Do Something! Dream Dreams!

October 30th, 2008 by Paul | Posted in autism | No Comments »

There is a great blog post from skifoozle.wordpress.com entitled what’s happened to our dreams?.

Why do we dream, why do we strive, why do we act?  Is it for the end goal?  I would say not so much.  It is the journey, completely!  The end result is always a disappointment to what we perceive it will be.  We always, always over estimate how results will make us feel when we are chasing a dream.  I’ve written about this previously here.  Live for the journey. 

For myself, do I want my son to be “healed”?  Do I want him to be “normal”?  Not exactly.  I want him to know friendship.  I want him to know love.  I want him to vigorously pursue our Savior, Redeemer.  I desperately want these end results.  As important as these goals are for me, I am not willing to neglect the joy and happiness in the now that my son provides.  Playing frisbee, speaking mullish, laughing, hearing “I love you dad”, that is the value of my journey. 

Keep dreaming, dreams so that you can have amazing (often painful, but ultimately fulfilling) journeys!!! 

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TDAH - Playing Games with the Kids - Update

October 30th, 2008 by Paul | Posted in Playing Games | No Comments »

We are still playing games every day.  The game of choice for the past 2 weeks continues to be mancala.  My daughter loves this game and is getting to be quite good at it.  She is also developing good math skills in her ability to determine her opponent’s score based on the number of gems that she has.  It is a very positive experience for her.

My son has also enjoyed playing mancala.  Last night I heard him playing and went to ask him if he wanted me to play with him.  He said that he was just practicing by himself.

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TDAH - Playing Games with the Kids - Days 9 -13

October 15th, 2008 by Paul | Posted in Playing Games | No Comments »

Things have been extremely busy with work, home, etc., so I haven’t been able to post as often as I would like. 

I have maintained the challenge of playing games with the kids everyday with one exception.  I was gone on Saturday and fortunately my parents stepped in and played an abundance of games with the kids that day. 

The game of choice on day 9 was Chutes and Ladders.  The version that we own is the Sesame Street edition.  The game is the same except with Sesame Street characters.  My daughter won as Zoe, my wife was Elmo, I was Big Bird and my son was Cookie Monster.

Since day 9 our game of choice has been the same game each day.  That game is Mancala.  It is a simple game that originated in Africa.  The goal is to capture more gems than your opponent.  My daughter is really good and takes extreme pleasure in beating dad. 

We maybe “stuck” on playing Mancala for quite some time as we all enjoy it so much. 

Click here for more information on Mancala.

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TDAH - Playing Games with the Kids - Day 8

October 9th, 2008 by Paul | Posted in Reading with Kids | No Comments »

Today’s game of choice was Ker Plunk by Mattel.  We had two quick games before bed time. 

Ker Plunk was invented in 1967 and involves a plastic upright tube, plastic rods and marbles.  The rods are inserted into the tube and the marbles are placed through the top of the tube and held in place by the rods.  Each player in turn pulls a rod out trying not to let any of the marbles drop.  The person who causes the least amount of marbles to fall is the winner.

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TDAH - Playing Games with the Kids - Day 7

October 8th, 2008 by Paul | Posted in Playing Games | No Comments »

Today was the day of my wife’s domination over the family.  We played the game in which she is unbeaten.  She is willing to take on all challengers!

The name of the game is Cranium Jam Pack Jam.  It is a great game that is simple to play and is great at exercising spatial reasoning.  The object of the game is to pack the trunk of a toy car with 14 different odd items.  The items include chairs, cactus, bench, aquarium, cake, skateboard, tire, doll house, guitar, picnic basket and carpet.  Cards are dealt with pictures of the items.  On your turn you must decide how many of the items you will attempt to pack in the trunk.  You must then pack the items in the trunk before time expires.  It is quite simple.  The challenge and fun is how the items can be combined to save space in the trunk. 

Of course my daughter loves playing this game.  She is so intense when it is her turn trying to figure out how to fit the items in the car.  My son, of course, mildly tolerates playing the game. 

Hands down, my wife is the best.  If you are at our house, I dare you to challenge her to a Jam Pack Jam duel. 

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TDAH - Playing Games with the Kids - Day 6

October 7th, 2008 by Paul | Posted in Playing Games | No Comments »

Today’s game was a rousing battle of Candyland.  All 4 of us played and we had a good time.  My wife was the winner as she was fortunate to get the ice cream cone card to propel her to the top of the board. 

Candyland was first published in 1949 by Milton Bradley Company.  The game has changed over the years with the most recent change is the the Molasses Swamp was changed to the Chocolate Swamp as most children in 2002 had rarely heard of molasses.

