Tate's Love Affair With Movies

Tate knows movies. He loves movies. It’s his “thing.” He knows more actors’ names and movie facts than I do, well except for the old classics and musicals. Those oldies are of no value to him, but I love those. So, he is somewhat selective when it comes to his movies. We have tried to get him interested in some of the older Disney movies. We’d love to share some of our favorites and broaden his horizons. He is not usually very receptive. He felt like he was being punished when we asked him to sit through Swiss Family Robinson and Davy Crockett with the family. We asked him to watch Jimmy Stewart in Harvey recently, one of Shawn’s favorite movies. Tate was miserable. Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and The Happiest Millionaire were hits with him though. Television series are the same. He loves the old Scooby Doo series but won’t even watch the first episode of Dark Wing Duck, no matter how many times his older brothers have told him they loved it when they were younger. I got it for him for Xmas a couple of years ago and it is still sealed.

If Tate likes a series of television shows or movies, he will not rest until he owns them all. (If there is one more movie about Shrek or the Ice Age characters, I think I will jump off a cliff. HA) All of his movies must be kept in his room and grouped together for him to feel at peace with the world. He has a plastic set of drawers and a bookshelf that are full but he knows each and every movie very well. Loaning one out, even to a family member is hard for him but he can do it. But, heaven forbid a movie becomes separated from its box or lost. THAT is a crisis, and there will be a melt down. I am not talking about a temper tantrum, or anything that resembles anger. It is anxiety. Lots of anxiety. I have been known on several occasions to go and purchase a duplicate, even knowing that the lost movie will eventually turn up. His worry, pacing, the wringing of hands, the lost sleep, and the constant talk about the missing movie, makes for some very long days. I especially hate to put his teachers through the experience if it is a school day. Teachers have let me know there is not much learning going on unless Tate is anxiety free. It’s almost always worth the $15 or $20 it takes to ease his pain. 

It gets even more ridiculous: When we see a movie that gives birth to a sequel, then Tate wants to see the sequel at the same theater we saw the original movie in. We frequent more than one theater, for crying out loud! I don’t know how he remembers where exactly we saw the last movie or why it is even important to him, but these kinds of things matter so much to him. Of course we cannot always comply with his wishes and he does not usually meltdown when his demands are not met about the theater location but he does become somewhat anxious. Using a scale of one to ten, seeing a movie in a theater he does not prefer is a three or four on the anxiety meter, while a lost movie is a nine or ten. A four is manageable but a nine is not. There will be nothing getting done around here if a nine rears its ugly head. No amount of talking or reasoning will do the trick. And time will not heal the wound either. Tate does not soon forget something that is bothering him. A lost or broken item for those of us without autism may be no big deal, but for Tate it is very painful. It doesn’t only apply to movies but because movies mean so much to him, and those DVD’s are somewhat fragile, it has been a problem quite often. Last week Tate's beloved watch stopped. Right. Before. School. I had few options. I left him at school and he was a wreck. He was to go straight from school to bike camp. I knew I could make it to Walmart and back before bike camp began. I did NOT want the progress he was making in bike camp to stall! When I showed up with a working watch at the beginning of bike camp it was like I relieved physical pain for Tate (and his teacher). The teacher he had been with for the ninety minutes before bike camp began told me he had not been able to focus on schoolwork and they had heard about the broken watch over and over. He cannot help it. He really cannot. I know that those of you who live without autism in your household might consider me an enabler or you might be thinking I am spoiling him. I did just admit to being a mother who runs to Walmart for a new watch or movie instead of using natural consequences to teach a lesson. However, I have tried it the “right way.” Remember, I have five children without disabilities so I know how things SHOULD work. You can take almost everything you learn from raising neurotypical kids and throw it out the window when you are handed a child with autism. The same rules do not apply. Tate does not learn much from natural consequences, nor does he have the ability to “let it go” (no Disney Frozen pun intended) when something is bothering him. 

