Assessment 2018-19: Brother

If I had to choose a single word to define this school year with Brother, I would choose trauma.

This has been a traumatic year for Brother and for all of us who have lived with him.

He was 6 when the school year began and turned 7 half way through, so if we were traditional schoolers, this would have been a first grade year.

And in some ways it was; i.e. he learned to read at about a first grade level, and he's doing math at about a first grade level.

But in many ways it was a year of mental, physical, and emotional survival.

Which trumps reading and math . . . no matter what.

Brother's behaviors have been challenging from the time he joined our family, but we didn't know what was related to past abuse and the trauma of changing families (and cultures) versus biological issues.  From early days we sought psychiatric and medical assessments, and we enrolled him in play therapy.  The early assessments were inconclusive--pointing at the potential for diagnoses that only time could tell.  The play therapy was not helpful, so we withdrew for a season.

Brother's behaviors grew more challenging, so in August of 2018, I initiated another round of diagnostic testing.  

During fall semester 2018, Brother's behaviors deteriorated until he was breaking windows, harming other children, running away from home, and reporting to social workers that we hurt him.  (Investigations have been conducted, and we have been cleared of any guilt; the social workers report that it is clear that we take good care of Brother and that his definition of hurting him by putting him on time out to calm down does not constitute abuse in any way.)

Waiting for help in the Emergency Room--we couldn't keep him home, and his outbursts were happening nearly every waking hour.

We finally got a set of diagnoses:  Autism, ADHD, PTSD.

And we got Brother enrolled with a new play therapist who is also willing to do some directed therapies with him.

We were assigned a psychiatrist to supervise his ADHD treatment.  Stimulant meds caused Brother to become even more violently aggressive than he was off the meds, so he was switched to guanfacine.  So far, guanfacine is helping Brother to be a little bit more focused, and it is reducing how many outbursts he has and their duration.  Before meds, he was destructively breaking down anywhere from 4-12 times a day.  On meds, he is only destructively breaking down 1-4 times a week.

We have an appointment with an Autism specialist in August.  Brother is quite high-functioning; his Autism shows itself in rigidity, fixations, and an inability to follow the nuances and complexity of human relationships.  His passion for patterns is actually a mathematical blessing because he can see how numbers relate to each other.

We do have to put the clock away sometimes to keep him for fixating on watching the time pass and predicting what time it will be in 1 minute, 3 minutes, 5 minutes, or at this time tomorrow.

In his efforts to understand how the world works and his place in it, he looks for patterns everywhere, and then he makes predictions about what will happen next.  Nothing makes him happier right now, than to watch traffic lights and correctly predict when one will turn green or red.  When he is right he shouts happily, "I knew it!  I was right!  I knew it!  I knew it!  I knew it!  I just knew it would happen like that!"

Being wrong sets him back sadly, and he asks many questions in order to understand how he could have been wrong, so that he can be right later.

This summer the young ones and I are following the Myself and Others Book 1 curriculum by Memoria Press.  It is a literature based safety and social skills program that is really helping Brother.  It gives reasonably clear ways to behave in certain situations, and Brother likes having clear rules.  We do a lot of role playing with this curriculum, and that helps Brother understand how to apply what he's been taught.

His therapist and I have recently set some goals for treatment, and she's going to reinforce the social skills development with some AutPlay therapies.  As well, she's going to work on helping him identify emotions (specifically anger) as having a range of intensity (something we work on at home, too).

Brother is sensitive to touch.  Often he can't tell the difference between a light touch and a hurtful one (which may explain why he tells social workers that we hurt him).  We've practiced often telling the difference between pain and contact, and Brother seems more capable of differentiating now (June 2019) than he did (spring 2018).

Brother is moderately red/green color-blind.  He can differentiate between red and green if they are vibrant and clear.  If they are mixed in tone, or he is trying to identify colors with red/green undertones, he is likely to get confused and need help.  He simply arranges his crayons in an order he can remember once he's been told, and he uses them as he sees fit from there . . . which means that most people have green skin, and there's usually pink smoke coming from chimneys.

That's how he sees the world!

He does not like playing Candyland, and games at church that depend on knowing colors are frustrating for him.  I have informed his teachers/leaders, and I help him the best I can and encourage his siblings to help, so he won't be left out.

Brother does not sleep well.  Under his psychiatrist's supervision, he takes melatonin every night to help him fall asleep.  We are well aware of the risks involved, and this is an informed decision.  We have recently heard about a different herbal sleep aid that might be better for him, so we are studying that potential right now.  At this point, his psychiatrist prefers not to use a pharmaceutical sleep aid, and we're fine with that.




Brother struggles to understand the nuances of relationships.  He does not differentiate between instructions between authority figures and non-authority figures; i.e. if I tell him not to throw a ball in the living room, but Lola tells him to throw a ball in the living room, he'll throw the ball.  When I take the ball away as a consequence for disobeying he'll cry in anger, "But [Lola] told me to!  I was obeying [Lola]!" 

