Khaled's behavior this Friday was so astonishingly calm that I feel compelled to post about it.
Khaled's primary stim is movement. He moves. All the time. He runs, he jumps, he spins round and round, he does most things at warp speed. So when Khaled walks or stands or simply sits, we are in a state of uncomfortable disbelief. Uncomfortable because I fear the worst - that he may be ill.
But he wasn't ill. I decided to visit a friend who lives downtown. A bus and two really long subway rides away. I dared to be brave and did not take our stroller.
Sausages and lightning McQueen car toy packed and we were off.
Here is Khaled waiting, patiently at the bus stop. Although he does absolutely love the bus and is learning to wait for the things he really likes.
I am working on trying to get Khaled to smile when faced with a camera. Right now he just imitates me when I say "Khaled smile, hee hee hee" and bare my teeth. I am going to fade out the hee hee hee and just ask him to smile, and then later maybe just show him a camera? But the result right now is evidently not very smile-like. We need to work on this a bit more. I think I may be pulling a scary toothy grin that he is just copying.
Luckily the train was waiting for us at the platform (and I did not have to wrestle to keep Khaled away from the tracks in his attempts to peek inside the tunnel).
On the bus he usually repeats the announcements. I took advantage of his calm by putting my arm gently around him and rocking with him to the motion of the bus. He let me do it. The entire train journey (40 minutes), he was sitting, calm, watching the doors open and close at the stops. Just quiet. We rocked in the train too. I didn't have to wrestle much with him when the trains pulled up at the platform either. Just picked him up and sort of leaned.
At Yonge and Bloor there were two guys with a guitar and some whistly kind of instrument. Khaled stopped and danced a bit to their music and they let him strum their guitar and gave us a CD. He loves music.
On the way back he was exhausted. It was his nap time and the train was packed. So I crouched on the floor and he stood. People make faces when a little kid cries on the train. I like to think they envy little children because we all want to cry on a packed train, but they obviously cannot get away with it. Some guy made a comment about why this is the reason he always drives, which made me look up and glare at him only to realize how seriously unattractive he was. This made me feel much better and I ended up smiling at him. (Which is why you should never trust a random smile from a stranger).
We changed our carriage and a lovely woman gave up her seat for Khaled. He rested his head against another woman next to him and fell asleep within seconds. She smiled to herself all the way to our stop. Who wouldn't want this face leaning against their shoulder and dozing off eh?
Khaled's primary stim is movement. He moves. All the time. He runs, he jumps, he spins round and round, he does most things at warp speed. So when Khaled walks or stands or simply sits, we are in a state of uncomfortable disbelief. Uncomfortable because I fear the worst - that he may be ill.
But he wasn't ill. I decided to visit a friend who lives downtown. A bus and two really long subway rides away. I dared to be brave and did not take our stroller.
Sausages and lightning McQueen car toy packed and we were off.
Here is Khaled waiting, patiently at the bus stop. Although he does absolutely love the bus and is learning to wait for the things he really likes.
I am working on trying to get Khaled to smile when faced with a camera. Right now he just imitates me when I say "Khaled smile, hee hee hee" and bare my teeth. I am going to fade out the hee hee hee and just ask him to smile, and then later maybe just show him a camera? But the result right now is evidently not very smile-like. We need to work on this a bit more. I think I may be pulling a scary toothy grin that he is just copying.
Luckily the train was waiting for us at the platform (and I did not have to wrestle to keep Khaled away from the tracks in his attempts to peek inside the tunnel).
On the bus he usually repeats the announcements. I took advantage of his calm by putting my arm gently around him and rocking with him to the motion of the bus. He let me do it.
The entire train journey (40 minutes), he was sitting, calm, watching the doors open and close at the stops. Just quiet. We rocked in the train too.
I didn't have to wrestle much with him when the trains pulled up at the platform either. Just picked him up and sort of leaned.
At Yonge and Bloor there were two guys with a guitar and some whistly kind of instrument. Khaled stopped and danced a bit to their music and they let him strum their guitar and gave us a CD. He loves music.
On the way back he was exhausted. It was his nap time and the train was packed. So I crouched on the floor and he stood. People make faces when a little kid cries on the train. I like to think they envy little children because we all want to cry on a packed train, but they obviously cannot get away with it.
Some guy made a comment about why this is the reason he always drives, which made me look up and glare at him only to realize how seriously unattractive he was. This made me feel much better and I ended up smiling at him. (Which is why you should never trust a random smile from a stranger).
We changed our carriage and a lovely woman gave up her seat for Khaled. He rested his head against another woman next to him and fell asleep within seconds. She smiled to herself all the way to our stop. Who wouldn't want this face leaning against their shoulder and dozing off eh?