Key Marking

J has a problem with locating things.  As mentioned in this blog, he likes the colour yellow. A lot.  Wandering around Homebase the other day, a small pot of Rustoleum Painter's Touch gloss finish in Bright Yellow was spotted... and, looking at the materials it can be used on, metal is covered.  So, a 20ml pot was bought (for £1.99).  We would paint the keys we need to find quickly - key covers have been tried in the past but they never last long.

Today, we assembled our equipment - old newspaper, small paintbrushes, keys and paint.

Covering the table with newspaper, the paint shaken and the correct key identified.

The key was painted yellow (we were lazy and didn't take it off the key ring)...








...and left to dry in the sunshine.

Once fully dry, it took about an hour, we had two sets of keys with a lovely bright yellow key for us to spot - effectively, a visual "USE ME" for all of us to see.

As shown in our pictures, we also use yellow wristbands on key rings as these allow the keys to be seen and held easily.  J's getting used to using keys when we go on dog walks - locking the door and keeping the keys safe - and having a wristband means he worries less about losing them.  Attaching them to his wrist gives him the security to know he has the keys with him and also has them readily available when arriving back at the door.

Keeping Christmas Calm and Coping

December is upon us and the build up to Christmas is in full swing.  Some find this an exciting time of year full of anticipation and promise.  Others don't.

J struggles with crowds, loathes surprises and can't bear loud music 'blaring out and filling my head'.  So, we decided to chat about a few things that he thinks make this time of year more easy for him to deal with.

When he was in school, he hated the change of daily/weekly routine that inevitably came with end of term/Christmas show/party preparations and outings.  Surprises are NOT fun for him.  He says 'I like to know what to expect'.

Regarding presents, again, surprises are not welcome.  What works well is when J makes a list of 'things I would be happy to get... but I know I won't get all of them'.  Then we try to choose from them - although the list is always Lego, Pokemon, Nintendo and Star Wars items so we're pretty used to his likes by now.

Wrapping paper is a big issue.  J can't even be in the same room as brown corrugated cardboard and finds many paper textures unbearable.  He actually gets goosebumps when he hears or touches paper/card.  Today was quite notable as we managed to get some Christmas present wrapping done - he touched, cut, folded and stuck the paper.  Then he wrote the tag and stuck that on.  It took an hour and a half to wrap just four presents but he did them all.  This sort of OT activity works well because he can see there's a reason for what he needs to do.

For presents that J receives, he hates touching the wrapping paper and that's without having to deal with sellotaped ends.  His grandparents refuse to adjust their wrapping technique to accommodate this so I 'doctor' all presents prior to J getting them.  The ends are opened, with just a small piece of tape left to hold the wrapping in place.  With cards, I open the envelopes and he *may* remove the card depending on "how it looks like it feels".

Presents we give to J are wrapped with minimal taping that mean the innards are easy to retrieve or else they are placed in a gift bag with a simple, small piece of tape on the top edge.  Where things are too big to use these, we just use a plastic carrier bag and the ones from the Lego store, being yellow and mentioning Lego, work very well indeed.  We reuse these year after year.

Christmas food is handled by writing on our weekly timetable (a chart I made and then laminated so we can use white board pens on it) the meals for each day.  J talks about what he's happy to eat and we let him stick to that.  We want as calm a time as possible and find it's not the time to challenge his boundaries. 

Visiting people does not, generally, happen.  We have a particularly fantastic family who we've known for years that we sometimes pop to see but our visit follows a standard pattern and we take our own food that we share with everyone.  J knows where to go if he's finding it too much and wants to take some time out.  Our pals know not to make a fuss about things and understand that J never, ever says "Goodbye", he just heads off to the car and that's it. Visit done!

Basically, J likes things the way they are.  Christmas is no different.  So, if you know someone who has similar challenges, please bear in mind that what you like may not be the same for them.  There are ways round things, it's just a matter of finding, and accepting, what works for you/them.

Modelling with Meccano

Keeping things interesting for J whilst trying to improve his manual dexterity and co-ordination is a daily task.  Finding items and activities that appeal to him is all important (we have used therapy putty many time in the past, blogged about his Hama beading and he is keen to Lego whenever he can).

We were lucky enough to be sent some meccano for J to review.  He had looked on the meccano UK website and chosen a Gears of War Helicopter - King Raven which was the model he was keen to assemble as soon as he set eyes on it.  Meccano was a good choice as it has small parts to deal with, over 300 in this set, and clear instructions to follow which help J with his planning skills.

