I am struggling to come up with just the right word to describe what this year has been like for Nicole and for us. It was almost exactly a year ago that we got her Autism diagnosis. At first it seemed like no big deal, it didn’t actually change anything about her to have a name for her peculiarities. Then everything changed. It was almost like she knew she had a title and now she needed to live up to it. Only she didn’t really know anything because we didn’t tell her. The first real memorable change came just before our trip to Ohio. She came with me to run some errands and while we were out, Ila needed to use the potty. Nicole refused to go in the multi-stall public restroom. I don’t remember the specific details, only that she screamed and I felt panicked about leaving her outside of the restroom by herself or leaving Ila to go in by herself.
My Mom always made birthdays a really special occasion. The whole day was special in every way should could think to make it special and I always try to do the same for my kids.
Since Nicole loves “The Rainbow Queen” so much, I thought it would be nice if she got some rainbow clothes fro her to wear to school on her birthday:
She choose french toast for breakfast, but I was so busy making and serving it to everyone that I didn’t get any pictures of her eating her birthday breakfast. After breakfast, Nicole and I made this rainbow crown for her to wear to school on her birthday:
Nicole will complete 10th grade later this month. This has been a good year for her in many ways. She has gained more social confidence. She says she didn’t talk to people much at lunch last year, but she now feels more respected by others and more comfortable in social situations. She was thrilled to be invited to a Discord server where she is able to communicate with a large group of peers from school. She was one of the first to be invited to the group that has grown to 18. It has also connected her with them in a way that allows her to sometimes play online computer games with them as well.
Nicole is also enjoying more elective options at school . She has been taking a CTE class where she gets to learn and practice a variety of coding languages. She says HTML is her favorite and that she finds Python boring. She has also really enjoyed learning ASL this year. She finds it fascinating and fun to learn. Theater is still one of her favorite electives. She just finished performing as Olivia in a 90s adaptation of 12th Night. She loves to be on stage and wants to get into community theater.
Nicole describes her current musical preferences as Punk Rock, Experimental, Synth-pop, 80s, and 90s. Some of her favorite bands are Belle and Sebastian, Gorillaz, Stars, and Arcade Fire. She named “No Cars Go” as one of her current favorite songs.
Some of her favorite games to play are Roblox and Streets of Rogue. She also likes to play Lethal Company with her friends and enjoys retro gaming and JackBox Games. She has recently started watching and enjoying Trigun, a Japanese manga series that her friends introduced to her.
Other things that Nicole likes to do on computers/tablets are to draw digital art and experiment with digital audio. She likes the fun and creative sounds of the synthesizer and would love to have her own synthesizer to experiment with. She also likes AI chatting and Reddit. Her favorite things on Reddit are absurd and amusing things like a group named “food stapled to trees.”
Nicole is still fascinated by medicine and fashion. She likes to read books about diseases, contagion, immunology, plagues, and ancient medicine. She enjoys designing outfits on Roblox and experimenting with different looks in real life. She especially likes modern/steampunk/medieval style clothing. Nicole is jealous of some of her sister Charlotte’s medieval clothing accessories and wishes to spend more time at thrift stores looking for unique clothing items and accessories.
Nicole read through and studied the driver’s ed manual and took several online practice tests before declaring that she was ready to take the test. She passed it on her first attempt, but hasn’t had much opportunity for driving lessons yet. I’m perfectly happy to take our time working towards her driver’s license.
Nicole loves Asian food and Asian treats. She loves to try news foods, particularly foods from other cultures. Ramune soda is one of her favorites, but she also really likes Pocky and Popin’ Cookin. She loves fancy drinks like sodas or hot chocolate with flavoring and whipped cream. She likes Funions and good beef jerky as well.
Nicole loves animals and nature and still enjoys finding interesting insects. She likes to observe animals, but she usually wants to interact with them as well. I think she dreams of Sleeping Beauty/Snow White moments where she convinces a wide variety of forest animals to trust her enough to eat out of her hand and let her pet them as she tells them about her life experiences and I’m sure she wouldn’t mind if they helped her sew some new outfits.
Nicole loves to dance and she’s got some sweet moves. She is not a wallflower, even if she’s all by herself she will usually be out on the dance floor dancing her heart out. Perhaps I’ve only seen her dance with timid boys, but when I’ve seen her dance with a boy, she usually takes the lead which results in lots of fancy twists and twirls.
