"Mamma Knows Best"

I have been brewing over whether to write on a specific topic that has been bothering me for some time.  Anybody who regularly reads this blog knows that I tend to steer away from political things.  I don’t think it takes a rocket scientist to determine that I am pretty damn liberal, an ideology I have had since I was young.  Certainly the way voting has transpired for legislature on the subject of autism has further cemented my views.  In truth, what I want to write about is nothing so vile as to even be called political.  I had to go back to my very first post though, to really feel comfortable writing on this subject.  In my first ever blog http://autismandmytwoboys.blogspot.com/2011/09/in-beginning.html I state that one of the reasons for this blog is to vent.  I am about to do so.  Should you not care to hear my venting, then I strongly suggest you stop reading this post right here.  Ironically, I have probably guaranteed people reading on from this point by making that statement.  I want to say it was Metalica that stated during a Grammy acceptance speech, something to the effect of, “It just goes to show, put a parental warning label on a record and it will sell a few million more copies”.

As I have stated before on this blog, I read a lot of other peoples blogs.  I believe the ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder) community to be a fairly tight knit community.  Everyone is very supportive of each other, and we all can relate to most of the situations we all write about.  However, I have become pretty exasperated over a single idea.  That idea is that nobody understands the sacrifices of a “mother”.  I read so many people talking about how mothers make huge sacrifices, mothers never get a break, mothers end up dealing with the brunt of the responsibilities, from the school battles over IEP’s to dealing with sick kids.  Mothers need to take time for themselves and not feel guilty.  I full respect mothers, I actually have one, she’s pretty cool.  That doesn’t mean they own the rights to parenting.  I am here to tell you, for over a year and a half I have been the only person dealing with all of these issues.  This father, truly appreciates the role of the primary care giver of ASD kids.  Hell, I fully appreciate the role of the primary care giver of neurotypical kids, having one of those too.  Whether people parent as a team, or an individual deals with the majority of the “kid related” issues, it is an incorrect assumptions to expect the “mother” to be at the center of that.  I have no doubt in my mind that I am touching on a touchy subject here.  I also confess that I am probably the minority in the primary care giver statistics.  That doesn’t mean that mothers can play the mothers instincts, or mothers intuition, or the “I cared this life inside me” card.  I respect the fact the female body is truly amazing.  Not only do they grow a life inside themselves, they also grow an organ ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Placenta ) in the process.  Most men only know how to play with their organ, certainly not grow a new one.  I also have a huge amount of respect for women in general.  There is no doubt that since the beginning of Judeo-Christian supremacy in western civilization the woman has been put, at least, a step below man.  From the fall from grace with Eve, in the garden of Edin, to the misrepresentation of Mary Magdalene in the time of Christ, women have been getting the short end of the stick, no pun intended (well maybe).  Paganism always celebrated the life creating power of women, but that part of Paganism was not adopted by Christians.  I truly believe in gender equality, in fact I believe in it so much, that I am here to say that fathers can be as much of the nurturing, mothering types, as women.

It has taken me a long time to write this blog, because I do respect motherhood a great deal.  I think the concept “a mother knows” is often correct, but only because they are the primary care provider.  The concept “The nanny knows” could be just as accurate, if said nanny is the primary care provider of a child.  I know when Holden is about to bolt (make a run for it), because I have seen him do it so many times, not because I have some kind of father super power.  I know when Holden isn’t feel well, even though he can’t communicate it, because I have countless hours of seeing him when he is feeling well.  I may not think about it, but I am subconsciously picking up on discrepancies from his usual behaviour, to extrapolate (who knew I would ever get to use extrapolate in a real sentence someday) that he isn’t feeling well.  The bond a mother feels for their child is very strong, and it starts long before birth.  I have news for everyone, it starts before birth for men too.  I have seen people at my old work, change their whole way of life, because their wife was pregnant.  They stop partying, they take a second job, they become very cost conscious, and they begin to ask questions about parenting, instead of talking about football or television.  This is the male way of dealing with the bond that they start forming with their unborn child.  I can also tell you that when I saw Zane’s head make it’s appearance in the world, it changed my life, in an instant.  I am not the person I was, before he was born.  I am not to proud to say that it brought tears to my eyes.  In that instant, my whole world shifted, and this tiny entity became the center of my universe.  If anyone questions the strength of the bond I have for my children, try messing with one of them and see what happens.  

