So, one of the really great things about RDI is that it has made us very conscious of the many ways that we can involve Sami and Oliver in the everyday, mundane details of life. Over the years, I confess, it hasn't always been fun to involve the kids in the shopping and the cooking and the cleaning and all the other errands that pile up each week. But spending that time together, doing things together, modeling my thinking for the kids and helping them find many ways to participate in our lives together has ultimately been very rewarding. The real goal of working through all this stuff with my kids isn't about teaching them how to do the laundry or make a bed -- it's about executive functioning: what do you do when you are faced with something that isn't working out as we expect? How do you know when you've done something good enough? How do you plan? How do you evaluate and choose between two things that are similar? In RDI, this is what we call apprenticeship in thinking and now that the kids are getting older I can clearly see how it is benefiting both of them; each in their own way.
But the side benefit is, of course, that they were also learning to be independent. With Sami, I suppose he would have managed to pick all this up along the way, regardless of my efforts. But Oliver? He is eight and working independently is just not one of his strong suits -- to put it mildly. This weekend, however, I began to take note of just how far he has come in this, too. Shooing the kids into their room to clean up, I suggested that Oliver pick up the items on the floor and Sami make the bed. At first, Oliver kind of wandered around in a not very directed kind of way and I figured he probably needed some more help so I said: "How about if you start with the cars, Oliver." And then? I stood back and watched him put every car in the right spot. Then he moved onto the books and finally the random toys laying in a heap. Meanwhile, Sami made the bed and they finished up by working together to stack the giant cardboard blocks and then vacuuming. All without a word from me.
Now I know that two kids, five and eight, cleaning their room together might sound like no great shakes to some. But if you only knew how many times I wondered if I would have to stand forever beside my boy, telling him the next thing to do, then you would understand why a little piece of the dread I carry around with me when I think about what the future might hold for my boy evaporated.
And it helped that my house was spotless by the end of the day.
September is approaching and I couldn't be happier. Once again, August has kicked my butt. I'm exhausted. My feet hurt from standing in the kitchen for hours and hours. My house is filthy dirty from all the produce that gets lugged in and out on a daily basis. And yet? Yesterday I brought home about 50lbs of grapes (that I got for free!!) that hopefully will soon be made into juice and jelly and will bring a bit of summer sweetness to the days ahead when we need to conjure it most. And maybe you would be surprised to hear that this is on top of the 75lbs that I brought home a week ago (also free, free, free!)!
I write here about our efforts to eat locally and I believe that this is a manageable, important bit of activism and that it is a vital part of teaching my kids to live in this world. But unless you read between the lines you might not get a good glimpse of how much my children participate in this part of our lives. This week, for instance, the kids have worked right alongside me as I picked grapes, carried them home, sorted them, removed the stems, crushed them, stirred them, poured them into a strainer, then made jelly and juice for canning. My kids work as hard as I do, but -- between you and me? They think it's fun!
I give most of the credit for this to RDI. If Oliver didn't have autism and I was just parenting the way I hope I might have, maybe I would have come to this kind of "extreme cooperative venture" parenting anyway. But probably not. Maybe it is an unexpected gift of autism that I've found a way to slow down and include my children in just about every thing that I do. And the truly stunning part for me is to realize how much a kid can learn about problem-solving and decision-making in little moments throughout the day that we might otherwise rush through. Like: What can we use to stir this? How do you know if a grape is good enough for the pot or should be thrown into the compost? What size bowl should we use? How do we know when it has cooked long enough? Of course each kid is contributing and being challenged on different levels, but they are both there with me, learning together. And do you know what? I am new to most of this, too. So we are learning and figuring things out together. And honestly? It feels like a grand adventure!
So yes, that is very cool and it is extremely rewarding when everything is going well -- it doesn't always, trust me! But yesterday, when we were taking a rest from the great grape escapade, I asked the kids to please go and clean their room. And can I just tell you how amazing it was to watch Oliver and Sami work together to 1) pick up all the books and put them away, 2) make the bed, 3) put their own folded clothes away and 4) vacuum the floor? I mean, Oliver blows me away. A year ago I was writing about how much trouble he was having just locating his clothes in the closet to get dressed in the mornings! All those times when we have worked together cleaning their room, problem-solving along the way and now I see that it really has come to pass that he can figure things out. Today, for instance, there were no sheets for the bed so Oliver went from room to room looking for a sheet! In times past he would simply have given up and gone on to do something else.
When I do these every day kinds of things with the kids it is never really with the intention of teaching them how to make jelly or juice or whatever. Rather, it is teaching them how to approach thinking about things: how to plan, how to react when something doesn't quite go the way we expect, how to decide when something is good enough, how to work together. But the upside? The beds are made and we will have a bit of summer sweetness to carry us through the winter months ahead!
