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rufusrufus

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Posts posted by rufusrufus

  3. Posted · Report reply

    Oh, I didn't go back and read the whole thread, I just started blabbering on (I do that a lot!). I'm glad that something I said makes sense though - wahoo! My most pervasive stim is spelling out words as if I'm typing / texting with my fingertips or my toes. It tends to be a word I've picked up from a conversation, although it's not necessarily an important word from the sentence - it's just as likely to be "the" or "and" as "anti-disestablishmentarianism" :) If / when I become aware that I'm doing it, I try to stop myself, but a minute later I'll realise that my toes have just picked up the baton and are doing it instead! And often when I try to stop my toes AND my fingers doing it, my arm / leg muscles will contract / relax as if they're joining in too. It does seem to act as a dispersal of nervous energy, but it's incredibly draining, and I don't feel in control of it at all. I can be lying in bed absolutely exhausted and I'll "select" a word from my internal dialogue and off I go... so it doesn't even matter if there's an actual conversation going on or not! Argh! I think it actually came from an earlier stim, as when I was a child, whilst travelling in a car, I'd press my fingertip down when we travelled alongside a hedge / wall / fence, and "jumped" any gaps, then pressed down again when I "landed" on the next item. I'd also do it with lines in the road, pavements dipping and then rising, traffic (making fingertips "hop" from one car to another). I don't think I do it when I'm driving, myself, though. I'd like to feel a bit more in control of it, but I guess I'm lucky in some respects that it's not as obvious as hand-flapping or rocking as I've been able to hold down jobs etc. Having said that, if it had been more obvious, maybe I would have got a diagnosis sooner! :)

  5. Posted · Report reply

    Isn't that the one that smells like puke? Or is that something else? :unsure::lol:

    Umm I don't know... I don't think I would have eaten it if it did though! Though my Dad didn't realise at first that you're supposed to cook it, and tried eating it raw. He thought it was foul and couldn't understand why everyone else liked it so much! :lol:

    what do you call a woman that knows where her husband is every night?

     

    a widow.

     

     

    Haha. I like "If you want breakfast in bed, sleep in the kitchen!" :P

  6. Posted · Report reply

    oooh ..........I love all those

     

     

     

     

     

    .........its been a while since I was an adolescent and you may have never heard of half of these

     

     

    The Cure

    TheThe

    Talking Heads

    Eveything But The Girl

    Echo and the Bunnymen.

     

    My cousin got me into The Cure a bit - he always wore their T-shirts and I became intrigued! And my old geography teacher once made me a mix tape with the Talking Heads on it. I really get into movie soundtracks too. As a child it was The Bodyguard (no accounting for taste, I know!) and in my teens there was The Crow and 10 Things I Hate About You. Now it's Dreamgirls :)

  8. Posted · Report reply

    I think there used to be a saying that if one didn't hand-flap then one couldn't possibly have asperger's.

     

    No idea where this saying came from but I don't believe it now having seen that very few of those on the spectrum actually do it. But what I want to know is whether hand-flapping is limited to just those on the autistic spectrum and if so what actually might cause it?!?

     

    I've never heard that saying, but I used to work in a school for children with special needs and there were a fair few on the spectrum who did this, or other movements, like waving a sheet of paper, or a piece of cloth, or a bag in front of their faces. I can't remember where I read these, but 2 theories spring to mind relating to this.

    The first is that the world is so overwhelming and overstimulating, that the flapping hand, or whatever, acts as a filter, or a distraction. The mind / eye can focus on that, whilst taking in the rest of the world through peripheral vision, without full focus, which reduces how over-stimulating it is. Someone (might have been Phoebe Caldwell) used the example of a child who would hold a toy car up to his eye and view the world through the windows, as though the "frame" of the car gave a bit more control of what he viewed. Does that make sense?