So all I am asking, is don’t assume that the mother of a child is the primary care giver.  Sometimes that responsibility falls on someone other then the mother.  Oh, and sorry mom, no offense!

"Auld Lang Syne"

Recently I have read about a lot of people either eliminating “friends” off their social networking sites, or thinking about it.  I read one post from someone that said something to the effect of “Congratulations, if you are reading this, you made the cut!”  Certainly this is not a new concept, since the song Auld Lang Syne dates back to 1788(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auld_Lang_Syne), and it having existed as a poem before that.  The song asks  “Should old acquaintance be forgot, and never brought to mind?”  Certainly social networking has made it easy to get in touch with old friends.  We all have heard of, or lived through, some of the consequences of those reunions, good or bad.  I could probably write a whole book filled with accounts of peoples lives being changed forever from social networking. Then there are those people that just sort of pop up in your life again, in actuality, or in reference.  I was visiting with my mother the other day, and out of the blue she asks me if I remember the time I had been riding in a car, and the rear wheel fell off.  I hadn’t thought about that day in years, nor the guy who was driving the car.  Then two days later I read a post about him, and a new project he is working on, and the next day even more about that project.  Here is someone I had not thought of in quite a while, suddenly being thrust into my life several times in one week.  I tend to think things like this happen for a reason, but irrelevant of an reason, it certainly made me think of an old friend whom I have not thought of in a long time, and I am sure has not thought of me either.  So do we have a choice in who we keep in our lives and don’t, or are certain people going to be coming back into our lives over and over again.  After all isn’t there only “Six degrees of separation” from everybody?

As is often the case, things seem to be much different for Holden.  I can’t even begin to guess how Holden’s memory works, but it seems he associates names with ideas, almost like we do with objects.  Like for instance “Jenna” is someone that teaches him, loves him and makes him happy to see.  However, if he were to run into Jenna tomorrow, I doubt he would know who she is, yet he talks about her all the time.  Jenna was his preschool teacher, and is first real teacher, that was with him for a whole school year.  He has since called all of his teachers Jenna, at some point or another.  In fact, I think it is a compliment if as a teacher of Holden, you reach the status of “Jenna” in Holden’s mind.  I think “Jenna” has become a concept to Holden, not a person, even though it is a person.  The same can be said for “Ester”, his first daycare provider.  He has since called other childcare centers Ester.  In fact, when he is sick of me being strict with him all the time, and not getting away with not talking, he will ask for “Ester”.  I believe to him this is the concept of loose childcare.  Where he can get away with not having to talk, and being underestimated.  It is a place where he knows he can get away with manipulating people, based on their lack of knowledge of his abilities.  The thing is, Holden knows his teachers actual name, just as he knew his nannies names, and the name of the few daycare centers he went to.  Somehow though, some people, turn into concepts in his mind.  They become an idea, rather then a person.  To some extent we do the same thing.  “Mom” doesn’t have to mean our biological mother, it can me the person who mothers us.  I don’t think it is quite the same for Holden though, I think it is on a different level.  I think sometimes these single names, take on concepts of great detail for him.

When I worked with Developmentally disabled kids, I was always amazed by the way their memories worked.  I remember this one kid coming up to me one day, and saying “Remember the day we met, it was Wednesday, and we went fishing.”  He probably couldn’t have told me the year we met, or the month, or the season, but he knew it was a Wednesday.  At the time I could have given a rough approximation of how much time had elapsed since we met, I would have know the month and year, and certainly the season, but I would have no clue what day of the week it was.  That was the way his mind worked though.