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TDAH - Playing Games with the Kids - Day 3-5

October 6th, 2008 by Paul | Posted in Playing Games | No Comments »

On day 3 all four of us played the game Blokus.  Blokus is a game that requires spatial reason with a variety of shapes.  The playing pieces are “tetris” shapes that must be placed so that it touches at least one other piece of the same color, but only touching the corner.  The game is really simple, but the amount of possible plays quickly diminish making strategy important. 

My son struggled to find correct plays, but he stuck with it and I think it is a good mental activity for him.  I just happened to win.  I’m really enjoying my victory in a mental reasoning game over a 6 and 7 year old.

There is also now a Blokus Trigon with triangle based playing pieces and a hexagonal game board.

On day 4, I played Popomatic Trouble with the kids.   Trouble is another simple game with the goal to get your 4 game pieces around the board before your opponents.  The fun of Trouble is that if you land on an opponent’s piece they have to go back to the beginning.  The game has been around since 1965.  We always enjoy playing this game and my daughter had a come from behind victory to win, which she enjoyed!

On day 5 the game of choice was Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games on the Wii.  This Wii game involves a variety of Olympic sports that you compete in using the Mario and Sonic characters.  The events that we played were the 100m dash, 100m swimming, hammer throw and table tennis.  Some of the events give you quite a workout. 

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TDAH: Playing Games with the Kids - Day 2

October 3rd, 2008 by Paul | Posted in Playing Games | 3 Comments »

Day 2 of this month’s Test Drive a Habit of playing a game with the kids everyday.  Today’s game was Mario Kart for the Wii.  We had a college student over for supper and he stayed and played Mario Kart with us.  We all had a great time playing 4 player team racing.  My son and I were battling it out for 1st place while my daughter is ecstatic if she finishes a race.  It was a really fun evening.

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Test Drive a Habit: Playing Games with the Kids

October 2nd, 2008 by Paul | Posted in Playing Games | No Comments »

My Test Drive a Habit for this month is to play a game each day with the kids.  I enjoyed my TDAH of daily reading with the kids and thought that this would be a good intentional way to spend time with them.

On day 1, we played an old card game called “Annie”.  It is based on the musical Annie and is one of my daughter’s favorites.  The object of the game is to be the first to spell A-N-N-I-E.  It is a very simple game with a couple of special cards.  One special card is the Miss Hannigan card which allows you to remove an opponents letter.  This Miss Hannigan can be blocked by a Sandy card.  My daughter loves to trick people into thinking she is going to play a Miss Hannigan every time she discards a letter.  It is quite funny.

We had a great time last night playing.  I’m fairly certain that this game is well out of production.  I wasn’t even able to find it for sale on Ebay. 

Here is a description from boardgamegeek.com. 

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Autism: Rep. Maloney’s Autism-Vaccine Meeting

October 1st, 2008 by Paul | Posted in autism | No Comments »

On Wednesday September 24th, 2008, Rep. Maloney held a meeting on autism and vaccines. 

The list of those in attendance can be found here.  60 members of the House and 30 members of the Senate were represented.  51 Democrats, 38 Republicans and 1 Independent.  It is an impressive number.  The need for research is clearly gaining traction!

Mark Blaxill of Safeminds spoke on “Why the Autism Crisis Has Become So Controversial and Why Families Need Your Help”.  Click here for slides.

David Kirby broke down the importance of research and the need for urgency in getting funding for research.  A transcript can be found here and his slides here.

In light of the current financial “bail-out” discussion.  Read this from the Age of Autism transcript from David Kirby’s presentation (emphasis mine).

We have people from the left and the right and center representing offices in this room. Autism, of course, is a nonpartisan issues, quite a bit like the financial crisis that we’re all trying to deal with right now. And the parallels go beyond nonpartisanship: The financial crisis is a real threat to our country, and so is the autism crisis. And I hope you will go back to your various offices and talk about ways that Congress can respond even better than it has so far to this crisis.

This is a national emergency.

We now have hundreds of thousands of children with autism in this country, and the majority of people in this country are under 18 years of age. They will come of age, and they will be dependent on us, the American taxpayers, to support them.

It is estimated that the cost of care, education and housing for a person with autism runs up to 2 to 3 million dollars per person, and we have at least 250,000 people with autism in this country, so we are already up to the 700 billion, 750 billion dollar mark, coming at us in the future. And even though you’re all concentrating on fixing the financial mess, I just hope that attention will also be paid to fixing the autism mess we’re in, in this country. This is a serious national emergency.

Either our children will be thrown away or they will be cared for.  The research to care for children needs to be done. 

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