    The second theory is a sensory integration perspective - the example I read was about walking on tiptoes, so I'll use that - in NT people, the brain gets enough information about where they are in space, orientation etc, from the sensations of the feet, leg muscles, ears (for balance) in relation to the ground. Their muscles tell them that they are standing upright, on a level piece of ground, with straight legs etc, whereas the autistic brain doesn't always process all that info in the same way. So for the brain to get enough information from the feet, a person with autism might need to focus all the sensory pressure on the balls of their feet (i.e. walk on tiptoes), so the relevant muscles are triggered and the message gets to the brain. I keep re-reading this and really have no idea whether it makes sense outside of my own head!! Anyway, I was going to say that maybe the hand-flapping is a similar thing to walking on tiptoe - the nerve endings in the hands / arms aren't stimulated enough by still air surrounding the body to get that information, but the sensation of the movement of air might trigger those sensory messages to the brain? Or maybe it's a comfort thing? A ritualised movement?

     

    dude, some of these topics your digging up are back form before jesus was born.

     

    Hahaha this made me chuckle :)

  11. Posted · Report reply

    Fair enough - pretty weird to describe the fruit as sausage like... looks more like a peanut crossed with a kiwi fruit - but maybe whoever coined the common name hadn't seen those things :)

     

    True, I guess "sausage tree" is a colloquial term, rather than an accurate anatomical one :) My Dad used to live in the Caribbean and they ate bread fruit. That confused me!!! :) It's most like a potato in texture and flavour.

  13. Posted · Report reply

    I like that way of saying what you doing - but I can't think of any other examples either - they just appear in my mind in the moment :D

     

    :) I also burst into song aaaaall the time because someone will say something that reminds me of a song. If I say / think the word "sometimes" I start singing "Sometimes in our lives, we all have pain, we all have sorrow" from Bill Withers - Lean On Me. Anyway, is this silly enough to be in this thread or have I hijacked it? :s Did you know that there's such a thing as a sausage tree? :o

  15. Posted · Report reply

    Hi there. I can't say exactly what you could expect, but I used to volunteer / work at a home-based therapy programme for a child with severe autism and there were elements of therapeutic play in what we did, so I don't know if this is helpful at all. We would use play to foster interaction between ourselves and the child. A formal therapeutic setting was more than he could cope with, he'd just shut down, but by engaging with him on his own terms, through play, this helped him learn to tolerate (and even occasionally enjoy!) our presence. I would think that in a first appointment they may do some kind of assessment - Emma's needs, areas she struggles in, what insight you can give them maybe? I'm not sure. I don't know how long each session might last though. We used elements of Phoebe Caldwell's Intensive Interaction and Son-Rise too, as well as Stanley Greenspan's Floor Time method and Sensory Integration stuff. I don't know if any of that is relevant at all, but I think it's really interesting stuff to read, in any case! :) Funnily enough I got accepted onto a Post Grad course to study play therapy, but then the course didn't run. If it had I could probably have given you some better info, sorry! Good luck though :)

  17. Posted · Report reply

    What's your favourite? I forever search for moments to say "it puts the lotion on its skin or it gets the hose again" :lol:

     

    Hahahaha :) Ummm, I can't think now I'm on the spot. But I used to have a boss who was Chinese, so her pronunciation of some things were a little odd, but she's one of the people I tend to mimic because she's strong and generally awesome, so I come out with these phrases in a Chinese accent and people look at me like I'm totally bonkers! So instead of saying "what are you doing?" I say "wah choo do-aahn?" (that's the best I can write it out, sorry!), with her inflection. She also called me "Lootie" instead of "Ruthy". :)

  19. Posted · Report reply

    Exactly. And I would throw in all my tapes, CDs and mp3's and let someone judge me from these

     

    I can't get over the buzz I feel just to have someone understand something I say! :) It's so cool! And I love to share my musical tastes with people too. Connecting to another person through a piece of music gives me a massive buzz too. :)

  21. Posted · Report reply

    All my books are like different shades of my personality. Rather than actually having that "getting to know you" conversation with someone, I'd rather just be able to give them a list of all the books I own and say "There - judge me on that". Hmm, maybe I should try that! Somehow I doubt it would work out too well though! :)

  22. Posted · Report reply

    I love books! Many books! I can get lost in them. New ones are friends we haven't met yet. Just being around a lot of books relaxes me. I also like over-sized and minature things. I'm not really sure why, but they amuse me. :)

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