On ya bike….

For my other children school holidays are always to be looked forward too, a great time to sleep in, lie around and just do as little as possible, but for Lali they are boring… boring… boring, unless you happen to be shopping every day and buying everything you touch.

These holidays Lali has renewed her love for our local tip shop where the most expensive item we have purchased has been around $5. Last week she decided that she would like to teach herself to ride a bike, since we live on a rural property and the only sealed area for bike riding is about 6m x 10m there has not been much opportunity to teach Lali to ride. After a quick trip to the tip shop we purchase a bike with good tyres (inflated) and brakes for $2 also a pair of crutches for $1 as Lali thought she might break her leg whilst practicing.

After about 30 minutes (15 of those spent crying, screaming and hurtling the bike across the lawn) Lali appears inside looking for plasters as she had blisters on both thumbs from holding the handle bars so tight. I came up with the idea of gloves and after searching through a few draws Lali appears very chuffed with herself holding aloft some large ski gloves. Back outside for more screaming and bike throwing, back inside for slamming doors and abusing the person who invented the bike, back outside to ride into a few trees, back inside to abuse me for buying the bike….. and so it went on for a day. By day two Lali could ride around the house without falling off, hitting a tree, running into outdoor furniture or the dog. Mission accomplished and a happy but very bruised, scratched and blistered 10 year old. And so far no need for the crutches.

Loosing teeth….. a very testing time

Time for a family trip to the dentist…. hmmm this could be interesting. The benefit for Lali having five older siblings is that she can observe how they interact and behave when put into different and sometimes difficult situations. It does not mean that she will react the same or sympathise but being visual she can see what will be happening to her.

The family dentist is great and after a bit of coaxing we got Lali into the chair and mouth open, a quick poke around and all ok, rather a surprise considering Lali will not tolerate the taste or texture of any toothpaste.

Lali was desperate to get the dentist to remove a tooth that was starting to get slightly loose, but unfortunately the dentist said that it was no where near to coming out so best wait for nature to take its course. By the time we had got home Lali was brewing into a full melt down, crying and saying how she hated her life (yep just cause her tooth was not removed), this crying and yelling went on for about half an hour and during that time she had asked each of us to pull out the offending tooth. After no success with any family member doing the deed Lali took herself off to the bathroom and twenty minutes later proudly emerged with a handful of bloody toilet paper and one tooth…. stating ‘wow I am very brave’

Lali Logic

Lali is now in her fifth year of primary school, on advise from her pre-school we made a request to the Board of Education to hold her back a year, for Lali there is less stress regarding academic performance and in Lali’s logic she should be in a class with children her size.

Those five years have held many challenges for Lali and we are still on an ‘immediate pickup’ when major meltdowns occur. Swearing at the principal is still a challenge that Lali struggles with along with telling children whom she is annoyed with that she will ‘strangle them’. Sports day, swimming carnivals, on-stage performances are just a few competitive events which we stay well clear of.

It’s the small things that make the BIG difference

Fascinating or frustrating, I think that depends what side I get out of bed. Apples and ice are both very important to Lali they can be the difference between a good and a bad day at school.

When Lali started day-care she would take two green apples with her each day, her day-care teacher would peel and cut (under strict direction by Lali). After about a year of green apples Lali would only eat red apples which lead to many late night or early morning runs to the supermarket.

As Lali’s fine motor skills developed she could then master the use of a apple peeler but that also brings its own challenges as red apples need a red peeler and green a green peeler.

Help Is On Its Way

A picture Lali drew of her dad.

By the age of four Lali was registered with Early Childhood Intervention Services and Aspect (Autism Spectrum Australia). These amazing passionate people have been wonderful in providing support for Lali, teaching her skills to enable her to integrate into preschool and eventually primary school.

By the age of 5 1/2 Lali was assessed to have severe delay/disorder in both her receptive and expressive language skills her level was that of a 2 1/2 year old. At this point Lali was learning basic sign language to give her another form of communication which did relieve a lot of stress for her when we were unable to understand her speech. Unlike many spectrum people Lali has always been fascinated by other people, what they do, why they do what they do, how they do it, so I feel that being unable to communicate with others was very upsetting for her.

Lali Loves To Draw

I think Lali was about 6 or 7 when she did this, she loves to draw.

The First Step…. to diagnosis

Fortunately by the time Lali was to go to day-care she had overcome her need to be naked and was now happy to wear loose (but not too loose) dresses, the occasional pair of undies and bare feet. Her dad would walk her over the road to day-care where she would play for anything from one hour to four. Lali was mostly happy to go but did not socialise with any other children nor communicate. She would need to be seated at the same spot each day and play with the same toys, she would not share and if another child tried to play with anything she claimed as hers they were met with screams, slaps or an occasional projectile.

Within the first two weeks we were called to a meeting and asked if we objected to Lali being assessed by the local Early Intervention teacher as her slow speech and lack of social interaction skills were of concern. I actually felt relief that someone outside Lali’s immediate family felt that all was not as it should be for this wilful wee soul.

Time To Leave The Nest… if only for an hour

Lali spent daytime with her dad as I was working full-time and he was working from home, but she did need to be constantly supervised as she could climb almost anything, open draws, cupboards, jars, containers and empty the contents all around the house she also loved scissors and had a fascination with cutting her hair, clothes, bedding, curtains etc.

There was a small childcare centre directly over the road and we decided to enrol Lali so that her dad could have a few hours to work. At this stage Lali was undiagnosed and just seemed to be a little eccentric in her ways, she did not verbally communicate very well but if you paid careful attention to her you could make a good guess what she wanted and hay how disruptive could a petite four year old be?

Early Years – A Bit Of A Blurrrrr

Lali sat, crawled and walked around the same time as her siblings so as a baby, apart from her feeding issues was pretty similar to the others.  As Lali became more mobile she also became more wilful, I had to use disposable nappies on Lali, the only way to keep them on her was to do a few rounds of masking tape as she had very good fine motor skills and would have any pins, Velcro or other fasteners removed in seconds.  Lali also would not keep clothes on regardless of how cold it was, she was more than happy for you to dress her but within minutes she would have hidden somewhere and removed every stitch of clothing.  I think at that stage it was the pressure of clothes that distressed her and it was the same with restraining her in the car, no matter what type of car seat we tried she would always manage to wriggle herself out much to the distress of her siblings who were constantly trying to convince her to keep in her seat. 

Feeding problems = speech problems

Lali was identified by a lactation consultant as a ‘fail to thrive’ baby, meaning that she was not fussed if she was fed or not.  Having a extremely bad sucking reflex Lali struggled to be breastfed and even when bottle feed she could easily take over an hour to finish 60mls, a complication with her lack of sucking reflex is slow speech development.  But she was a happy baby who loved to be snuggled in her baby sling and carried round for most of the day.