Letters to Mom and Dad, by Tim, age 9 PDDNOS, diagnosed at 3yrs
"Jj is coming to vist you house. Jjs uniform is purple at the school every day. Jj went to school and do calendar. Jj loves to do math. Jj loves toys. Jj loves to ring the bell. Jj loves to clean up his toys . jj sits on the red circle. Jj is going to eat snack. At recess we go outside and play ball. Jjs uniform has the numder five on the back. He loves to line up. He goes inside. Pack up go home. Jj will pack up. And will try it nextime nextime. Ok will try nextime."
-Tim, circa 3/2009
It's been awhile since I've updated this blog....busy, busy year. Tim has been in a day school for autistic children for a little over a year. The school is a Godsend, recommended by one of Tim's home aids when the "Parent Directed ABA at home" fell apart (More on that later...).
He's also taken to the internet...surfing for hours for pictures of cars. We finally had to disable the printer after the first one simply burned up...worn out from his attempt to print the entire internet.
The past few months we noticed that cryptic type written notes were appearing around the house. It was obviously Tim...no one writes like that and he was bringing them home from school. We would ask him about them and he would provide the stock answer, "Very good.". We thought they were either random forays into "hit key, see letter" stuff...after all Tim has applied labels to every item in the house: "door", "wall", "ceiling fan"; but they started taking more form.
It finally dawned on us...these were not part of another attempt to label everything (only more neatly) and these were not created with a teacher patiently coaching him. No, this was Tim trying to communicate on his own.
Hours typing "Mitsubishi", "Ford", "Dodge", "Chrysler", "Honda" along with every other make and model of every car on the road had paid off...and he's gotten good at it. So we started asking Tim to write about his day by saying, "Tim, write a letter to Mom and Dad about....(usually his day at school.)"
All those thoughts had been building up and like water looking for a weak seem, found it in typing. Now, his two index fingers work the keyboard over like steam-powered, iron hummingbirds jackhammering some hapless flower.
Tim, mystery boy of few words is quite the chatter box with a keyboard, it turns out.
"I went to school and I WENT to see dr lteif I hand fun at school today. I went to see dr lteif. What is your favorite part. I like that too. My favorite part was fun. Thaks for helping. This is my car my favorite car is a Suzuki firenza wagon. Mommy will get a Suzuki forenza wagon and its blue. French fries today. I han fun at school today. What is your favorite part. We hand fun at school we did math and uno and some reading today "
-Tim 3/12/2009