Speaking of boys, Nicole has had an interesting year on that front. She has enjoyed a few romantic gestures from young men seeking her approval. She also had her second experience with a boy asking her to be his girlfriend which she walked back the next day. I think it’s hard to know what to do in the moment, but she’s trying to avoid an exclusive boyfriend/girlfriend situation. Luckily her current mutual crush is of the same mind. There’s a pressure to pair off, but it feels like going from 0-60 to be in an exclusive relationship before you’ve even been on an official date. We’ve had several conversations about it lately and she likes the idea of dating and developing stronger friendships with potential. Hopefully she can still have lots of exciting romantic moments without committing to exclusivity just yet.
I adore Nicole and am glad that I get to be her mother, even if I get the occasional eye roll or hug avoidance. Here is what I wrote about her last year.
Nicole completed her first year of High School. She enjoyed the increased freedom of high school where she had the flexibility to sit where she wanted for lunch instead of being required to eat in the cafeteria. Nicole has always hated school cafeterias so that was a good change for her. She also got to know many upper grade students that she didn’t know before and has enjoyed some new friendships this year.
High school dances were a new fun thing for Nicole. She was excited to be asked by a boy to go to the Halloween dance which happened at the end of the day during school hours. The same boy invited her to go to the Winter Formal with him. After the dance, she said it was the best night of her life. We encouraged her to not date any one boy exclusively so she made plans with a different boy for prom.
Nicole loves music and enjoys dancing and singing. Last summer she went to For the Strength of Youth (like a church summer camp for teens known as FSY). She texted me after the first night that she had won the dance competition and danced with 2 different boys. By the end of the week, she reported several fun experiences and she came in 2nd place for the final dance competition.
Nicole says her taste in music has changed some this year, though she still loves a lot of older music and complains about modern music. She says that she’s more into ‘synth’ music and really likes Electric Light Orchestra.
Nicole’s interest in fashion has continued to blossom. She got her ears pierced over Spring Break and has enjoyed creating entire outfits around some of her new earrings. She loves to have a theme for her outfits and only wishes she had an infinite supply of clothing to accessorize with. I’m glad that the daughter who used to compose the most extreme, mismatched, clashing outfits, now understands how to match and coordinate in a way that no longer offends the eye.
She has started studying her driver’s ed manual in preparation for getting her learner’s permit, but I think we’ll take our time getting to the point where I feel comfortable letting her drive anywhere outside of a parking lot. She has also started talking about getting a job and thinking about where she’d like to apply for her first job.
The insect world still fascinates Nicole. She has become more selective about the insects that she’ll collect. She passed up two perfectly good cockroaches that I found outside yesterday, but was delighted by the swallowtail caterpillar. Some of her more unique bug interactions this year included trying to teach a grasshopper to skateboard and attempting to feed a praying mantis lunchmeat.
Nicole is still very interested in medicine and diseases. She enjoys studying books with descriptions of causes, treatments, and symptoms. She has fun trying to diagnose people from her hypochondriac’s guide to deadly diseases. She also has a book about quackery which describes odd and sometimes dangerous ways people used to try to cure and treat disease that she has read over and over.
Nicole has always enjoyed drama and was excited to play the role of Cecily in “The Importance of Being Earnest.” She has always loved having an audience and hopes to continue preforming. She started writing a musical in hear head, I think it had something to do with aliens blending in and then falling in love on Earth.
Nicole loves Japanese treats, especially Ramune soda and Popin Cookin. Panda Express is her favorite place to eat. She still loves eggs and bacon for breakfast, mini corndogs, imitation crab, and bagel bites. Sodas and fancy drinks bring her much joy.
Nicole appreciates sleeping with a cat in her bed and enjoys going across the street to pet her grandparent’s cats. She loves all animals. She has spent many hours watching and trying to feed some deer that have been living in an orchard near our home. Whenever I couldn’t find her, the orchard is one of the first places that I’d look and I’d usually find her trying to entice a deer to eat out of her hands.
Roblox is probably Nicole’s favorite computer game. She enjoys trying to make games that others would want to play and she enjoys interacting with others from the comfort of home. She also likes to try the games that other people make in Roblox. She also really enjoys Jackbox games, and People Playground.