Back to the topic of this blog post: Movies. If you asked Tate to name the worst movie ever made, I’m pretty sure he would say, “Annie.” He despises the movie Annie. I do not know why, but he is adamant. He is not a fan. We used to have two versions of the movie on VHS and he probably saw both of them when he was really young. He claims that he hates it because I used to make him watch it over and over. He makes it sound like I tied him in a chair and played it for days. HA. I’m pretty sure that never happened. If I want to tease Tate, I just break out in song, “The sun’ll come out tomorrow.” The last couple of times we have been to a movie theater, we have seen previews for the latest version of Annie. I leaned over and asked Tate if he wanted to see it. He stuttered out, “No, no, no, no, ummmm Mom, you know I don’t like Annie.” Ironically, my brother is playing the role of Daddy Warbucks in the play Annie in his community theater this month. I cannot wait to see it! I asked Tate if he wanted me to get him a ticket. He was sure he was NOT interested. He does like to go to plays though. His oldest sister took him to see The Wizard of Oz last week at an outdoor theater. He loved it. The Wizard of Oz happens to be one of his favorite movies right now. He goes through phases and if he choses a favorite then he watches it over and over. He has several versions and sequels of The Wizard of Oz. Even the Muppets have a version of the movie. The Muppets are another all-time favorite for him. He has a lot of Muppet toys and occasionally lines them all up so they can watch a movie with him.

Tate’s love affair with movies began when he was really young. One of the first television series I remember him obsessing over was Curious George. One of the first movies I remember him being crazy in love with was Mary Poppins. He must have watched it every day for two months. Tate lost most of his language around age twenty-four to thirty months. When he started talking again it was mostly just to echo us or movies or books we had read him. He did not have to see a movie more than once or twice to have much of the dialogue memorized. He would sometimes say things that fit into conversation appropriately and I’d think, “He’s talking to us!” But then one of us would recognize the sentence as a line from a movie he had been watching. At a very young age, he learned to read some words because he memorized them from movie titles. When Tate was three years old, we saw a movie poster that said, “from the makers of Finding Nemo” and Tate read it to me. I remember being excited and thinking, “He’s so smart!” but then, “I’d trade the things like that for some social skills.”

Tate knows the release dates of movies he is interested in seeing or owning far in advance. Last Friday we saw How to Train Your Dragon 2 and he gives it a two thumbs up. Today is the day The Lego Movie will be out on DVD. This is all he can think about and all he has wanted to talk about for days. He keeps telling me he will bike to Walmart to get the movie and I keep telling him that we will be driving in the van. Next up? July 18, Planes: Fire and Rescue. I wonder which theater we saw the original Planes movie at? Tate will remember!

prank phone calls and teaching Tate

I have so many stories to share, but they are not all related to one topic (unless it is just autism, in general) so this is going to be a pretty random post. 

Tate has tried his hand this week at practical jokes. He will tell me in a whisper that he is going to prank someone, usually Levi, and then do something really silly. A few nights ago, Tate dropped a clothes hamper over Levi’s head. Of course, Levi saw it coming and cooperated so Tate could have his fun. 

We found out last night that we would be staying home today for a snow day. Tate became so excited he began to chatter and he became very animated and active. He isn’t usually much of a talker so when it happens we love it. He gets really talkative sometimes when he is happy. A day I will always remember is from a trip to pick out an Xmas tree, in 2011. It was one of the first times he had EVER become a chatter-box for a day. Most days he is pretty quiet. 

Tate’s favorite prank right now is to go find a sibling and tell them that Mom has been calling. Then he follows them into the room and when they ask what I wanted and I look confused, Tate runs and they chase. Last night he did it to everyone, at least once. They are great to play along. Tate has started making up jokes that are usually not funny too. Last night he told one he made up: “Why did the pen not write on the paper? Because the paper fell on the floor!” We usually laugh much longer and louder than is worthy of such a joke because of the kick we get out of Tate telling a joke. Most kids make up their own jokes around age four. I know because I had five kids before Tate that told me hundreds of jokes. I have heard “knock knock” many, many times in the past twenty years!

