Living & Loving, Autism & Deafness

The urgencies of life all keep going on these months, almost 3 months since I posted last, my Christmas newsletter. School is in full swing for me and the kids, and we are doing fine. The usual chaos of trying to get the house cleaned (or not) and cooking, studying, playing, having outings, and planning the quarterly work trip with Rog keeps us all busy. Progressing one step at a time.

When a young boy decided to take a gun to school in nearby Chardon, Ohio, it was a moment of reflection, horror, questioning, sadness, shock, and many other emotions. Three boys died, the last of which was buried 10 minutes away in northern Chardon yesterday. The barrage of beautiful black and red ribbons has been everywhere, and I’ve even worn a red headband for a week now myself. What a tragedy, and I pray and have prayed for the victims families, friends, and the boy who shot them, and his family.

Of course something like this makes you hug your own children and say, thank God it wasn’t us, it wasn’t our children. You hug them many more times a day than usual, and yell at them less than usual. And you wonder what the purpose was. We have seen a tremendous outpouring of love, support, and offers of prayers to our immediate neighbors to the south of us, and perhaps it was that love after tragedy that was supposed to be a kind of lesson. I’m not sure. As we all continue to heal, spring is at our doorstep, with tulips and daffodils beginning to poke their heads out here and in other places. Everything becomes normal again, though of course it really doesn’t for the families touched.

In the education and democracy class I’m taking, we have had some discussion about how these events could somehow be addressed at school. I don’t know, really, what else they can do. Bullying prevention starts in elementary school. But yet it continues. And then we don’t even know for sure, was this boy bullied? That has never been confirmed.

Nothing else to say, really. My prayers continue.

Christmas

Christmas Newsletter, 2011

December 23, 2011 criscollrj

A blessed Christmas!
www.criscollrj.com (new)– for online Christmas letter with pictures. We can’t believe that it has been 3 years since we sent a Christmas letter. Quite a few of the old links to our 1990’s web sites are updated on there but not all. Describing more in depth all the changes you might have missed are the 2010/2009 Christmas letters. God has been in the works for our family as always, and we keep trusting as we go, never know what we will see next in this journey.

CHRIS was in his group home for 14 months (Sept. 08 – Nov. 09), and it didn’t quite work out so he has been living with his Mama and Papa since November ’09 (Roger’s parents). Those of you that I have kept notified via blog and Facebook know this, of course, but just reiterating how they have worked wonderfully with him and how much we appreciate their care. Now 21, he also went back to his school of his early childhood, the DD program of our county. He also recently has become eligible for some wonderful aides through our state, two gentlemen and two ladies so /far, and they may have a new residency for him, whenever it seems to be the right time. He also has another company working with him that provides more summer recreation and after school groups. Preparing for graduation this year, and for his adult workshop next fall are other new tasks before us. Learning a new communications program at school this year is keeping him very busy and focused! Additionally, he and Ryan were both recipients of IPad grants (their Christmas gifts!) on which he will receive more therapeutic programs that individuals with autism are using all over the world. He still also has his aide of many years, Vicky, though she is actually leaving soon and will be missed very much!

(2020 – amazing I didn’t post that Chris got the I/O waiver in June! He did, and that is the program I’m referring to above. It was a Godsend! He also still has THAT SAME IPAD and it still works. Pretty much. Kind of. For some things. A few things. ha!!! Going to try and get him one through Spectrum Mobile for 2020.

COLLEEN is a senior in high school this year, so we will be having a dual graduation party! We are busy with paperwork in regard to college and ACT testing this year, and we are excited for the new opportunities she will have, most likely obtaining her Assoc. Degree at in Graphic Arts/Design and then choosing where she will continue. A new chapter. She also worked at a haunted house with her friends this fall and had a good time with that. Last year she sprained her ankle twice but so far this year has not had any mishaps. All these years she has still been involved with her anime group (expanding to individuals all over the NE Ohio area as well as a few from Columbus!), and her love of animals continues. Currently we have still our beloved cat Sophie; plus two betas, Luna and Amethyst; 5 goldfish; 3 tadpoles; and a leopard gecko named Spike.

RYAN is excelling in the fourth grade in his autism class. Continue reading “Christmas Newsletter, 2011” →

God, life, relocation

Jesus commands us to go, and to come

December 3, 2011 criscollrj

As I listened to Dr. David Jeremiah today, http://www.davidjeremiah.org/site/radio_archives.aspx, as he was preaching about stress and our lives, I was drawn to this parallel. He was describing how when we are so stressed out in life that we have a rest in our Savior and God and that not only is it a slight offer to come to Jesus, but is a command, the way the Greek “I” is written in the text. “²⁸ Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. ²⁹ Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. ³⁰ For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”

Matthew 11:28-30.