So try as me may, to let old acquaintances be forgotten, we might just find we can’t even if we want to.  Or we might find that we no longer are a person in the mind of Holden, but rather a concept.  An idea that caries so much more meaning to him then the name of an individual.  That is not to say that individuals are not important to Holden, they are.  but for some reason some people become more then just people, they become definitions, concepts in a very complicated structure that is Holden's mind.

"Oh Oh It's Magic"

There is a video circulating right now of a teen age, severely autistic girl, that had an amazing breakthrough ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNZVV4Ciccg&feature=share ).  The media presents the story almost as if it is some magical thing that just happened one day, and a completely non-verbal girl suddenly jumped on a computer and was able to communicate.  However when you really pay attention to this video, what you find is a truly amazing story of an amazing breakthrough that was clearly the result of years and years of hard work by many people.  Her parents showed incredible dedication to her, despite experts telling them that their daughter was severely autistic, and probably mentally retarded as well.  They continued to provide her with therapy that was giving her the tools to one day make a breakthrough, and type two words on the computer.  From those two words the parents and therapist then continued to work with her, focusing their efforts towards that breakthrough, enabling her to find her voice.  This story to me is a love story first and foremost. A love story in which parents never gave up on a child that continues to be difficult, a child that never gave up on herself, and a team of therapists that continued to work with someone that in their minds was beyond help.  What this story is NOT to me, is magic.  It is an insult to the girl, her parents, and all those who put so many difficult hours of work into this case, and continue to.  One of the common things we find in reading blogs, articles and news stories of other success stories, is that when given the tools, a lot of autistic children find their own way of using those tools to teach themselves.  It’s like giving someone a palette, paint, brushes, an easel, and countless hours on painting theory.  Showing them standard exercises in painting, showing them works of other painters, but after countless days of complete apathy, when they finally start experimenting with these elements, knowing to let them discover them on their own.  Let them start by chewing on the cap of the paint, then maybe tasting the paint, rubbing their fingers in it.  Instead of immediately trying to correct them, and teach them how to hold a brush, you encourage them to further discover these tools and elements of painting.  Maybe they don’t pick up a brush for a long time, maybe they never pick up a brush, it doesn’t matter because they start painting on their own.  At first they are simple things, but with encouragement and a knowledge of the theory and all the tools at their disposal, they begin to build on their ideas, expand them, and use these things in ways others have never thought of.  

Holden has begun to make some amazing breakthroughs in language.  He is teaching himself to read and write, in his own way, but with the tools we have provided him with.  Very early on, I began to really push academics with Holden.  He showed an aptitude for academics in preschool, and so when he enter kindergarten I spoke to his teacher about putting effort into those academics.  Other people felt that it was better to address his behaviors first.  Their line of thought was that if Holden’s behaviors were under control, he would be able to focus better on his academics.  However I was a special ed child growing up.  I was mainstreamed, but pulled out of class to attend special ed classes.  My deficit was primarily in English, math came very easy to me.  As a result, they would pull me out of math, to go to special Ed for my English.  I know they were trying to help me, by getting me caught up in reading and writing, but they did me a great injustice, by talking away the one subject that I could just do.  Math just came to me, when it came to math, I could just dance.  I didn’t want to do that to Holden, take away a strength, to work on a weakness.  Also, it is our goal to include Holden into more and more mainstream classes.  Right now he is mainstreamed about 10% of his class time, but we would love to see that number at 85% to 95% someday.  In order to do that he would have to have his academics at par, as well as his behaviours.  Holden’s teacher listened to me, and began to equally push the academics, and Holden responded by giving us more focus and more time on a single task then he ever had before.  Encouraged, his teacher pushed on, and Holden slowly, but surely made progress.  

What is interesting now, is that Holden is under going behavioural assessment, because he is going to begin in-home behavioural therapy.  The person doing the assessment was blown away by Holden’s interest, and progress in reading and writing, and how much more focused, and engaged he is when doing those things, then he is doing anything else.  She wants to incorporate those academic skills into his behavioral therapy.  It is so ironic to me that the behaviours that have been said to get in the way of his ability to learn, are now going to be partially treated by using academics, or learning, as a tool to treat them.  

