Graduation postponed

It's been unbearably hot and humid here lately, which means that when we walk to the park in the evening, we have to pass through multiple clouds of gnats. This has been a source of anxiety for the boy child, and he told me Tuesday night that he didn't think he was ready to graduate from therapy. I assured him this was fine and that we could continue to see Dr. H as long as we needed to.

So we saw Dr. H the next day, which would have been graduation day, and we explained that the boy was not quite ready yet. And so we're seeing Dr. H again on Monday, which is fine.

What isn't fine is that Dr. H is probably dropping our insurance next month. Apparently he's had a lot of problems with the company that DH's employer uses for mental health coverage and has decided it's not worth the bother. The fact that AS isn't a mental health issue so much as it is a neurological one is a subject I'm too tired to go into right now, but suffice it to say, if the boy child isn't over the bug thing within a month, we're probably going to have to switch therapists. And the supplemental insurance thing that pays for the boy child's occupational therapy dries up next month, too, so the boy will likely be losing two therapists and gaining a new one (we don't think he'll need to continue with OT beyond next month, except for occasional tuneups) all at the same time. Which should be interesting. By which I mean "hellish". We haven't told the boy yet.

Sigh. And how was YOUR day?

Oh, but there is some good news I almost forgot! I was browsing Amazon a while back and came upon an author by the name of Kathy Hoopmann who has written a couple of fiction books for the boy's age group (he's 9 but reads at a much higher level) about a boy with AS. So I bought the first book, Blue Bottle Mystery, and gave it to the boy yesterday. He read it in one sitting and loved it! This is the first fiction book he's ever really liked that much. So I'm going to get him the next one, Of Mice and Aliens. (The girl child got Horton Hatches the Egg, which she loved, so next she'll be getting Horton Hears a Who.)

Shoe shopping and other hazards

I took the children shoe shopping today, which was a study in contrasts between the girl child and the boy child, and an exercise in frustration for the latter and myself.

The boy child, in addition to having AS and all sorts of sensory issues, also has weirdly shaped feet. They're really wide at the ball/toe area and really narrow at the heel with a high arch. DH's feet are exactly the same way, which I guess is another thing I can blame him for, haha. So not only is the boy bothered by the toe seams in his socks, the way the tongue is stitched into the shoe, the way the laces cross the tongue, etc. but there are essentially no shoes that are shaped the way his feet are shaped. So it was a fun day, as you can imagine.

First we went to Target, where the kids got new pajamas, socks and underwear and we also looked at shoes. The girl child found a pink pair in her size, tried them on, loved them and was done with the whole shoe-shopping thing in like 10 seconds.

The boy child tried on three or four pairs. They were all uncomfortable.

So then we went to the mall, to my old standby for kids' shoes: Payless. Nearly all of my kids' shoes to date have been the Smart Fit shoes at Payless, because the sizing is very consistent and also they're way cheap. Well, they had exactly two pairs of shoes in the boy's size that were actual boy shoes. The rest were all girl shoes. This is a complaint I have about Payless in general, by the way -- the kids' shoe section is invariably 70% girl shoes and 30% boy shoes. And the girl shoes are really overtly girly, too. So that was a bust. I don't think he even tried anything on.

Then we went to Mervyn's where he tried on three or four more pairs and declared them all uncomfortable. Then on to the discount shoe place in the mall, where he tried on two pairs that were also uncomfortable. Then on to the really expensive kids' shoe place in the mall where we learned the sizes only go up to 4, and he's more like a 4.5 or 5 although really we have no idea because THERE ARE NO TRIANGULAR SHOES ANYWHERE.

By this time there was only an hour left before taekwondo, so in a last-ditch effort we stopped by WalMart on the way home. The boy child tried on about half a dozen pairs before settling on one pair that was "almost perfect" except that something about the tongue was bothering him. I reached into an identical shoe and felt the seam where the tongue was stitched in, and asked him if that was where it hurt. But no, it hurt further up. So I loosened the laces of his shoes considerably, and he declared them perfect. And heavenly choruses sang, and I stopped mentally popping virtual Valium. As we were leaving the shoe area with the perfect shoes, we spotted these alternate shoelace things. They're elastic spirally things that you lace through your shoes in place of shoelaces, and you don't have to tie them. This is a plus because while the boy child CAN tie his shoes, it's a struggle and a lengthy one at that. Also, since the spirally things were elastic, we thought they might allow for more "give" over the tongue of the shoe and thus make them more comfortable for him.

So fine, we got the shoes and the laces and rushed home to get ready for taekwondo. While the boy child was changing, I put the new spirally lace things in his shoes. He tried them on. And said that now the seam where the tongue is stitched into the shoe, the seam he didn't even notice until I pointed it out in the store, was bothering him.

I give up. I think we're going to have to fashion him some footwear out of cardboard and duct tape. Maybe it can be a science project, or something.

Long time, no blog!

I just realized it's been a while since I updated. Oops! Sorry about that!

Things have been going pretty well for the boy child. The only other meltdown he's had recently was yesterday at his taekwondo belt test. For some reason his headgear was bothering him and he got really angry and frustrated and started crying, which made him even more angry and frustrated and caused him to cry MORE, and it kind of became a Thing, but he was able to calm himself down and finish the test and after that he was fine.

He's still a bit flinchy around bugs and has run away from a few, but we've been going to the park several times a week and have been swimming a couple of times in the past couple of weeks and he's able to enjoy himself doing those things. He's not filled with anxiety the entire time. And today, he went off to a sleepover at his grandparents' house wearing shorts! That is a big deal, because the boy child hasn't worn shorts since last summer! He just refuses to wear them, I think because of the bug thing. I guess it finally got too hot outside, even for the boy child!

We see Dr. H again on Wednesday. This was supposed to be "graduation day", but we'll see. The boy child is definitely doing better with bugs than he was when we first started seeing Dr. H, but not as well as he was those last couple of weeks of school when he seemed miraculously cured. I think we'll probably continue to have ups and downs, though. Such is the nature of AS, I'm learning!