He's genuinely confused about whom to follow, so he chooses the authority whose directions most align with what he'd like to do.

He also thinks he can give directions with the same authority as Sir Walter Scott and I.  He will follow after us, changing instructions that we've just given, and leaving kids confused or running for confirmation of what he says.  I've learned not to allow him to carry messages for me because he's too unreliable.  We spend a great deal of time reviewing how parents and children have different stewardships and what they are.  Brother's therapist has agreed to support this in his weekly therapy appointments with her.

Traditional academics were not the primary focus of the year for Brother, but they were not neglected--just relegated to the times and places they could happen without causing further mental/emotional/physical trauma.

I administered  MAP Growth tests for reading and math for Brother.  His scores indicate the need for remediation in reading as well as reasonable mathematical skills given the instruction he's had so far.

In reading, Brother understands phonics rules, and he applies them.  I've gotten around his need for rules to be perfect--which would prove a real challenge in reading English--by explaining that some words are "just like that--it's the way they are."  If he wants to spell "one" and and gets mad because he wrote a "w" before asking me, I shrug my shoulders and say, "That's the rule for 'one.'  It starts with 'o.'  That's just how it is."  If I act matter-of-factly and refuse to sympathize that it doesn't follow phonics rules, he can accept it, memorize it, and move on.

He loved doing Shiller Language Arts A, and he completed all of the books in that level.  It was very good for him because it included social skills and fine motor development.  However, he grew ready to learn to read, and when we moved to level B, the diversity of concepts taught proved too challenging.  We needed simple, repetitive, every day lessons on phonics--not one day on phonics, another on typing, another on grammar, and then finally back to phonics.  We put the Shiller books away and began working our way through Teaching Your Children to Read with the Book of Mormon.

It was a perfect fit--a balance of sight words and phonics that moved at the right pace for Brother.  He reviewed the basics he'd learned the previous year, and he soaked up the new information beautifully.  When he completed the first two sections, the work got too advanced for him, so I gave him the pretest for The Good and the Beautiful Language Arts Level 1 in March, and he wasn't quite ready to start it then. I considered jumping into Level K, but felt it would be too overwhelming and just as jumpy as Shiller was, so instead we began working through a hodge-podge of beginning readers that allowed him to enjoy reading for reading's sake.  In addition we reinforced what phonics he'd already learned with Phonics Pathways.

Referring back to his need for remediation in reading--that comes from Brother's inability to make connections, to infer, to predict, to comprehend.  His mechanical skills are perfect; his understanding is lagging.  I imagine his understanding will always lag because he is completely literal, but we will work on understanding subtleties and the nuances of language as his phonics skills become fluent.

For handwriting, I'd use kindergarten lined paper to write some words or sentences along with his full name in yellow highlighter.  He'd trace what I'd written.  He learned to write his name completely by himself that way, and I think he'll be able to do some actual copywork next school year.   At the very least, he is comfortable writing all of the letters of the alphabet in both upper- and lower-case.  He also uses what phonics he knows to write/spell independently, and he does a sensible job of it.

He liked Shiller math, but the manipulatives were too distracting, and the material was not presented logically enough for Brother.  We switched to Rod and Staff Grade 1 Arithmetic, and we found our sweet spot.  He finished the first half of that curriculum in June, and he'll complete it next year--along with a healthy portion of Grade 2 (I hope).

He likes Morning Meeting and Academy.  He tries to listen, and he tries to make insightful comments.  He's better at remembering facts than he is with making connections.  His ADHD often prevents him from staying focused on the lesson, but he wants to obey, so a mild correction is all it takes to get him trying again.  He loves to raise his hand and give a correct answer.  If he has to wait for a turn to speak, he panics because he'll forget why he raised his hand and because he runs the risk of having someone say what he wanted to say.  If that happens, he cannot regroup and come up with an alternate answer, so we're working on accepting that more than one person can share the same opinion or have the same idea.

I don't think Brother is much of a fan of history--too many names and places and ideas to keep straight.  However, he likes the rules and predictability of science.  Arts and crafts aren't fabulously fun for him unless there is a pattern to follow; then he is very proud of his ability re-create what he had before him.  He loves to build with blocks, Legos, and other construction toys--often asking me to take a picture of what he's created before it is time to clean up.

He's fascinated by tire tracks.

(Up until a few months ago, his best love was windshield wipers.)

If it has an engine, it is worth hours of observation.

He loves "Dad days."  (When I'm gone and Dad takes the kids on an outing)

He has the gift of prayer.

He is sincere and loving when the anger and hatred are at ease. 

He cares about helping.

He's methodical and precise.  This means that any task I can break down into completely clear, unvarying steps is a task he will do very well.

His tantrums are so violent that his eyes change so that we can't see any spark within, but when the tantrums pass, the spark is reignited, and we can see a dear boy with a lot of hurts and a lot of hard challenges to overcome.

He's quite a brave little soul to keep battling forward in a confusing and overwhelming world.