So as we go about our daily duties, which He does entreat us to do: “From the fruit of his mouth a man is satisfied with good, and the work of a man’s hand comes back to him.” (Proverbs 12:14), we still need to go to Him for rest and rejuvenation, and for me, be more like Mary and less like Martha from the New Testament stories.

Building a case for us to know that we do need to work, and not be lazy or slothful, are these verses contained in this blog post that I found. http://strengthenedbygrace.wordpress.com/2010/02/19/proverbs-on-work/ So by no means is God telling us to be lazy and sit around in Matthew 11:28-30. Perhaps it is a message to rest in Him as we work, to pray through the day, and to meditate on Him always. It is a lesson to me to try and take more time to read the Word and try to hide it in my heart to think more on as I go through my day. And just listening more to teaching radio, such as this show by Dr. David Jeremiah, has been a good practice as I drive hours a week now with work and school, to establish better habits to grow in my Christian walk.

And in the words of Keith Green —

Jesus commands us to go,
But we go the other way.
So he carries the burden alone,
While his children are busy at play,
Feeling so called to stay.
Oh, how God grieves and believes that the world can’t be saved,
Unless the ones he’s appointed obeys,
His command and his stand for the world,
That he loved more than life.
Oh he died, and he cries out tonight.
Jesus commands us to go,
It should be the exception if we stay.
It’s no wonder we’re moving so slow,
When his church refuses to obey,
Feeling so called to stay.
Oh how God comes, as he starts the great judgment of fire,
So he can gain, his greatest desire.
Cause he knows that the souls of the lost,
They can only be reached, through us,
We’re his hands and his feet.
Jesus commands us to go,
It should be the exception if we stay.
It’s no wonder we’re moving so slow,
When god’s children refuse to obey,
Feeling so called to stay.

[ Lyrics from: http://www.lyricsmode.com/lyrics/k/keith_green/jesus_commands_us_to_go.html ]

Perhaps directly meant as a call to the mission field, but I think it could also be a call to work with all our might what is at our hand, depending on Jesus, in His name, each day.

autism, chris, God

More than we can bear? God bears it with us.

November 23, 2011 criscollrj

Woke up early this morning and was reading an older journal – and found these older posts from November 1994 and January 1995.

November 19, 1994

Tomorrow is Christopher’s birthday. 4 years old! He’s got a double ear infection but is now getting better. He’s been sleeping in the daytime and stays up until 12 or 1 a.m. or gets up at 6:30! I have laryngitis and can’t speak at all! Hopefully we’ll feel better by Thanksgiving – in five days. That’s when we’re celebrating Chris’s birthday.

Dr. X wants to have Chris evaluated for autism. Hopefully it will be ruled out. He’s really a sweet little boy. We’re praying for him daily. I know God can perform a miracle.

November 20, 1994

It really hurts sometimes when we worry that something if really wrong, that our son can’t speak. Also that he’s often seeming not to understand us, although when it’s something he really wants to do he understands perfectly (bath). I’m worried we’re focusing on things that may just be nervous habits – grimacing, playing with his fingers (itzy bitsy spider?), looking at bowls and pop bottles.

He snuggles, smiles, figures things out (like loading dishwasher), being affectionate to baby Colleen. We do have the promise that God will not give us more than we can bear.¹ It seems we’ve had enough trials this past 18 months to last a lifetime. But there have been blessings among the trials.

February 6, 1995

I’m so happy being home with my children. These years will go too fast. Chris is 4 1/4, almost. He’s stretched out so tall and now seems to be getting a little chubby to make up for it. his sandy brown hair forms bangs to his light eyebrows, and in straight thickness just reaches his collar. his chocolate brown eyes are framed with long eyelashes. He snuggles with us a lot. Especially while I’m nursing Colleen, Chris climbs up on my lap, on the other side of Colleen, and cuddles up to my shoulder. At these times I thank the Lord for this time.

Christopher is mildly autistic. He was tested January 24, and the doctor confirmed our suspicions. Continue reading “More than we can bear? God bears it with us.” →

autism Ryan, chris, college

Teaching Enjoyment

October 11, 2011 criscollrj

Ahh, so many ways to look at that. I thought of that title the other day while trying to help Chris with some things. And as my mind will play with words I realized there were two ways to look at that.

The first way is how when trying to plan events with Chris, I just wish he would show clearly that he enjoys them. I wish there was a way to look at Chris and say, wow, he really loves this activity!! We took him and Ryan to a Fall Festival, which was wonderful!