It was only 11:30 in the morning and it already felt like a day when everything went wrong. Maybe it is because the night before had been one when Oliver didn't sleep much at all, breaking his string of nights slept through. If you have lived that life you know how it feels to be without patience, full of over-wrought emotions and unable to muster more than a fraction of optimism. So when I sat down to my first meal of the day, a veggie burger with tomato and onion salad, all I wanted to do was refuel my body and recharge my emotional battery with a few minutes peace. I was surprised then -- and a bit annoyed -- when Oliver sat down across from me and said in his halting way: "I want a sandwich." He had only woken ninety minutes earlier and had already eaten two servings of baked oatmeal. How could he be hungry? But as you know, if your boy with limited language tells you he wants a sandwich, then by all means you fix him a sandwich. Except when you don't
"Oliver," I said, "you can make yourself a sandwich if you're hungry. Would you like a grilled cheese?" Mostly, I'll admit, I said this because I was just plain annoyed with him -- I had just finished cleaning up from his first meal -- and I thought my offer might stall him a bit so I could finish my burger.
Being a boy of few words he didn't answer me and I watched with curiosity to see what would happen next. After a few seconds he walked over towards the area of the kitchen where we keep the bread and the silverware. He looked around a bit and picked up some random items from the counter and set them back down again. I refrained from saying anything more. Then he opened the microwave, retrieved the bread (we keep it in there to discourage mice) and brought it over to the table where I was still watching, now with a bit of surprise, my annoyance completely faded away.
Let me say, before we go any further, that Oliver has spent a LOT of time in the kitchen cooking with me so he knows where just about everything is kept. But prior to this morning I never really just turned him loose to fix his own meal. Also, as I watched him I felt that now familiar twinge of my heart muscles contracting to realize how far he has come with his receptive language ability. Only two years earlier I had sat in the same chair despairing that he didn't understand the most simple commands like "Turn on the light," or, "Get me the fork."
But back the cheese sandwich. When Oliver handed me the bread I placed it on the table and then turned back to look at him expectantly. I saw the look on his face that registered his understanding that I was still waiting for something and watched as he went to the refrigerator, scanned its contents and retrieved the cheese. This time when he returned to the table I noted aloud that there was another item from the fridge that we would need. Once more he returned to the fridge and found the butter. "Ah ha," I said, "now we have all the ingredients." Upon hearing this and perhaps thinking that he was ready to make the sandwich he sat down and took two pieces of bread from the bag, then stopped and looked at me. I looked back at him and adopted a puzzled look. Then we both just sat there for another minute or so and I held my breath, again struggling with myself to refrain from saying anything.
Finally, after what felt like the longest, heaviest minute, Oliver got up and brought a knife back to the table and got to work buttering the bread, at one point declaring: "I want some help." Because the butter was cold and did not spread easily. He sliced the cheese, he assembled the sandwich and then sat there looking at it.
I told him, "I can help you cook it if you get everything ready for me, Oliver." Then I watched as he slowly -- and thoughtfully -- retrieved a pan and placed the sandwich in it on top of the stove, dragging a chair over there in the process so he could center the bread precisely in the middle of the pan.
By this time I had finished my veggie burger and had begun to feel as though this were a day when all was right with the world.
To help Oliver cook the sandwich, I merely stood to one side and adjusted the heat. He was in charge of the spatula. When he determined that the sandwich was cooked well enough, I carried it for him on the spatula to the table and stood there. "Should I just put it on the table?" I asked. Oliver turned to retrieve a plate but found that there wasn't a clean plate to be had. He stood for a moment, unsure, thinking. Then I watched as he retrieved a towel and spread it at his place at the table.
It occurs to me that I don't write very much any more about what we are doing with RDI. I don't want to beat anyone over the head with it. Plus, it is just so much a part of how we parent both our boys now that I sometimes forget what an important part of our lives it has become. Also, I probably don't make enough of all my uncertainties about how we are navigating this road with Oliver. We do RDI, not ABA. We homeschool. We don't have a team or IEPs or ESY. We only just started with OT (which I will post about soon). We didn't even have speech for more than a year. All of this is, well, outside the norm and I am keenly aware that we do almost everything differently than almost everyone else that we know. For the past three years I have put executive functioning first. Problem-solving, planning, reasoning -- thinking -- this I hoped and prayed and believed was where much of our teaching efforts should go. There are other things, sure, but without executive functioning he could be the most social, verbal kid on the planet and still be in big trouble. Remember this post when I watched Oliver struggle to solve such a simple problem? That was just 18 months ago. Re-reading my words above and that post from December 2008, it is hard not to feel a bit gratified that I've chosen to follow my intuition even if it means that I sometimes (often) feel like we are completely off the grid.
I know we still have a long way to go, but even though I didn't get a bite of that sandwich, it was the most satisfied I have ever been by two pieces of bread and a little cheese!
So, one of the really great things about RDI is that it has made us very conscious of the many ways that we can involve Sami and Oliver in the everyday, mundane details of life. Over the years, I confess, it hasn't always been fun to involve the kids in the shopping and the cooking and the cleaning and all the other errands that pile up each week. But spending that time together, doing things together, modeling my thinking for the kids and helping them find many ways to participate in our lives together has ultimately been very rewarding. The real goal of working through all this stuff with my kids isn't about teaching them how to do the laundry or make a bed -- it's about executive functioning: what do you do when you are faced with something that isn't working out as we expect? How do you know when you've done something good enough? How do you plan? How do you evaluate and choose between two things that are similar? In RDI, this is what we call apprenticeship in thinking and now that the kids are getting older I can clearly see how it is benefiting both of them; each in their own way.