Holden is making some amazing breakthroughs in reading and writing.  I am including a video with this blog of Holden reading sentences that he wrote on his own.  I was so happy I caught this on film, he had never done anything quite like it before.  There is really no other term for what he is doing in this video, he is reading and writing.  It is truly amazing to see, since he will rarely speak in a sentence unless prompted to, yet here he is reading several simple sentences that he wrote.  It is not magic, that he sudden was able to make this breakthrough, it was countless hours of hard work, from a lot of people.  It is a part of our love story, it is a work in progress, and it is fueled by such a love that only a parent can have for a child.  I don’t know how this story ends, but I know that it is far from over.

"Good Intentions"

Consequentialism is the concept that the consequences of one’s conduct are the ultimate judgement about the rightness of that conduct.  A moral right act, in consequentialism is one that produces a good outcome, or consequence.  The saying “The end justifies the means” is a simplification of this idea.  In it’s most raw form, the idea seems pretty benign, however when put into practice it becomes less benign.  For instance, put the twist of “My aim for greater good makes all the evils I have done right.”  Now we are accepting evil doing as being okay, so long as we achieve a positive outcome.  As we can see, this idea gets very sticky, very quickly.  The next logical step is justifying one’s evil actions as having had the best of intentions, when a positive outcome is not reached.  So we jump from the moral idea of allowing our consequences to determine the moral correctness of our actions, to allowing ourselves to do anything, so long as our intentions were good.  I believe this line of thinking to be a fatal trap, that I think all of us have faced, if not used to justify our actions.

When I made the choice to move my family to Santa Barbara, back to Santa Barbara for Zane and I, I had quite a few solid arguments for doing so.  None the less in the back of my mind, I couldn’t help thinking that my actions were partially motivated by the idea that I would be able to justify my actions by the consequences of my actions.  The question is, was my motivation truly the best interest of my boys? Or was I doing what I wanted to do, because it was what I wanted?  

My arguments for bringing the boys here were many: The schools here are way better, and there would be more opportunities for both of the boys.  I would have more, and better support from family then I did in Escondido.  I could contribute more to my mother who has Parkinson's, if in no other way, by just being here for her.  I could take the boys out of a living condition that had elements of the very things I swore not expose my children too, and had become intolerable.  I could leave the industry that had changed my life for the worse over the past thirteen years.  I could raise my children in a much safer, and culturally richer environment.

I can honestly say that all of these things have transpired, and even better then I could have imagined or dreamed.  Zane was in G.A.T.E. in Escondido, but they had no budget for it, so it was in name only, here he goes to G.A.T.E. every Wednesday, and is given the challenges he needs.  Holden has received the support I had to fight so hard for in Escondido, without the slightest argument.  To make matters even better, the Regional Center here has been significantly more helpful, and very prompt to give Holden even more services outside the school. In terms of family, Zane has benefited greatly, as I hoped he would.  His grandparents are involved in his life, and he is getting piano lessons from his grandmother.  His grandparents took him to a Play the other day, and he had a blast.  These are the opportunities to do things away from Holden, I couldn’t give him in Escondido. I have been able to visit my mother frequently since moving back here, something that I think has benefited both of us.  Our living condition has vastly improved, and made the ability for in home services to be more feasible and stress free.  

Despite all of these things, and more, I still can’t help feeling that I allowed myself to make the choice based of the anticipation of a good outcome.  The one thing that has not come to fruition yet, is a job for myself.  I left a job that paid me very well.  Despite all the cuts and loss of business, it was still a good paying job.  I know I am happier now that I am free from that work, but that won’t put food on the table, or keep a roof over our head.  The truth is, I couldn’t keep going with the financial situation I had found myself in.  I wasn’t able to pay for everything on what I was making, even though I was making good money.  Ironically it was the job that made more expenses in child care.  Working 4/10’s meant I had to have child care before and after school on the days I worked, and all day care on Saturdays.  It made no sense to switch careers and move to a different place in Escondido, when there were so many better opportunities for the boys here in Santa Barbara.  Yet despite all these things, I still can’t help that I made this change for myself, and that I was going to use the ends to justify the means.  