Nicole finds AI fascinating and enjoys having conversations with AI and role playing games with AI. She has experimented with AI chat rooms and AI generated discord servers.
Nicole loves to laugh and always enjoys a good meme.
Nicole also enjoys exploring the concept of Liminal space and Backrooms. I had to ask a lot of questions and do some internet research to understand this concept well enough to define it. It’s basically an eerie inbetween space, sometimes a disquieting image that just feels off or unsettling. Liminal space has developed into a particular aesthetic in itself. It includes empty paths, hallways, waiting rooms, lobbies, or even abandoned malls carrying an “eerie and unsettling vibe.” Nicole’s first attempt to describe it was “like falling through the floor into an empty room with yellow walls, moist carpet,and a buzzing sound.” Nicole says she enjoys reading about and looking at pictures of these types of spaces. Many years ago she enjoyed watching Gravity Falls and started imagining mysteries that only she could see all over her school. I think the mysterious, unsettling nature of that idea that appealed to her then, has matured into this liminal space fascination that she enjoys now.
Nicole is full of life. She is engaging and creative. She is fun and kind. I enjoy Nicole on many levels and enjoy being her mom. Here is what I wrote about her last year.
Nicole just finished middle school and is officially a high schooler. It’s really hard to believe that she’s old enough for high school. She transferred over to Spectrum Academy (SA) one month into her 2nd grade year. Although I’ve considered pulling her back to the public school over the years, I think we’re all fairly well settled on the idea of Nicole graduating from SA. It’s fun to see her in her element interacting with her peers, laughing and sharing inside jokes and enjoying being part of a group. They accept each other without reservation and appreciate each other’s differences.
Last year was a particularly difficult year for her at school. She had a lot of conflict with teachers and recieved school discipline regularly. Her 8th grade year progressed smoothly with almost no conflict. All her teachers were impressed with how much better 8th grade was for her than 7th grade.
Nicole loves fashion. She likes to create a signature style every day using a theme or a color. Her basic wardrobe is a shirt, a skirt, and leggings. She has been adding vests, belts, and other accessories to create outfits that she feels represent her unique sense of style. She wants to stand out and be noticed and she feels like most people are lazy about their style.
Nicole continues to be fascinated by bugs. I love to see and hear the joy she feels when she finds a particularly nice beetle. She was beyond thrilled to find a katydid a while back, but she did not want to keep it in a container. She was thrilled to have it crawl around on her arms. One night she slept with the katydid and woke up devastated that it was nowhere to be found. I had to send her to school a little distraught. I decided to tidy up her bed in hopes of discovering what happened to her beloved friend. I found the katydid amongst her blankets and she was able to continue loving it until it died. A few weeks ago she found a June bug on the way to church and was thrilled. She considered it a lucky find and wanted to keep it in her pocket through all 2 hours of church. Luckily I was able to convince her to leave it in a special place outside of the building and she happily retrieved it after the meetings. Several nights later, I heard her sweet little voice at about 2 in the morning. I went in to check on her and found that she was sleeping with and talking to the June bug, fortunately she was cuddled up to the container with the bug in it and didn’t have the June bug crawling free in her bed. Over the last several weeks, some of the neighbor girls have brought her crickets in jars which she accepted joyfully. Unfortunately her favorite thing is to have the bugs crawl on her and she does not appreciate my rule that she can only have jumping insects crawl on her outside. Several times over the last week, I’ve checked in on her at night and found her talking to and loving an insect outside of it’s enclosure!
Nicole is passionate about music. Music speaks to her soul and brings her joy. She loves music from the 80s and 90s, especially rock anthems and metal. She knows the words and sings along, often at the top of her lungs. She loves music by Bon Jovi, David Bowie, and has too many favorites to name. She loves to dance with energy and movement.
Roblox is the primary game she plays on the computer. She will also play a variety of steam games with her siblings. She enjoys finding and sharing amusing memes and funny videos and is particularly interested in AI (artificial intelligence) generated content.
Nicole is at the age where boys have become interesting to her and she dreams of romance. She imagines the movie style romances where she bumps into someone and music starts to play and they fall in love. In real life she’s on the lookout and claims not to be too picky, but hopefully she will refine her taste at least a little as she gets a little experience. Nicole is fairly open about how she feels and we all appreciate her candor. She often makes us laugh with her open and sometimes amusing ideas about romance and boys.