Last night Tate told me he was going to call his older brothers who live in Tennessee and prank them on the phone. I could hear his end of the conversation with both boys. When they answered, Tate yelled into the phone, in a voice that is cracking due to his age, “Hellooooooo, How can I help you?” Then he said, “I don’t have the wrong number, YOOOOOUUUUU have the wrong number.” He did a lot of giggling. He told one of the boys “Congratulations, you have just won a new foot.” We were laughing pretty hard on this end but I haven’t talked to my boys yet to find out if they understood much of what he was saying. Knowing them, they loved the call. I couldn’t ask for better kids than I have. Tate has a whole family of therapists. For more on Tate's siblings and all that they do, read here: He's My Brother

Totally unrelated to the above: This past weekend we skipped an afternoon of school and went to the movie theater. That is not the real story I want to tell here, but it is a story in itself. When Tate hears the release date of an animated movie or a movie that strikes his interest, he immediately begins to make plans to attend the opening day of said movie. If you are not involved in the life of a child with autism, you probably will not understand the importance of these kinds of things to us here in the Smith family. When Tate makes a plan, if it is not altered or shot down, IMMEDIATELY, then it is set in stone. The mind of a child with autism is much like stone. Plans made are not easily changed. Usually, I am fine with taking Tate to a movie on a Friday after school. He doesn’t ask (demand) that often, maybe every-other month. So, last Friday was one of those times and I had agreed to take him. After about three days of listening to him talk about the movie, my senior in high school, told me that my presence was required at one of her school events. She told me IN FRONT OF TATE, so there was no time for me to prepare myself for his anxiety attack. His face turned blotchy, he began to choke, and he started pacing the floor on his tiptoes. He actually said some pretty hilarious things in his misery. He was trying to talk us out of our alternate plans and saying things to his sister like, “I’m sorry, but we won’t be able to attend that game. You’ll be on your own.” The funniest thing he said was, “If your wedding is on a Friday night, we won’t be able to make it.” Tate’s oldest sister came up with the perfect solution. She would take Tate out of school early on Friday and take him to the movie. 

I told that story to tell this one: At the theater, a young man in a wheel chair was taking tickets. Tate got right in front of him and even crowded him and said to me, “Hey, what’s wrong with him?” I was totally taken back. I had no idea what to do. I knew I needed to use the moment to teach but what was the proper way to handle the situation? I had no time to decide. I said to Tate, “You can ask him, why he needs to use a wheel chair.” Tate said to him, “What’s wrong with you?” The young man said, “I have a disease.” Tate said “Oh” and walked away. I hung back to explain to the young man that Tate was lacking in manners because he has autism and doesn’t have many social skills. The guy replied that he could tell and he was very gracious, although we were both embarrassed. As we got settled in our seats and waited for our movie to begin I talked to Tate about how impolite it is to ask someone what is wrong with them if they are sitting in a wheel chair. He seemed to understand. A few days later, Tate asked a person with a blemish on their face, what was wrong with their face and I had to repeat the lecture. If that person had been in a wheel chair, he wouldn’t have asked them perhaps but I hadn’t covered acne.  If you think about it, etiquette is very hard to teach. It is okay to ask a friend who shows up to school with a broken arm, what happened to their arm, but very rude to ask a stranger in a wheel chair what happened to their legs. Typically developing kids just learn these things from watching and absorbing the examples around them. Kids with autism have to be taught everything they know systematically. They have to file away each little lesson and each little variance to each rule so they can know how to act. When something new comes along that they have not seen before, they don’t know what the proper response should be. They don’t mean to be rude. They just have no idea what is acceptable and what is not. These kinds of unwritten rules are often referred to as “the hidden curriculum” in schools. Teachers don’t have to teach the hidden curriculum to the typically developing kids but the kids with autism do need to be taught all the unwritten rules. I feel so badly sometimes when I hand my special needs kids to their teachers. I’m asking them to give more and do more for my kids than their job descriptions ever called for. I don’t think that colleges give a lot of instruction to their teaching students on the hidden curriculum. Special needs students, fully included or not, require so much more work than the other students. They are also much more expensive to educate, due to the need for para support, other services, and modified materials and equipment. I cannot sing praises loud enough for my kids’ teachers. 