I suppose in the end, this entire blog is about the moral dilemma I find myself facing everyday.  I can certainly justify my actions by the great outcome, but what if it had played out differently?  What if I continue to have work elude me?  Did I make this decision with sound reasoning? Or did I make it on good intentions?

"Don't Worry, Be Happy"

When Zane was still really little, before Holden was born, he sustained a black eye.  He was sitting with his mother on the floor, and toppled forward, and fell right on the edge of a bowl.  It was just a simple accident.  A few days later I went to Target and took Zane with me.  While checking out, the cashier implied that I had hit my child.  I was completely flabbergasted that someone would make the assumption that I had physically abused my child.  Certainly abuse happens, and it is horrible that it happens.  However, a person making the assumption that a) I would abuse my child, and b) that the child had even been abused, without any knowledge of the situation, or the people involved was, to say the least, on called for.  A few months ago I was shopping with the boys, and Holden was having a particularly difficult time, especially at self checkout.  He was trying to push buttons, and grab impulse items around the check stand.  Zane was doing his best to help out, and get us out of the store before Holden, or myself for that matter, had a melt down.  A gentleman walked up to me and said “Well at least you have one well behaved child.”  Once again I was completely astonished that someone would make such a comment.  I told the gentleman that my other child was autistic, and he immediately backed off.  Once again someone had made an assumption about people, and situations which he knew nothing about.  I shouldn’t have to justify Holden’s actions to anyone.  Nobody should have to justify the actions of their children, because there are always mitigating circumstances.  People have all kinds of reasons for being a certain way at any given moment.  Because of the way our society works, there might be repercussions for that behavior, despite the possibility of good reasons.

While I was in high school, I toured Canada with our Jazz band.  While in a hotel lobby we ran into Bobby McFerrin (The “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” guy).  We were all super excited to meet him.  He is a huge celebrity in the jazz world, especially at that time.  We had seen him perform earlier in the week, and he completely blew us all away.  He was very brief with us, and a little stand offish.  We all took it in stride, and really didn’t think much of it.  Later that week, when we were flying home, we ran into him in the airport.  We had the same flight to San Francisco.  He approached us this time, and apologized for his being brief in our previous meeting.  He explained that he had been very tired, and was not feeling well.  He was very humble and sincerely sorry for his behavior, which in all honestly was really not that bad.  The point is, you never know what someone is going through at any given moment.  Maybe you are catching them at a bad moment, maybe they are dealing with a neurological disability, maybe they received their black eye completely on accident, absent of malice.  You just never know.

It would be nice if people gave people the benefit of the doubt, especially if they are people they don’t even know, but it would seem to be the human way to judge people.  Emotional Intelligence would tell us that it is our primordial need to categorize something as a threat or not, so as to be able to make the proper reaction to it, i.e. fight or flight.  I suppose the fact that it is safer to assume the worst, has made us all a little jaded in our ability to give people the benefit of the doubt.  I think having Holden as a child has taught me to be less jaded about people, and made me more open to the possibility that there might be much more to the situation then I can perceive.  Maybe we all need to take a page out of Bobby McFerrin’s book, and “Don’t Worry, Be Happy!”

"Dichotomy"

Dichotomy, as defined by Merriam-Websters is: A division into two especially mutually exclusive or contradictory groups or entities.  I find language to be so interesting.  On one hand it has replaced our ability to visualize things in our heads.  We have come to think in language.  When I was a wee little lad in collage, I had a general psychology class.  They showed us that we read before we look.  They would put words on a screen that were written in a color that contradicted with what was written. In other words the word “red” was written in say blue ink.  When asked to name what color the word was written in, it was very hard not to say red when the answer was blue.  I have often stated that poetry isn’t the ability to express in words our deepest emotions, but rather the ability to express that language is not capable of expressing our deepest emotions.  It is only when we paint with language, through metaphor, that we can truly express ourselves.  I am going to jump to a tangent here for a second, and further state that I believe autistic people have so much trouble with language, because they think in visualization, not language.  That means they are like an ESL (English as a second language) speaker, trying to translate in their heads from imagery, to language.  This is purely my opinion, and I have no research to back this statement, but when you watch Holden trying to find the words for what he wants to express, it is like watching an ESL person.  Anyway, that was a tangent, back to Dichotomy.  I love language, despite it’s imperfections, but also try to still visualize, and use my inner eye for seeing things other then just words.  Language is a lot like a person, it is capable of showing such grace and beauty, like Mikhail Baryshnikov or Yo-Yo Ma, or be a clumsy drunkard, stumbling along a dingy street.  For some reason “Dichotomy” feels like the perfect word to express something I witnessed with Zane and Holden recently.