Nicole seeks after uniqueness. She wants to be interesting more than she wants to be trendy. She likes to express opinions that are uncommon and enjoys the reactions she gets from such opinions. The more unusual the opinion, the more appealing it becomes to her.
Nicole was invited to a summer school enrichment program in science either because of her interest in science or her aptitude for it. They never specified which reason prompted her invitation, but she does enjoy learning scientific concepts. She was thrilled to get a microscope for her birthday last year, but disappointed that she couldn’t see things at a cellular level through the scope.
Connected with her interest in science is her fascination with disease and medical knowledge. She likes to learn about the causes and symptoms of diseases. She has several books on medical diagnosis and treatments that she enjoys reading. She still enjoys using a starting symptom to investigate potential diseases people might have. She says she was able to diagnose an adult at school one time with an accurate rare diagnosis.
Nicole is particularly good at entertaining children. She has the ability to engage with them enthusiastically and to be flexible enough to avoid potential conflict. Usually in situations where a young child would appreciate being entertained, Nicole will respond enthusiastically to my request to entertain the child and she will be a very giving and kind host. I’ve been amazed to see my autistic daughter demonstrating so many good social skills and being so good at relating to others. Just the other day I pointed out a shy younger boy that I knew and asked her if she’d invite him to play. She made up a fun new game with him and they had a grand time together.
Nicole enjoys our pet cats and they’ve become good friends to her. In the mornings the cats love to go into her room with me to wake her up and they will walk all over her bed meowing at her and enjoying pets and loves from her. Sometimes at night one of the cats will bring small stuffed offerings to her door and I’ll find a pile of small toys lovingly laid outside the door.
Some of Nicole’s favorite foods are Taco Bell soft tacos, “restaurant chicken”, Panda express honey walnut shrimp, and buttered noodles. She usually requests a “traditional American breakfast” in the morning which means she wants eggs, bacon, sausage, and toast. Special drinks have always been a favorite treat for her. She likes mixed drinks, flavored water, or juice. She also loves asian candies and sodas.
Nicole is a delightful and kind girl. She is enthusiastic about the things that interest her and eager to accept and love others. I feel very privileged to be her mother. I love watching her grow and mature and I genuinely enjoy her company. Here is what I wrote about her last year.
My inquisitive, unique, loud, autistic, beautiful, creative little girl is now officially a teenager! Here is what I wrote about her last year.
She’s in the 7th grade this year which means it’s her first year of middle school. Although she continues to go to the same charter school for autistic children, the transition to middle school was not easy and much of this school year was a little rough for her. She was very excited to find out that she had been selected for the student council and said that it made her feel special to be part of student government. They ordered her a special jacket which she loves even though it is enormous on her. Unfortunately, she had a lot of conflict with the student government teacher and was removed from the class.
She was able to go back to in person school for almost the entire year. She had one week of all her classes online and has had every Friday online for the entire school year.
By the way, I wanted to let you know that their school provides play places for children. They have created new play areas in schools by relining playground markings to improve the environment while also encouraging active learning and physical conditioning. By including educational components into designs, children can learn cognitive abilities like arithmetic, literacy, and science while playing.
The other class she was super excited about this year is Drama. She has wanted to preform for years. She was cast in the school play and was thrilled when her drama teacher said she was very expressive. She is playing Miss Muffat in a production called “Big Bad.” They’ve decided to record it instead of preforming live so we’re still waiting to see it.
Nicole has become increasing interested in a variety of topics in science, especially biology and “medical stuff.” She enjoyed learning about the parts of cells at school. She asked for two things for her birthday: candy and slides to look at with her hand held microscope. We did her one better and bought her a nicer microscope to go with the slides we bought for her.
She continues to be fascinated by diseases and contagion. This interest predates the Covid-19 Pandemic. She was given some cards and a book for Christmas that describe a variety of symptoms of deadly diseases. She enjoys asking people questions about their symptoms and evaluating the likelihood that they have a particular deadly disease using her cards.
Her interest in diseases has facilitated a diligent mask wearing philosophy. She will often wear her mask even in situations that don’t warrant it. For example, when we drove down to Las Vegas to visit my sister, someone mentioned case counts being higher in Arizona. Nicole responded by wearing her mask the entire time we drove through Arizona, despite the fact that we never got out of the car or rolled down our windows.
