I think other parents in my position might find beneficial.

Hence, The Frugal WAHM. Click on over, tell me what you think. There are only two posts, but I've got a LONG list in my head. In superb Good Housekeeping style, I'm even going to post the occasional recipe.

Oh. My. God. I think I just turned into Betty Crocker.


Aaaaaaagggghhhh!

Yes, he shows empathy

At least, I think this means he does.

You may have heard that Michael Jackson has gone to the Great Moonwalk in the Sky (or perhaps it is the real Neverland). Unless you live on top of a mountain in Tibet, you're probably aware of his passing.

True confessions: I've never owned a single Michael Jackson recording and even though his successes were contemporary with my formative years, I never really cared much about him. I thought "Thriller" was novelty pop, and his music inspired no passions within me. And in spite of the fact that I know that pedophilia is a compulsion, I have zero sympathy or compassion for pedophiles, and I can't mentally erase "Jesus juice" from the history of MJ's life. There. I said it.

Anyway, I was reading tmz.com, as I do every evening because if you're gonna have junk food for the brain, may as well go for the best...and I was surfing it when TH came in. He saw a picture of MJ ca. 2008 and said, "Hey, is that the person who used to be brown but now is white? I've heard about him." (TH is very literal about skin color).

"Yes," I said. "He used to have darker skin and a different face." And I surfed over to handy Google images and googled up a comparison graphic of MJ pre-whitening/nose sharpening and MJ of more recent vintage and clownlike visage.

TH was intrigued. "How did he do that?! He looks like a white woman now."

"Plastic surgery and some skin treatments," I responded.

He pondered a bit. "Plastic surgery?" he said, a query in his voice. Then, after considering, he said, matter-of-factly, "He must not have liked himself very much."

(Did he have Daddy Joe to thank for that? Maybe.)

Now... that's empathy, right? Concise, insightful, in-the-other-person's-shoes, theory-of-the-minded empathy. So there.

A mind extraordinary

Speaking of Dubya...here's one of his latest artistic outputs. He'll be seven in September. We are not exactly sure where this particular talent of his comes from. We just know that neither of us did this kind of thing when we were six.

Door in the Hand?