Tales from the Shark Tank

My beloved husband was reading over medical records in preparation for a deposition. In them he found records of an occasion when the individual in question had gone to the emergency room because his hand hurt. The reason given was that he had punched a glass window.

His discharge instructions read “take Tylenol for pain as needed, and refrain from punching glass windows in the future.”

And yes. Some people really are that stupid.

I’ve re-read what I wrote yesterday, and something got lost in the ramblings. What gets me isn’t solely in regard to my son in particular. What gets me is that the “experts” insist that their tests measure everything, to the point that if many autistic children display a skill that would be lauded in neurotypical kids, they decide the skill indicates a problem with the autistic children rather than that their tests might not give valid results. They know – by their own testing and labeling – that these children are not typical, and yet insist upon using tests designed for neurotypical kids and applying the results as though pervasive neurological differences wouldn’t affect the results. To me, that seems ridiculous on the face of it.

Maybe I’m oversimplifying, but it seems to me that if you have a group of children who read very early but get low scores on standard intelligence tests, then the obvious conclusion should be that there’s a problem with the tests as applied to those kids. But instead I’ve heard “no, the tests scores are low, so therefore the reading must indicate a problem.” Huh?

Or maybe it’s a problem with “boxed” thinking.

A friend of mine sent me an article from the current issue of Newsweek about intelligence testing and autism. Basically, it says that scientists have found that standard IQ tests consistently show autistic children as being of low intelligence, but that if a different form of test is used which relies on pattern determination rather than verbal responses, the test results go up into the normal or high range. There’s no such difference between the two tests for neurotypical kids, but for the autistic kids it’s tremendous – something like 60 points in some instances. The author goes on to wonder how many autistic kids have been written off due to failure to detect “blazing intelligence”.

My first response was to wonder why this was such a discovery. It certainly isn’t news to me. I know how my son scored on the standardized IQ tests he was given, and he functions far above many autistic kids verbally. I also know how bright he is, and that a test predicated on patterns and structure would be a thing at which he would shine, as that’s how he thinks. I can see the same thing applying to his best friend, also on the autism spectrum. But my perception is based on an intuitive understanding of my child, no more quantified or measured than that of any parent. My second thought was that while the second test got better results, it would still fall far short of providing any kind of valid indicator of intelligence. I don’t have the skills to devise a test that would measure reasonably well for kids like mine, but I can recognize pretty quickly what will be outside their pattern far enough that they would have to “translate” the instructions before they could even begin to respond to the questions. By the descriptions, the second test is better than the first, but it isn’t perfect either.

I have no doubt of my son’s intelligence. I see the structures he creates. I watch as he grasps mathematical or engineering concepts on the first explanation. He struggles with sequencing, with implication and inference, with verbal clues and behavioral cues, but makes up songs with lovely, complex, cyclic melodies. He doesn’t generalize (a requirement of many tests of mental acuity), but does keep track of and understand whole webs of interconnection. He taught himself to read before he could talk, and understood what he read; I have never understood why that was dismissed by education professionals as a sign of mis-wiring rather than an indication of innate intelligence! If a neurotypical child taught herself to read by age two, those same people would be talking about what a wonder she was, a prodigy – but if it is an autistic child, then it’s “hyperlexia”, another “condition” rather than a skill, and they’ll go right back to the tests that show the child in question is of barely average ability.

And I think the problem is that the scientists and medical professionals who define the paradigms want things that are measurable and quantifiable into neat packages. My son isn’t – really most kids aren’t, but kids on the autism spectrum even more than most. It’s so much easier if you can reduce everything to numbers and then compare the numbers, nice and linear and consistent. But autistic kids don’t think in linear fashion; they think in webs of interconnection and interaction. It’s like the difference between Euclidean and non-Euclidean geometry. And if it is a newsflash to those who study them that verbal, language based, linear tests which presume understanding of social interactions won’t provide valid results, then I think I shall continue to rely on my own intuition, flawed and unquantifiable as it may be.

It has been raining – and raining – and then it’s been raining. I rather appreciate it; nothing drops the temperature on a 90+ degree day like a good storm. But the grass appreciates it as well, and as a result has been growing. I’m the one who mows it, so it got pretty shaggy while I was gone. This afternoon, after a storm cooled things off, I got a start on doing something about that. I got about two thirds of the way through the front yard when my mower decided to stop functioning. I thought I must have hit a rock, or a large branch hidden in the grass, but when I backed up there was nothing. So I don’t know what caused the horrid noises I heard; all I know is that when I turned the mower off and back on, it was no longer making horrid sounds, but it was also no longer mowing.