She’s still interested in romance and gets a huge smile on her face when she talks about her main crush which is a boy at her school.
She loves the outdoors and enjoys swimming and playing in water. She finds nature fascinating. She still gets excited to see bugs of all kinds. Recently when she was asked if she had any pets, she listed “a singular ant” as one of her pets. Some of her favorite animals are sloths, monkeys, owls, and birds.
Like all of my other children, she enjoys our pet cats. She is often concerned about developing a good relationship with the cats. She will become instantly upset if she accidently steps on a tail or something, but it makes her particularly happy when a cat approaches her for affection.
She still loves everything 80s. She enjoys 80s music and sings along with all the hits from that decade. She also likes fashion in general, but particularly 80s fashion. She likes bright bold colors and patterns. She prefers skirts to jeans and has recently started tucking in all her shirts and experimenting with wearing her clothes high waisted.
Nicole has fairly recently taken an interest in learning to cook. This interest was most likely sparked by her little sister who has been working on baking independently.
Nicole is interested in sewing. She was excited to learn some sewing skills in her Career and Community Awareness class. When she came home from school, she went right over to her grandparent’s house to practice her sewing skills. She loves to turn scraps of fabric into outfits for dolls or other toys.
Getting along well with and being included by her siblings is very important to Nicole. She gets upset and complains if one sibling is “getting a better relationship with” another sibling than her. However, she is often enthusiastically happy when one of her siblings invites her to play with them.
Nicole’s favorite game is Roblox. Her favorite things to watch on YouTube are 80s music videos and Pokémon fusion videos. Her favorite shows are The Simpsons (we watch the old ones with her) and Bob’s Burgers. She likes to play and read Drawception games. Her favorite treats are Krabby Patty gummy candy, Japanese candy, and Australian liquorish. Some of her favorite foods are fruit, Taco Bell Soft tacos, funnel cakes, Calamari, Little Caesar’s pizza and cheese sticks.
Nicole is loving and sweet and often full of contagious enthusiasm. She loves genuinely and brings me joy regularly. I am lucky to be her mom!
It’s hard to believe this tiny, enthusiastic child is 12. I thought she’d stay a child forever, but now I’m starting to see glimpses of adolescence.
She’s very interested in the idea of Romance. Her eyes light up whenever she sees signs of affection between her parents or if she sees a couple in real life or on a movie. She told me that she keeps telling two of her classmates that “they should date when they turn 16.” Occasionally she’ll bring up romance or crushes in conversation or her ears will perk up if she hears about someone getting married or falling in love. She has random periods of being extremely distressed that she doesn’t know if any boys in her class have crushes on her, but she is usually only distressed for a few minutes at a time.
Nicole continues to find bugs fascinating and adorable. It always makes me smile to hear her passionately arguing with someone that insects are adorable. When she thinks of attractive bugs, one of the first examples she mentions is locusts. Sometimes she gets out one of her books on insects and goes page by page extolling the virtues of each bug in an attempt to sway her audience. She is also totally ok with insects eating each other. She can be talking about how adorable a grasshopper is one moment and hoping a spider enjoys eating it the next. She started a terrarium of bugs she had found in the yard and as she added new bugs to the container she would often remark how it would be ok with her if they ate each other. It’s uncanny how she can switch sides so regularly between adoring and wanting to protect a creature and wondering if another creature might enjoy eating it.
Her interest in bugs and romance collide when she starts to imagine or project romance onto her creatures. Sometimes she’ll ask if I think two particular bugs will fall in love or she will say “I hope they marry each other.” She was disappointed to find out that all her Millipedes are females and is eager to introduce a new love interest into the habitat at some point. The idea that these little creatures are crawling around having millions of love stories and marrying each other just thrills her.
Nicole is still enamored with the 80s. She is constantly belting out 80s tunes no matter what she’s doing. Her ideal hair style involves lots of teasing to make it big. She likes side ponytails and one day would love to have an 80s style hair poof. She says people today are too lazy with their style.