Over Christmas, the boys mother came out from Arizona to visit the boys for four days.  From beginning to end, there was such a dichotomy as to how the boys reacted to this visit.  Both boys love their mother very much, and are very happy when she visits, but the similarities end right about there.  From the very beginning of the visit, to the very end, they reacted very differently.  Holden doesn’t want to let his mother out of his sight when she is in town, but makes it very clear that he wants both of us, his parents, to be with him.  He loves holding both our hands as he walks, and only wants to go for a drive, if we are all going for a drive.  Zane on the other hand, prefers to have one on one time with both of his parents.  Taking advantage of not having to be second fiddle to Holden’s special needs.  He doesn’t want us both being together, and wants which ever parent he in not with, to keep Holden out of his one on one time.  However he is very diplomatic about it, in that he is very careful to show equal affection for both of us.  If he tells his mother that he loves her, he immediately tells me that he loves me too, and vice a versa.  There is a sense of this being almost dutiful on his part.  Holden, on the other hand, has no problem showing a great deal of affection for whom ever he feels inclined to at the time, without the need to be fair and prudent.  When it was time for their mother to go home, the boys once again reacted very differently.  Holden, ever being so in the moment, seemed to simply accept that it was time for his mother to leave, and life went back to normal for him.  I don’t want to give the impression that he doesn’t miss his mother, or other people in his life that he had to leave behind when we moved, he most certainly does.  He just seems to accept that they are not in the present, and there is no point trying to make them in the present when they are not.  Zane on the other hand gets very upset when his mother leaves, and remains sad for some time.  Things will remind him of her, and make him sad again.  This was also the way he reacted to our dog that we had to put to sleep last year.  It was very traumatic for all of us, but Zane and I would both get sad when we were reminded of her, and Holden was accepting of her absence from our lives.  I am once again going to jump to a tangent, and say that I believe Holden’s thinking in this way, being in the present, is a very enlightened way of thinking.  There really is no point in having the absence of someone so drastically affect our present, when there are so many things passing us by in the doing so.  That is not to say we shouldn’t miss people, when they are either gone from our presence, or departed from their mortal coils.  I think we can honor them and the memories we have for them, but need not have it take away from the joy and happiness that is potentially all around us, if we can live in the present, and not be concerned about the past or future.  

It was very interesting for me to observe this dichotomy between my two boys, who share so much genetic information.  To observe the stark contrast in the way they approach so many things in life, is always so interesting to watch.  I think of my own brothers and how differently we approach life.  How do we develop these great differences, with so many aspects of our lives being so similar.  It’s no wonder we have so much trouble understanding the ways of different cultures and ideologies, when two brothers can have such varied reactions to the same parameters.

"Breakdown"

In a lot of ways, it would seem that humans are a constant breakdown in logic.  I could take time to explain this in great detail, give examples, and even interview people. In reality I only need to mention two things:  Relationships, and smoking.  These two subjects create such vivid examples in all of our lives, that there is no need to over explain.  We all know people, or are people, who have been attracted to people who are not good for us, or to us.  Yet despite logically knowing this, we are still attracted to them.  That is a breakdown in logic.  Smoking is the same thing.  We all know smoking can, and will kill us, yet people still smoke.  It’s like playing cellular Russian Roulette, we never know which cell has the potential to go cancerous, but we know it’s there.  These breakdowns in logic are all over the place in life, and like the bee used to be for science, they are mysteries waiting to be solved.