So my lawn now has a Mohawk haircut. There’s this strip down the center that’s nice and tall, with everything around it mowed short. It looks really silly. And since I won’t have a chance to deal with it until next week, it’s only going to look sillier by the time I get there.

I’m glad I have no neighbors. Someone with an immaculate yard would make mine look even worse by comparison.

Here be serious Math Geekery. You have been warned.

I picked up my friend’s ten year old son from day camp one day, when his mom was in hospital and his dad in trial in the next county. (Like my husband and me, they’re both lawyers.)

So on the way back to the hospital for the daily visit, boychick asked me if there was any way two plus two could equal six. No, I told him, then added “but it can equal ten, or something that looks like ten.” He boggled a little, then asked me how. “Count base 4″ I answered, then went on to explain.

We count base 10. That means we count up to 9, then we run out of single digits and move over a position. We call that “One-zero” notation “ten”, but what it really means is “the base” (whatever it is) plus zero. Then eleven is “the base plus one”, twelve “the base plus 2″, and so on. So in base three the count would be “1, 2, 3″… and then it runs out of single digits, and goes on to …. “one-zero”. Base 4 that means “4 plus zero”. It looks a whole lot like 10, though. So that’s how 2+2 can equal 10.

The kidlet listened very carefully through the explanation, and asked a couple of questions that made me think he’d gotten at least the general idea, which is amazing given that the explanation was entirely verbal – I was driving at the time, hard to write that way. Then he got me good. “Was your mom or dad a math teacher?” he asked me. And I had to say that yes, indeed, my dad had been a math professor. He just nodded. Then he asked when his mom would be coming home.

I now have an example of ultimate distractibility.

My son, wearing one shoe, chasing gleefully after the kitten. He got distracted between the left shoe and the right.

Of the two, I think the kitten may sometimes have the longer attention span.

I’m back in Indiana. I wasn’t entirely comfortable leaving K. yet, but after ten days there were greater needs here. Our son starts school on Wednesday, and I need to take him to meet his teacher tomorrow, get him the rest of his school supplies (somehow I got sidetracked on that), and generally be Mommy again. (I think my husband’s moderately glad to see me as well.) The trip home was slower than I’d have liked; I got a late start and so caught the fringes of Chicago rush hour. But it never came to a complete stop, which means it counts as a good journey.

So of course, I went to pick my son up from the friend that’s been taking care of him during the day in my absence, a favor I’ll be returning through the harvest season when her boys ride the bus home from school with mine in case she’s running late. My son all but dragged me out of their house, wanting to tell me about everything all at once. I listened non-stop on the drive home, arriving to be distracted by cats. The two big girls were outside, and came up to the car to ask me where I had been, and what I could have been thinking to leave them to the care of others for two whole weeks, and never mind that for most of that time they were in their own house, cared for by my husband. Then once they had expressed their feelings, they snubbed me pointedly. That always makes me laugh, because they sit down with their backs turned, and then glance over their shoulders to see how I’m taking it, turning back quickly if they see that I’ve caught them checking. Little Miss Cloud was in the attic window, mewing frantically to be released so she could greet me properly and with every bit as much enthusiasm as J. had. He brought her down, and she leaped for my shoulder and began to purr. She’s grown so much in the past couple of weeks – she’s looking like a small cat now, with near adult proportions if not size. Her tail is no longer a spike, nor her face all huge eyes and ears. She’s still a beautiful purry little girl, though, and still quite fond of riding Mom’s shoulder.

She and Sophia have achieved a working detente in my absence, and are almost to the point of being friends, sniffing noses and exchanging a brief lick in passing. Now when Cloud leaps on Sophia (or tries to; more often than not she sails right over as Sophia crouches down without even breaking stride) my sweet mama-cat just keeps walking along being regally oblivious to the antics of the fur-ball in motley. Tornado is another matter. She came in, laid eyes on Cloud, and began to cuss in Cat. (I did not ask for a translation, assuming from the tone that it was probably something no proper lady would say.) So I picked her up, petting her and assuring her that she was still my cat and scratching her in all her favorite places. She kept muttering. The mutters escalated to growls and hisses when she spotted Cloud again, but she didn’t try to jump out of my arms – all the complaints were purely vocal. That worked until Cloud came over to say hi from a distance of perhaps eighteen inches. Then Tornado tried to launch herself, but allowed herself to be restrained by my arms and distracted by some serious ear-scratching. That was a Good Thing(tm), since her launching pad would have been my tender skin and she is fully armed. So Cloud is back in her designated haven in my sewing room for the night.