For the first time in her life, Nicole has started to feel and express embarrassment. All her life she has been completely genuine and never cared what anyone thought or felt about her, but now she has a new awareness of how others might see her. She worries that people don’t think she’s attractive or that her voice is ugly. She will now get very upset sometimes if she hears me talking about her or telling a story about something she did. This might sound like a bad thing, but in some ways it’s also a good thing too, because her lack of self awareness causes her to alienate potential friends. She still struggles to see other’s point of view, but is starting to realize that other people have thoughts or feelings about her.
Nicole does not like to go places or see people very much. When the quarantine started, she was very excited about the prospect of not going anywhere. After more than a month of not leaving the house other than to play outside or ride around the neighborhood, she still has no interest in going anywhere. While some of her siblings got super excited to see their classmates in Zoom or Hangout meetings, Nicole had no interest. I did talk her into a few online meetings, but I couldn’t convince her to participate in any of the end of the year events with her class or go to the reverse parade at her school.
Nicole has had an interest in diseases for many years. Some diseases she has thought about, talked about, and sung songs about the most through the years are leprosy, the black plague, and rabies. As one might imagine, living through a pandemic for her has been both intriguing and terrifying.
Nicole finished her last year of elementary school online. She does ok academically. Her tendency is to race forward without stopping to actually learn how to do the assignments and then be resistant to one on one coaching. I’ve also learned that she doesn’t like to learn the concepts from the videos because she “hates the way the guy on the video sounds.” As you can imagine, crisis/online school with her was not my favorite. I still can’t handle the fact that this child is entering middle school next year. Luckily she attends a charter school designed for autistic children because the idea of sending into the public Jr. High would terrify me.
She has a love/hate relationship with her siblings. Her sisters are still her best friends and she says she wants to marry a boy like her big brother Isaac because he is so kind. She likes to think of ways to make her siblings happy and regularly shares things with them. She really likes to be part of the sibling group and gets super upset whenever she feels like they’re not including her. Unfortunately, she also does things that alienate her siblings at times. She is often really loud in the mornings when her siblings want it to to be quiet. She often talks too much without giving her conversational partners enough turns to speak. She also reacts very loudly with yelling and crying instead of working out disputes.
Nicole is especially interested in Asian culture and treats. Some of her favorites are Pocky, YanYan, Ramune, and Popin Cookin. She loves to play computer games and watch videos of people making crafts, doing experiments, or growing plants. She loves to listen to music and sing at the top of her lungs. She likes to create things.
Nicole is a moody eater. She tends to love one food and want to eat it all the time; one day she asked how much mushrooms to eat a day. then suddenly refuse to eat it at all. She will also be super particular about weird things like the color of the spatula used to cook something, the store brand of cheese, and the dishes she eats on or the stove that cooked the food.
Lately she’s been asking me if I’m glad I had her or if she’s too much work. She asks if she’s worth it, if she’s worth all the extra effort she requires. I always tell her that I absolutely am glad and that I would never wish I didn’t have her. She might often take more work than all her other siblings combined, but she also brings a tremendous amount of joy, love and laughter to my life. She brings so much love and light to our family that I can’t even imagine life without her.
One of my very favorite things about Nicole is her sense of Wonder. The fact that small things can bring her large amounts of joy and happiness. The whole family enjoys her enthusiasm (most of the time). Whenever we see an interesting bug or particularly sparkly anything, we call Nicole because she reacts with such genuine joy.
Thomas turned 7 at the beginning of February, but I’ve had a hard time figuring out what to write and remembering to write about him at a moment when I had some time to do it.
If you are my friend on facebook, you might sometimes wonder if Nicole is my only child. That is because she regularly says and does the most fantastically absurd things or comes up with the most uniquely interesting perspective on things. She finds wonder and joy in tiny everyday things like bugs and especially large worms. Her off the wall absurd take on life is one of my very favorite things about my girl.
Here’s what I wrote about Ila last year when she turned 6.
Ila has blossomed with the whole school experience. She was worried that she wouldn’t love first grade as much as she loved Kindergarten, but she has found that first grade is great too! I don’t have as many opportunities to volunteer in her class this year, but everytime I come in she is always thrilled to see me. She eagerly anticipates the days I am coming in and she jumps up and hugs me as soon as I enter the classroom.
I’m constantly amazed by this girl and how much she grows and changes every year. Last year I wrote about her first year with an autism diagnosis.