And as we were attending the event, which was a pumpkin patch, food, guitar playing, animals and a corn maze, we could not get Chris to stop and look at anything. He did stop and eat a hot dog. He seemed happy, and he really did seem to like the corn maze. I just wish we could learn how to get him to stop and look at things, the way Ryan does at this point. We will keep striving.

And is there a way to teach enjoyment of things to Chris and other children/adults with autism? Why for example do we have trouble with this with Chris, but not with Ryan, when they both have autism? Ryan, however, is much worse with hitting randomly, throwing things, and running off. A different problem, but still a problem. Autism spectrum is a mystery to me still . . .

So then of course the other side of the coin is teaching enjoyment as in the enjoyment of teaching. I was thinking about that as well as I was trying to think of how to teach our Chris and Ryan. I do enjoy teaching, though I never wanted to do it in the traditional sense of a regular school teacher. I now surprisingly find myself going in the teaching field as a special education teacher, which I never expected. I do feel God has led me into this journey to get my teaching license, perhaps to help me learn to enjoy teaching more? To help me become skilled at it? I thank Him for the opportunity which has come unexpectedly, and can’t wait to see what He has in store for me through it, both with the boys and with the world and my career.

college

Minor changes or major changes?

September 9, 2011September 9, 2024 criscollrj

Yep, that was the question.

At the beginning of speech class called applied phonetics, our teacher sat in front of us and shared that of the 100 people in the class, only 15 would make it into the master’s program. She advised to have another option in mind. I thought about that for a week or so, as I knew it was competitive but didn’t realize how extremely competitive it is – figured if I had the 3.7 GPA I was fine. As the week went on I got more nervous about it, wondering if I should change something, so Wednesday of this week I went to see one of the advisors.

My one advisor is a former speech therapist of Chris’s and a very nice person that we have known for years. I have not yet met with my formal advisor for me with senior status, but just meeting with her gave me more insight, though she encouraged me to still meet with the senior advisor. She thought in my situation I would be very wise to choose a different major and then pursue the speech pathology as a master after graduating with a degree that could be used as a job.

I thought all of this over. I am not really a wimp (lol) and had to decide if I should really just drop out of this degree at this point (after finishing this semester) or if I should see it through and apply for the master’s. However, I am not as young as I was, with three years to gamble on whether I will be able to get farther in a degree that has no future as a bachelor’s. If I do a different, marketable degree, then I could be employed in that field in three years, and then possibly get employee tuition reimbursement to go for my master’s! So I decided to make a major change. But it is was not because I don’t like my classes, or think that I can’t do well enough.

After researching for a day I emailed some chairs of departments and set about to decide between the bachelor’s degrees of Special Education, Deafness Education, ASL (American Sign Language), and Psychology (though I thought there was a fifth? Oh well…). Once I narrowed down more about each degree, I thought that the course requirements in the Special Education (Moderate to Severe) were most fitting to what I was trying to accomplish, with courses such as Applied Behavior Analysis, American Sign Language, and Speech and Language Development being a part of the listed courses.

I don’t want to be a teacher standing in the front of the class though – I hope I can be a one-on-one or maybe a home schooling teacher where you teach virtually. And I definitely want to work with individuals with autism/and/or deafness.

So Monday I will be turning in my program of study form (or before if I can do online) in preparation for the registration date of October 10. God willing, I will still get my master’s in speech after I’m done with this, but good grief, I’m actually getting a teaching degree! Wow! It’s not anything I pictured myself doing . . .

chris, colleen, college, Ryan

Senior year for 3 of us!!

August 22, 2011 criscollrj

RJ is in the 4th grade now and starts Wed. in his autism class, with a new teacher for the 4th and 5th grades. Hard to believe I have an older elementary school student now! Will get pictures of all three kids and post soon.

Colleen is a senior! All the festivities that go along with it we will be discovering – I know we need to get senior pics, and order her senior yearbook, and she’s talking about getting her class ring. Then of course graduation, and the resultant party, and filling out a FAFSA for her this year, and visiting colleges. Some sort of graphic arts is her plan as we all expected.

Chris is also a senior in a sense – he is going to be 21 this November and is in his last full year of school. We want to also get senior pics for him, and whatever yearbook they may have. He is changing schools and is going to be in a workshop program that should lead to an excellent adult workshop for the years after this where he does not have regular school anymore. This school also has, I believe, a Homecoming and a Prom! He has never done these things before so we are so excited. He will also have gym and swimming. He has not attended this school since 2nd grade so it is a sort of homegoing for him – he has had several different schools through his lifetime, all with different focuses, pros, and cons.

