early June

In early June our days included visiting Kiwi and her puppies, going to the lake with and without dogs, seeing friends, Boy Scout events such as helping a a car wash and my Birthday. The days are getting warmer and the kids take their pets outdoors more and look for creatures in the woods and at the lake. Our homeschool year winds down and we seem to slip into summer mode as opposed to saying on THIS day on the calendar schoolwork stops and summer begins. It always seems to just sort itself out and we realize we are outdoors playing rather than indoors working. Many of our homeschool groups, classes and activities have ended for the year now and the days can slow down a little. Household projects beckon and I start to think about next years curriculum possibilities.

Flying Squirrel

The cutest little Flying Squirrel ended up at our house recently. We had some tornados and downpours rage through New England. In the middle of the night our cat Flower brought this little critter, who must have been blown out of it's nesting place, into the house. He was soaked and quite still though he was breathing, I didn't think he's make it through the night. We put him in a warm, quiet, dark place for the night and were very surprised to see him quite alive come morning. Since then we have researched flying squirrels, fed him nuts, fruits and seeds (and cheerios and Kashi!) and started aclimating him to the outdoors. He should be ready to release back to the wild soon. He's just a little young and immature still at the moment. The bottom photo is actually the first day and one can see how he has grown just in this week and a half to the upper photos. He's a VERY messy little mite so his cage needs cleaning daily. Although he's adorable we're trying to interact with him as little as possible so he'll be wary of people when we release him.

Memorial weekend

Memorial Day weekend was busy for us indeed. We had a massive Memorial day project going on to renovate some living space to make two new, small rooms for Colin and Tristan. That in itself could have taken up the 4 day "weekend" but we also had in the plans a Boy Scout Memorial day event at the American Legion, which the boys needed to attend. A visit to my Mom who lives two hours south who although she was finally recovering from her broken leg was now unwell again and about to be diagnosed with shingles and needed help with household chores and shopping. AND getting the first plants into our gardens since Memorial weekend is considered the first dates that are safe to plant, and will be frost free, in New Hampshire. We did manage to get to it all and by the end of the weekend each of our four growing children had a space to call their own. We were all simply exhausted though, especially me who tried to be super Mom and worked almost around the clock at some points during the long weekend, on the room change arounds.

Each of the kids has a raised garden plot like this to plant whatever they want. This is in addition to our main, larger garden.

Scouts Memorial Day. First the boys met at the legion and got into formation to march with the veterans. Then there was an indoors ceremony followed by three cemetery and memorial visits.

So what shall we learn

As my children get older the focus of their education changes and I make sure they give a lot of input into what they want to learn and what they need to learn to accomplish their short term and long term goals. This is very different from their early years when my job as I saw it was to fascilitate a well rounded learning experience and to make sure they enjoyed learning rather than seeing "school" as a dreadful task to get through each day. Now maybe they don't always enjoy it although I think they do most of the time but their education is first and foremost designed to help them get to where they want to go. Some have college goals, some personal goals, 3 of 4 have scout goals, to learn and do a certain number of Boy Scout Merit badges or Girl scout Interest Patches. I found it was easy enough to incorperate the learning for those patches into our daily homescholol work. So we're working through waht would be best for each child next year. I give the kids a yearly end of year poll. They fill in some questions I've asked like what they liked, didn't like, saw as beneficial, saw as a waste of time..... this past year and also what they want to learn, want to do more of/less of etc for next year. For my older kids I go through the not picky stuff such as high school requirements they need to be aware of and tests they need to take if they will be heading off to college some day. We're still planning, next year is still a work in progress but here is where we stand.