Nicole is a deep thinker with an inquisitive mind. She comes up with the most off the wall questions and makes me laugh all the time. She makes life so much more interesting. I regularly share the funny things she says on facebook and several of my friends have told me that she is the most amusing part of their fb feed. She is curious about everything and her enthusiasm for things draws everyone in. Read more »
Nicole was telling me that she has started writing a story at school and she is excited that she gets to finish it tomorrow. I suggested she could write a story at home to show her teacher and this is the story she wrote:
We got a call towards the end of September offering Nicole a spot at Spectrum Academy. It’s a charter school for kids with Autism. We toured the school last year and felt like it would be a really good option for Nicole. I really love my kid’s home school (Foothill Elementary) and I loved having all 4 of my school aged kids in one school. Unfortunately, I felt like our home school didn’t have the perfect place for Nicole. The regular ed class is too big and didn’t have enough support and the small group seemed too restrictive and not challenging enough. I love the idea of her being in a class with her peers. Kids with the similar abilities and similar disabilities. The thing that I was most excited about is that they said they were seeing the kids develop genuine friendships.
They gave us 48 hours to decide or they’d offer our spot to someone else. Spectrum Academy does a lottery system for enrollment, so it can be tough to get in. Clearly by the title of the post, you know what we decided. We got the call on Tuesday and she started at her new school the following Monday. I picked Nicole up early from her last day of school at Foothill on Friday. This picture is of Nicole with her Foothill teachers.
Her teachers have been very kind and supportive. I felt a little sad pulling her out. I took her straight from Foothill over to Spectrum so she could see the school and meet some of her new teachers. This is Nicole in her homeroom.
The school runs a little bit like a Jr High. The students start out in homeroom and then they go to other classrooms for other subjects depending on their levels. They test the students to determine appropriate levels for math, reading, ect. If the student preforms well, they can move up, if the work is too challenging/stressful, they can move down. It’s a continuously leveled system. The whole school is designed for kids with autism which is particularly evident in places like the bathrooms. It’s a new experience for all of us. Nicole was telling me about the upcoming fire drill for two days and we got an email from the principal about it before it happened. (Things like fire drills can be traumatic for these kiddos).
Here is Nicole on her first day at Spectrum:
She has been in her new school for about a month now. I asked her today which school is better and she said “Foothill is better because it’s the best school and it has more stuff” but when I asked her if she wanted to go back to Foothill she said that she wanted to keep going to Spectrum so that she could “get used it it.”
She had her first friend from Spectrum over on Thursday.She was super excited to have her friend over, but they occasionally had to be reminded to play together instead of just doing their own things.
I feel like I don’t know exactly how she’s doing at school because I haven’t been able to observe her at school. They require background checks to enter the school and I can’t volunteer to help out in the classroom on a regular basis. I can schedule 15 minute observations which I haven’t done yet since I wanted to give her a chance to learn the routines.
The school itself is about 15 minutes away which means it has added more than an hour in the car to my daily schedule. Since she started I have felt like my schedule is more demanding and stressful. I think I expected to have more free-time with 4 kids in school. I suppose that might have been true if I wasn’t volunteering in the schools as much as I am and if I didn’t have a half day kindergartner breaking up my day.
It’s been hard to find time to write much or share much the last few weeks, but tonight I thought I’d share what I’ve been working on for the last few days. We decided that we needed to move Nicole into her own room. I had to deconstruct our guest room, which was admittedly really bare. I forgot to take official before pictures, but here are some pictures I took after I got rid of the bed and moved most of the stuff out of the room.
BEFORE:As you can see, I had already started taping for paint when I remembered to take a pic. AFTER:
On Day 7 My Dad took Isaac, Charlotte, Paul, Michael, and I to Put-In-Bay on South Bass Island which is located in Lake Erie. We took a ferry across the lake. The ferries are much smaller than the ones we were used to in Seattle. Most people walked on, very few drove cars. The ship swayed much more and even splashed the kids once as they leaned against the railing.Read more »
I have many, many pictures to share from our trip, but I will start off with some pre-trip pictures and then probably break the trip itself into parts.
Thomas had his friend Ian over for a bit. Thomas was so excited to see Ian. Thomas has seen Ian much less frequently since school has been out (I watch Ian a few times a week during the school year).