As with all things involving Holden these breakdowns present themselves in unique ways.  Holden loves music.  He loves to sing it, he loves to listen to it, he loves to be around it.  One time he asked me to put on a particular DVD for him, is was the Baby Beethoven DVDs.  He said the DVD by name, but when I put it on he got upset.  He began to say “5” over and “music” over and over again.  The DVD came with a music CD as well, so I took out the movie and put in the CD.  He became happy, but continued to say “5”.  I was totally perplexed, until he started singing Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” the fourth movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.  So I advanced the CD to the 5th track, and sure enough, it was the “Ode to Joy”.  He knew exactly what he wanted to listen too.  There have been particular CDs that he absolutely loves.  One such CD was the music to Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer that came with a Christmas collection DVD.  He would listen to this all the time, skipping some tracks, and replaying others.  Here is where the Breakdown comes in though, after he was done listening, he would take the CD out and start playing with it.  Over time it got so scratched it wouldn’t play anymore.  He would get very upset, and I used it as an example of what happens when a CD gets scratched.  He understands the concept now, because when a movie or CD skips, he immediately says scratched.  Yet to this day, he still abuses CDs and DVDs if I let him.  In fact, he sometimes gets so upset when they get scratched, that I have taken great care to never let him watch his favorite movies on his portable DVD player, because he always ends up taking them out, and not putting them back in the cases.  In all honesty, through my constant nagging, he has gotten better at putting them away, but certainly he does not always do it.

Another example of this was his laptop.  I had this old Dell laptop.  Now there is a lot I can say about Dell that would be negative, don’t even get me started about their tech support, but I have to say that laptop took a beating, before it finally died.  Holden loved that laptop, he loves to surf the net, play youtube videos, and draw on the computer.  He loves to change settings, changing his icon, wall paper, and style of appearance. He likes to create accounts and give them all passwords, and likes to change his mouse pointer.  Once again though, after he would finish on the computer, he would stand on it, carry it around and accidentally drop it.  He began to pull keys off of it, and with his OCD, once he started, he couldn’t stop, eventually all the keys were gone, and I had to attached a USB keyboard for him.  He eventually ripped the whole keypad off, and you could see right to the motherboard.  The chassis was cracked in several places, and one day while standing on it the screen broke.  He completely freaked out over this one, I couldn’t even bring the laptop out to work on, without him freaking out all over again.  These are the type of breakdowns that I just don’t understand.  I was raised to appreciate what I have, and make it last as long as humanly possible, and I think Zane is beginning to understand that concept as well.  Holden continues to have these breakdowns in logic, where he abuses the toys he loves the most, and then gets really upset when they fail him.  He still asks to listen to the Rudolph music, even though I tell him it’s to scratched.  He puts it is, and nothing will read it anymore, then he says “Too scratched” and gives it back to me.  

A few days ago Holden put a dryer fabric softener sheet in the toaster oven, and lit the toaster oven on fire.  He got really upset, and was yelling fire the whole time I was trying to put it out.  He was crying, and very agitated, even after I took it outside and put it out.  I couldn’t even try and clean it out and see if it still worked for a few hours, because Holden would get upset every time I went near it.  Yet when I did clean it, and it did work again, he tried to do it again.  I now keep it unplugged.  I don’t know if Holden really grasps the concept of repercussions.  He got a hold of a razor blade once and tried to shave his legs, and ended up cutting himself.  I could tell it hurt him, and continued to hurt for a few days, yet he tried to do it again at the next chance he got.  

Obviously this is an extremely dangerous aspect of Holden’s condition.  It means he will play with knives, run in the street, burn himself, and potentially never learn not to do it again, when something bad happens.  Everything is so situational for him, so if you change one parameter, it is a different situation.  I may someday get him not to run in the street at my house, but if we go a few houses down, it’s a whole new situation for him, and he will run in the street again.  These are the breakdowns in logic that I just don’t know how to solve.