Trevor's birthday

One May 26th we had Trevor's 17th birthday. Birthdays are never easy for Trevor because he doesn't like change or surprises and birthdays are both of those things. Over the years we have learned how to make birthdays easier for him. This year we had friends over but they know him well and know we don't make it chaotic and don't ever sing the Happy Birthday song. In the morning I asked Trevor what he would like for his birthday lunch when the friends would be there. First he said Pizza then he said no actually he wasn't sure. Then I ordered pizza anyway since the time was passing and our friends would be here soon. Thankfully Trevor then decided that pizza was the right thing. We had pizza with friends and then I was going to do the birthday cake and Trevor said he didn't want it then. Well I needed to be able to give some to our guests so I asked him if it would be OK to cut it in half, give his friends some cake and save the other half for when he was ready, thankfully Trevor agreed to that. After the pizza and cake we left Trevor to play computer games with his friend while the rest of us went to the lake for awhile and then visited Kiwi's puppies. We later had Boy Scouts. When we got home at night Trevor finally felt ready to have his birthday gifts. Then shortly before midnight, when I was about to fall asleep, Trevor said he needed to blow out his candles and have some cake before midnight, while it was still his birthday. So with the friends long gone home, the younger siblings asleep and Bobby still at work I brought out the cake for just Trevor and I. He blew out his candles and I guess made a wish. It wasn't a typical birthday but not a terrible one either. With autism you just never can predict how things will go. I have had 17 years to learn how birthdays and holidays can work for this particularly AS kid so it's gotten easier. I know not to take it personally if he doesn't want his gifts at all. I know how to keep things toned down and not get upset that his version of fun is not what most people's idea of fun is. With autism you have to throw away all the usual expectations and be happy with the little bits of joy you get. We've had birthdays and Christmases where Trevor wouldn't come out of his room and said he didn't like his gifts at all. We've had holidays where he surprised us and joined in well and we got to have those happy family moments. This birthday was in between and I will always treasure the fact that he wanted that little bit of celebration. The fact that he let me take a picture without making it impossible to get a good one (just needed one re-take because he wasn't "ready" so looked down for the first one). And that he asked to blow out his birthday candles before midnight.

Trevor at 17, don't take the picture YET I'm not ready!

Trevor graces me with just one looking up picture. Although he needed to wear the cap due to the bad haircut I recently gave him as he has never been able to do the barber or hairdresser but boy did we try.

So what of the future? Trevor at 17 wants to learn how to drive and his younger sister, who has been counting the days until 15.5 which is when they can learn to drive in our state, will soon be old enough to start learning too so they can do that together. Trevor has been very diligent with his education and has most of his must do courses out of the way. Trevor has no interest in getting a job yet, while his younger siblings wish they were old enough for a job. Trevor is learning several languages at once and making up his own language. For the next year or so I will encourage him to follow his interests with his learning. I will help to guide him further toward community college or work and will remind myself constantly that although he is not a typical 17 year old he will get there in the end. Long ago soon after his first diagnosis on the autism spectrum I watched some material, probably by Tony Attwood, about spectrum kids and heard that they tend to be "young" for their age. In the childhood years as much as 2/3rds of their own age, for instance a 10 year old might be 7 developmentally. I don't think Trevor is only 13-ish developmentally but he is a little young for his age and will probably start college a little later than typical but just because we have to do an extra year or so of high school it doesn't mean he will never get there maturity wise, it just might be later.

I can also remind myself of the positives of autism. AS kids aren't like typical kids but they often have less of the "bad" stuff that comes with the teen years. Trevor has no interest at all in alcohol, drugs or smoking or even drinking soda -it's not healthy and if it's not healthy he will not do that! Trevor doesn't give in to peer pressure, he cares far too much about what he wants to care what everyone else is doing or wants or is wearing. He doesn't slack with his school work because he knows he needs to do it and be done so he can move on to what he wants to do. He is a very black and white thinker, I need to do X to do Y ie: graduate high school, get a job, earn that video game...he will simply do X to get Y. So in some ways he's my easiest child now that we're past the younger years and the regular meltdowns. So I'll wait and see what happens in the next year, one more year until my first child is officially an adult!

Rocket Boys

During the spring one of the scout merit badges that Colin and Tristan were working on was Space Exploration. One of the requirements is to build and launch a model rocket. I also found myself to be a merit badge counselor for this badge since our troop didn't have one. Knowing these things we headed off to watch the Kearsarge area rocket society do some launches. We weren't sure what to expect but came away glad that we went. The younger boys now love rocket launching and I learned the things I need to know to sucessfully run this badge with other scouts. We thought we would only get to watch the launches but the rocket group involved the boys in every part of several launches. They put together rockets, learned the parts of a rockjet, learned about the importance of recovery wadding, launched rockets, ran into far off fields to recover rockets and did some fun missions to test height, launch a pesky tick far away, bring some not so pesky passengers back to the ground safely (ants) and recorded some footage from a rocket that was launching. They also saw some launch failures and learned some troubleshooting. A lot of fun was had by all and a new hobby for the younger boys was born. Trevor and Hayley watched and helped the boys to build some rockets and they want to do some launches too. The rocket club launches about 7 times a year and rockets and motors are not too expensive so this is a hobby we can afford both time wise and money wise.

Below are photos of rockets being launched, recovered and a turtle that was found while recovering a rocket (it was later put back to a safe place near the water).