Stay tuned for the next episode of Feline Place!

K.’s home, asleep on her couch with her foot up on cushions and an unpleasantly large hole in it. It’s healing up well, though, and hurting her less each day. And she’s tremendously glad to be here, where she can simply sleep, with no one poking or sticking things in her mouth or otherwise being intrusive. She sees trees outside the window here (and it’s a lovely large glass door), she has her cats, and she has food that actually tastes good. Hospital cooking doesn’t have to be horrid, but it sure was at this establishment.

But the nurses took very good care of her, and were cheerful and friendly and as gentle as they could be with things that couldn’t avoid hurting. I think within the first 15 minutes they decided that the patient was quite tractable, but that her friend was another matter. That was probably about the time an aide-type told me that outside of pediatrics, people were never allowed to stay overnight with the patients, and I simply declined to take “no” for an answer, instead asking where I might find a recliner. But if the aide was unhelpful, the nurse was more than willing to work with me, and even brought me bedding and pillows so I could turn a large chair into a reasonable bed. It worked; I really did sleep that night, waking only when they came in to check on her or when she herself had need of me. I know I slept; there’s no other way to wake with that “soaked in molasses” feeling.

The infection seems to be gone, and she herself so much better than she was a week ago there’s no comparison. There’s a lot of healing to do, but she’s going to be okay.

“Relieved” doesn’t begin to cover it.

Gentle readers, bear with me. My friend K. is in hospital, and I in Rockford to take care of her. Opportunities to sit and write are vanishingly thin on the ground; opportunities in conjunction with sufficient energy to do any such thing even thinner.

Short form: she developed an abscessed, antibiotic resistant staph infection in her foot. It has been surgically opened and drained, and she is now getting I.V. antibiotics in hospital. It’s working; she was admitted through E.R. yesterday evening, and is visibly better today. And all deities bless the people around me, who make it possible for me to leave my husband and son and come take care of her.

I’ll be back and posting at some point, but right now I’ve no clue when that might be.

Today I get to register Joseph for the coming school year. I’ll fill out all the usual medical and emergency and permission forms, read all the notices just in case something has changed from last year to this one and roll my eyes at the “we’re writing this on the assumption that you have no more sense than your five year old” tone of them. Then I’ll write them a check of eye-brow raising size for school book rental (an Indiana peculiarity) and go off to take care of the other things that the day requires of me.

It does make the impending start of school real for me, with all the feelings that accompany it. It brings home how quickly my son is growing up. He’s going in to fourth grade, and if he has his challenges – and he does – academic proficiency is assuredly not among them. But now is when I’m starting to worry about how vulnerable his literalness and inability to see consequences will make him. He’s got some of the concept of cause and effect, but he still can’t keep more than two steps in his head, and sometimes not even that. He’s like a butterfly, or a hummingbird: flitting from thing to thing, infinitely distractable by a passing thought or whim. Between getting on his shorts and his shirt, he suddenly decided he had to re-enact how he slipped and landed on his butt for my edification, and promptly forgot the shirt, dropped unthinkingly on the floor by his feet. And it’s funny, but it’s also a reminder that his wiring is a little different from standard.

My days will be my own again, and if most of them will be filled with obligation, I will be able to choose when to take a day to just do what I want. The first such is already planned; my friend C. and I are going out for lunch together on the first day of school. We’ve already chosen where we’re going, based on a particular dessert we want to split. And though it will be changed, life will fall into a routine again, given structure by the demands of school and homework. He won’t have an easy time getting back into some of those habits, but then to be fair neither will I. Our society is not so bound to the agricultural year any more, a fact borne in upon me by the fact that school starts in mid-August now instead of in September, leaving summer vacation the only real survival from that time. But for a number of years, we who have children are still tied to a yearly cycle, one that begins at the end of summer and ends at its beginning. That is the school year, and it begins over again in two more weeks.