Then me, I am classified as a senior at this point, strangely enough. it is also listed that I am in “pre” speech therapy, so oddly enough as a senior they still have me pegged into a “pre” associates degree area, where I actually already have an associate degree. This will change, however, after I maintain a 2.5 or above GPA for a while, and then I will be solidly listed as a speech therapy major. I did get a 3.4 from the summer classes so I am at a good start – need to get up to 3.7 or 3.8 by 2 years from now so I can get into the Master’s program. Classes – clinical phonetics, English grammar (online) and hearing science (don’t have the book yet). I start back next Monday. To drive to Kent two days a week. Good thing I love a good country drive – should be fun in the winter (ha!)

God

Yarping —

July 20, 2011 criscollrj

I have been wanting to post about this for ages, but could not find the book I was thinking of – but this may be part of the concept:

“YARPING Stuart Brisco

Stuart Brisco came up with a great acrostic for those wanting to know how to pray

P = Praise

R = Repentance

A = Ask for others

Y = Yourself

Sometimes people get this backwards. But that isn’t praying… that’s yarping.”

It was about 35 years ago that I read a book shortly after I became a Christian in 1975, where the unusual theory of YARPing was first introduced to me. I have always remembered it. I don’t remember the name of the book, however, but seeing this quote inside the very long page on prayer that came up when I googled “yarping”, causes me to assume it was a book I owned. I tend to remember that acronym, however, whenever I go to pray, as by nature I do believe we tend to pray in the wrong order.

It is difficult at times to put first things first, the P, for Praise, and just Praise God. It turns usually into asking, or for yourself, or, less often, repentance, (which should be #2 and instead probably is last or close to it) and you have to purposely direct your mind back to praising. It can also be hard to praise when everything is wrong and so difficult. But I am so thankful for this acronym that I read about 35 years ago, in most likely a book by Stuart Briscoe, and hope I will always remember to pray and not yarp.

And do check out more of the prayer site, there are some really cute things on there as well, like this:

“KIDS SPEAKING TO GOD
One little girl began her prayer like this: “Our Father, who are in heaven, hello! What be Thy name?”
A boy who thought he knew the answer to that question, prayed, “Our Father, who art in heaven, Harold be Thy name.”
The prayer of another boy went like this: “Our Father who art in heaven, Hollywood be Thy name.”
A girl whose visiting uncle was a horse player bowed her head with a plea that God “give us this day our daily double.”
A five-year-old girl who was trying to cope with Sunday School and kindergarten at the same time came up with this charming blend of Church and State: “Give us this day our daily bread,
and liberty and justice for all.”
Another kindergarten child asked God to “give us this day our jelly bread.”
Then there was the little boy who prayed, “Forgive us our dentists, as we forgive our dentists.””

college

21

July 12, 2011 criscollrj

Wow, somehow I did it. Due to my just plowing into things at times, I got myself into a situation where I was doing schoolwork every waking hour almost. Taking seven credit hours (2 5-week classes, 1 8-week class) sounded like a great idea in the spring. Only seven credit hours, should be easy! I didn’t think about the fact that I was taking them in a third of the time as usual so, duh, they would be accelerated!

So I just finished the equivalent basically of 21 credit hours (7 times 3). I took about 21 also in fall of 84 – that was the last time I took so many. I remember thinking at that time that I’d never do that again – that was quarters so must have been 10 weeks, and I was working too – ha! I remember thinking I’d go nuts.

I am proud of myself though. As far as I know I got at least 2 B’s – hoping maybe one was an A but not sure. Still working on the third class – have a B now I think but am pretty sure I can bring up to an A now that it’s my only class.

Happy to be able to breathe again and catch up on time with the family AND the housework! And if I ever did get to the point I would go full time again, maybe I could make the Dean’s list again (only did it twice in my life).

autism, speech delay

Just entering the world of autism phone apps–

June 19, 2011 criscollrj

Autism Apps (page 3) – Android

A while ago our speech therapist shared with us that autism applications could be found on the Apple Ipad, Ipod Touch, and Iphone.

Actually drafted this much of the post a while ago, planning to come back and add a lot of links. But I haven’t had time to really put a bunch more together, so am going to post this much, just to give some first guidance.

http://www.androidzoom.com/android_applications/education/model-me-going-places-autism_udlo.html is an excellent social story program

http://www.androidzoom.com/android_applications/communication/vocal-slides_ijin.html you can indeed match pictures to sound files and the child can click on them – however they are not thumbnails. I need to find out if they can be.

These are free – I will post more free apps very soon, and also a few that don’t cost a lot as soon as I preview them.

(2020 – well, neither of these sites work. I will leave up as a reminder to do this again, 9 years later. There are a lot of free sites to help – at this point I’m more familiar with iphone/ipad as I haven’t had an android in a while. But I will update!