More Drawings and an Update on Previous Post

I have had some lovely feedback about my last post. One email was from a staff member from the school J used to attend. In the message, there was an explanation for why J had drawn the picture he called 'Hawwison' (Harrison), with such long legs ; There is a boy with this name that went to J's old school, and is at his current school, albeit the boy is a few years older than he is. 
The boy in question is very tall. He has a growth condition. I knew there would be a reason why J drew such long legs, but my jazzy patterned trouser idea was not to be!

Since I posted J's pictures up, he has been very forthcoming with more drawings.
Some are the same as usual, but two are new ones.


This is self explanatory, as he has written the name of the children's television show he loves to watch on YouTube (as they do not broadcast it anymore, and there is only one DVD available). 
He writes without knowing what letters he is using. It is copying by rote.

When he presented this drawing to me, I couldn't understand or decipher what he was trying to say. I presume it is either from Bear in the Big Blue House, or from The Story Makers. I am inclined to think it is from Bear, and is the Shadow sketch part of the show.
The character's mouth is quite expressive. I am not sure what the lines are meant to represent.
I will one day! It may be years, but I always discover answers to the mysteries of J.....

This drawing is the same as the one I showed in the last post. It is a new drawing, but of the same scene. There are a couple of slight differences between them, which I have shown further down.

I have put the photos side to side to show just how precise he is. There are only three differences I can see. The rest, such as the height of the characters, are the same on both drawings.

              Drawing from last post                             Today's drawing

There are four of these magnetic drawers scattered around the house. J has his favourite one, and will seek it out if it has been moved. To me, they all look the same, but to J, he knows!

New Drawings And Verbalising Them To Me

My Boy has been busy these last few days with lots of drawings on his Tomy Megasketcher.
Although he has used these sketchers for years, it has always been by chance that I find a drawing he created.
These drawings I have shown below, were all brought to me by J. He would appear, hold it up facing himself so I couldn't actually see it (but he doesn't  realise that), and point to the drawing whilst telling me what it is.
I'm so impressed! He has never tried to communicate like this before, and it's brilliant. Before he would only say a word for a drawing if I asked him as I pointed to it.


He pointed to each square and said (from left to right), "Story Makers, Spaceman, Blue Cow".
I know that these are from The Story Makers children's television show that used to air a few years back. I have blogged before about this programme, and the drawings he created from their characters, here.

He said "Hawwison" for this next drawing. He means Harrison as in a child's name. I presume this is a child from his school, and I wonder what made J draw his legs like that. It will mean something, such as maybe this child wore some jazzy trousers, and J has interpreted it in his own way.

 This was meant to be the last drawing I was putting on this post, but as you'll see below, J brought me in another one as I was typing! For this picture immediately below, J said "Liam". Again I presume this is a child from his school.

Now I know this drawing is basic, but it is the fact that J was forthcoming with it after he had drawn it, and he verbalised directly at me. It's little steps, but I appreciate it so much.



Whilst I have been composing this post, J has been bobbing around looking at what I'm doing. He repeats the names of each drawing to me as he sees it on my laptop screen.

He then went off for a few minutes and reappeared with this........

He said "coppewation". He means cooperation. It is a song from Bear in the Big Blue House.
We sing it together a lot. He instigates it, and I then sing it, with him joining in at specific parts where he knows the words. The characters he has drawn are from the cartoon sketch part that features a character called Shadow, who sings with Bear. The character on the left is how it looks from the side profile, and this is his interpretation of it, which I think he has managed to create very well.

To give you an idea, if you haven't seen the show, this photo is a still shot from Shadow's little sketch, where she sings nursery rhymes with Bear....

You can see what he has tried to reproduce. The still shot is not the one he has tried to copy though - I couldn't find an image on Google for his one.

He is sitting next to me watching me type this. Every time he sees his drawings appear on screen, he points and says the name of it. If only he knew this whole blog centres on him! But then if he understood that concept, I wouldn't be writing a blog about his disabilities.....

The Perfect Lego Pieces

These four pieces of Lego live out in the conservatory, on top of the oak buffet bar.
If one piece is moved even slightly, J notices and has to realign them up again to his exacting standard.

The spacing between them is almost perfect, and they are all put on the same area of the buffet bar, along certain grooves of the natural oak.

He can spend a good half an hour perfecting them. Rearranging them, moving a slight millimeter here and there. He bends down to view them from the perspective looking up, and moves side to side.

It's not a new thing for him. For as far as I can remember he has lined up objects, usually four of them, and they had their own place he would keep them, and he always knew if they had been touched.
Four Lego pieces have featured for many of those years though. The same four colours. The actual brick size has changed every so often, with him using the regular sized 4 pin bricks, the 8 pin bricks, and sometimes building a tower of each colour, occasionally in graduating size (example being - four red 4 pins, three blue 4 pins, two yellow 4 pins, and one green 4 pin) or all the same amount ( four 4 pins bricks of each colour).
These bricks in the photo are the double version of the 4 pin Lego bricks, so are twice as tall as the regular brick.

It makes him happy and keeps him calm when he has these in the perfect place and position, and I would never disturb his work, as I understand it is what he enjoys, and I'm not going to spoil that.

A Nasty Fall For J

J had an accident just before Christmas. He fell over and cut his shin quite badly. He landed on some stones, and they managed to lacerate his skin, through his fleece lined trousers.
As it was the festive period, the GP surgery was closed, and I knew the ER would be overflowing with people, as well as the 'walk in' centre (that can deal with minor accidents). There was also the Norovirus in full force at the hospital (a pre-recorded message on the hospital phone line stated this) and I really didn't want to subject us to that nasty stomach bug.
So I took the decision to deal with it myself. I have First Aid skills, and felt I could deal with it.

In the days between Christmas and New Year, I made a decision to have the wound looked over by a doctor. It was healing, and had slight redness to the edges, so I wanted to be cautious about infection.
I took him to the 'walk in' centre. We waited around 30 minutes to be seen by the triage nurse. She was lovely. She said we would need to see the doctor, and that she was going to bump us up the queue as J has anxiety problems and doesn't act in a sociable manner with strangers (she understood all about autism and learning difficulties).
The doctor saw us fairly quickly, and mentioned stitches. The intonation of her voice made it clear she knew stitches would not be tolerated by J. The same with steri strips. Even a wound dressing would be removed by J at the earliest opportunity.
So she prescribed him antibiotics as a precautionary measure, and I would have to gently clean the wound daily, keeping it as dirt free as possible.

As I have worked on J and his ability to swallow tablets/capsules, the doctor prescribed it in that form, rather than the foul tasting liquid formula.
J is such a star with taking medicine. I hold the capsule out for him to see, and hand him a cup of water. I tell him, "J, swallow medicine", and he puts the capsule in his mouth, drinks, and swallows it. Superstar! That has taken years to achieve, but is worth the effort - no more cutting and chopping up tablets into powder and adding to yogurt (he hated that and would spit it out), or having liquid medicine that made him gag from the awful taste (even the banana flavoured medicines couldn't hide the taste.

His wound is healing slowly. I was advised that it could take a few months to heal properly, but the skin would eventually meet back together from each side.

The following part of this entry has two photos of the wound, so you can see what I have tried to describe. They are quite 'raw' so please I apologize in advance if you are squeamish.






                                                           Soon after the incident.

                                                  Day Three, after being cleaned.