True to form, J laid out all the pieces and inspected the manual to start with.  Then building commenced.  This was a task which took us a few days to complete and was a collaboration where J was project managing me when his dexterity let him down.  I am pleased to report, however, that towards the end of the build, J was able to complete most of the "structural assembly" himself.

J opened the plastic bags containing the parts with scissors and what follows is a montage of the build... and the comments are from J.

That's looking like it should...

These are a bit fiddly but the slots are good.

Nearly got the front wheel attached.

What's the next step?

It's looking good.

This is easy to follow...

...this is a bit more challenging!

It's looking like we're nearly done.

Ta dah!

This is bigger than I expected.

J loved working, over a number of days, on the model building and is looking forward to assembling the Space Chaos Heart of Darkness when he gets the chance!  He's particularly keen as it has "real life, working lights".   This set looked rather a challenge at the outset (having many pieces and almost 70 instructions) but J said of the whole undertaking "It was amazing and all my pals will be shocked at the size of the model!"

Disclosure - We were sent the meccano for free but these are our own views and pictures.  No fee has been paid for this blogpost.  Many thanks to Liz and Meccano UK.

Meandering through Motor 'skills'

Where to start with this post?  First of all, this is not a comprehensive guide into motor skills, as the title suggests, it will be a meandering account of things we've tried/are trying with J.  We embarked on the wanderings in the knowledge that with strong gross motor skills, fine motor skills follow and with that the seemingly all important handwriting will emerge.  The trouble for us is that with J his gross motor skills, at 12, remain poor (although they have improved greatly and he has worked long, and hard, to master things.)  There is so much to say and cover that bite-sized posts may be the only way to go.   We have tried/employed/practised many, many, many items/programmes/techniques in the hope of finding out what works for J.

J has struggled all of his life with handedness (this was touched on in an earlier post - What about Writing)... he showed no preference as a youngster so, given his other difficulties, it was agreed to encourage him to use his right hand.  Now, this has made little difference.  Being brutally frank, he is the opposite of ambidextrous, that is he is equally poor with both hands!  We now know this is called being 'ambisinistrous'.
As said in the aforementioned earlier post, J has had access to all types of pens, grips, writing slopes, white boards, therapy putty, paints, brushes, gross and fine motor games and exercises.  All to very little avail.  However, the facts remain that he has little stamina, holds implements at odd angles, cannot align his physical output with his mind's eye picture of what he wants to deliver... so you can imagine the frustration he feels.  In the family, we call this his frustration gap and we try to encourage him to keep putting pen to paper with simple dot-to-dots, line games, letter formation games and so on.

Some of the pens we have in our arsenal of handwriting tempters... he tends towards those with fatter grips and that can be corrected.  So, the frixion pen was a real find - it writes like a roller ball yet rubs out like a pencil.  The Stabilo s'move range are brilliant for reminding him where his fingers need to be to hold the pen/pencil.  And the selection of felt tipped pens he has used is vast.

Over the years, although he has poor hand eye co-ordination J has adored Hama beads and is a still a keen beader.  There has been the odd disaster when his masterpiece hasn't made it to the ironing board for fusing before a tremor has jerked the beads all over the floor.  He loves telling the story of when he was trying to open a packet of beads (5000 of them) and was tugging at the packaging whilst saying "Mum, can you help me open - oooooops!"  and lo!, there were 5000 beads spread far and wide across the floor. Whoops.  We both had to laugh but my goodness they can't half travel.

Naturally, he's also been very much into Lego and Meccano and comes up with some massively complex creations.  All of which have added to his fine motor skills and co-ordination/planning.  He has a huge collection of Lego... dreams of the stuff and talks about 'improvements' to the current range of models he's working on.  Lego is great for him... he gets to express himself, can (usually) do all his Legoing by himself and the models are quite sturdy so withstand any unexpected tremors.  Of course, sometimes a 'disastrous' failure happens and it will require immediate re-building of the model 'just the way it was'. Meccano is a bit more structured, the instruction leaflets great for planning and the skill required to use the bolt/nuts in situ is one he's starting to master.

Work on gross motor skills happens throughout every day.  J will catch and throw (socks usually) and can even bounce a mid-sized ball and walk with it a few steps now.  He will jump off steps (only up to 4) to get feedback and 'ground' himself.  He balances on a gym ball or physio roll (peanut) when he watches television so he knows where his body is... He's on the move all the time. In summer he will bounce on the trampoline. He has a swing seat indoors and loves to use that to calm down - but it also lets him know where his 'bits and bobs' are.  More to follow on this in a later post...