The laugh

We had our weekly progress meeting yesterday. It had been a few weeks because of Thanksgiving and a dr. appointment for B. We went over the highlights for both of the last 2 weeks. Two weeks ago, he had his best week ever. His "acquisition rate" was close to 8 - meaning he gained 8 new skills in one week. Um, yeah - that's awesome. It went down last week but he missed 3.5 days of structured therapy due to the holiday so it's not a totally accurate representation. He appears to be thriving.

We're addressing a couple of new things that are a bit hard to hear though. First, we've started a "procedure" whenever he cries. He has to do a totally arbitrary task - putting rags in a basket, then wait 20 seconds to see if he calms down, then keep repeating it until he calms. One of the first times, this went on for about an hour but overall, it seems to be reducing the length of time he spends crying. This is one that baffles me. It seems totally counterintuitive and honestly, I just don't get it. But I trust our team and their expertise so I guess time will tell. I know I would LOVE to cut out the crying. It still kills me to listen to it.

Secondly, one I've really been dreading - his laugh. In the words of our team leader, "B is super adorable" (I tend to agree) so it's hard not to get caught up in his laugh and inadvertently reinforce a stereotyped behavior. B has a couple of different laughs and I have to admit that I adore both of them. One of them is a typical laugh where he is genuinely delighted about something. The other is what they call a "stim" meaning self-stimulatory behavior. This is the one where he is sort of out of his mind, drunken laughing at nothing in particular. This is the one he does alone in his bed for hours in the middle of the night. It too is adorable and it's no secret that I am a fan - after all, that's the name of this blog. The problem is that it prevents him from being able to focus, to learn and really to function. It's one of those things that separates him from his typically developing peers. So, I'm not surprised that the topic came up but I know I cringed when it did. Fortunately, at this point - we're not looking at stopping the behavior or having any sort of negative consequence. We were all just cautioned to avoid reinforcing it (i.e. coochy, coochy coo - B, you are SO cute and funny) and not to try to run any of his programs while he's off in his own world that way. No big deal I suppose. I just don't want to lose my happy silly guy. It still hurts my heart to acknowledge that something I have always found so endearing is part of the autism.

We've had some recent sleep disturbances again. B has been waking up in the night and not napping consistently. We had about 3 nights in a row of poor sleep. Hopefully that won't continue because I am sooo feeling it. Last night, he slept through the night but woke up early - as in 5 a.m. early. In addition to his chatter and laughing, he belted out a strong Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. Even at 5 a.m., it was music to our ears.