A little bit more about hidden rules that Tate cannot learn without systematic instruction: One day this week when I dropped Tate off at school, I watched him walk into the building as usual. A girl much smaller than him was holding the door, waiting for Tate to catch it. A boy much smaller than Tate was right behind him, waiting to enter. Tate pulled the door open, slipped through and dropped the door. The little boy behind had to reopen the door because Tate had not pushed it open wide enough for him or held it that extra second it would have taken for him to grab. These kinds of things come so natural for the rest of us. Tate is not mean. He just doesn’t think about others, their thoughts, their feelings, their plans, or their motives. That part of his brain isn’t working. He cannot help it. If we teach him the “rule” for holding the door for the kid behind him then he will hold the door next time…. But then there will be variances of that rule that come up. What do you do if you are in a crowd and there are a lot of people behind you? What do you do if the person is on crutches or pushing a stroller and you need to move out of the way a little while you hold the door? All these things would leave Tate confused about what to do. I asked Tate’s teachers to help me teach Tate about holding the doors. The teaching opportunities for social skills abound at the school. Tate’s classmates are often involved in teaching new skills. I appreciate them so much. 

If you liked this post, you might also like this one: What is Autism?

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Its a mad, mad world.

Our family loves old movies and there are probably not very many we have never seen.  We love so many of the older actors: Jimmy Stewart, John Wayne, James Garner, Doris Day, Cary Grant, Rock Hudson, Don Knotts, Fred McMurray, Jim Neighbors, the list goes on and on.  We also love musicals and have a lot of soundtracks too.  Our older kids grew up playing the game “guess what movie this line is from” with us and now we play it with the younger kids.  So, even without autism, Tate would probably have the love of movies and movie dialogue he has. 

Because we all have this in common, our family uses movie scenes and characters often to reference things.  When one of us hears the line “I can’t see” in almost any context, we repeat it in the voice of Jim Backus (Thurston Howell the Third).  It is from a scene in “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World” when he is flying a plane and becomes blinded so Mickey Rooney has to take over the controls.  This is something we do constantly with all kinds of movie quotes.  Shawn uses them often to get a laugh from me or the kids.  We love it.

One of Shawn’s favorite television shows is the “Andy Griffith Show.”  Barney Fife and Floyd, the barber, are two of our favorite characters but the character that has always been dearest to our heart is Ernest T. Bass.  Ernest T. is a wild man from the hills.  He was in very few episodes but we have seen those few episodes dozens and dozens of times.  I said all of that to tell you this:  The past few years, every time I watch Ernest T. Bass, I see Sydney (the Sydney that has not yet had her medicine in the morning.)  It is not the way he looks, of course; but the way he acts.  If you have never seen Ernest T. Bass, you can watch a few minutes of him on U-tube to get an idea.  He jumps around and talks nonsense.  He laughs wildly and irritates everyone around him.  He throws rocks through windows when he wants to get someone’s attention.  In one episode he talks about saving for a gold tooth.  He wants to knock out two teeth and get a gold one, right in the middle, so it will shine and be pretty.  Ernest T. does not think things through.  He has no impulse control.  I wonder if Ernest T.’s mother had her own moonshine still out back.  I also wonder if the writers were modeling the character after someone with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome or ADHD.

This morning, Sydney got up before me.  She usually does on Saturdays.  It makes no sense because I wake her up Monday through Friday at 7:00.  On Saturdays, when she could sleep in, she is up much earlier.  Her room and mine are adjoined and she is supposed to call to me and ASK if she can get up.  She does not often remember.  As usual, she had everyone in turmoil this morning.  Tate is always up at the crack of dawn and he cannot defend himself against her so she was tormenting him.  She made sure the other kids were awake (although they would have rather slept in). She found a bowl of popcorn from last night and spilled it.  She got a glass of water and spilled that.  She let her bunny out of the cage and shared an apple with her.  YUK.  She kicked her new soccer ball in the living room and knocked over a picture frame and the telephone.  All this happened at lightning speed too, one thing right after the other.  An hour later, after her pills took effect, she was no longer doing impressions of Ernest T. and she was calm and sweet.  I am so thankful for those two pills and I can hardly remember what it was like before we got those two prescriptions.  Those years are a sort of blur.  I have a vague memory though and it was not easy.  Ernest T. could have used one of Sydney’s pills; but then what kind of television character would he have made?   

Note:  Please do not misunderstand.  Comparing Sydney's behaviors to that of a silly fictional character is not meant to be ugly.  I love my little girl and she is a very valuable member of our family. 

An Easter joke

Tate’s literal thinking keeps him from getting the punch line of most jokes. Many of the funny things Tate says, he has learned from a television show or movie.  He has the ability to often use those phrases in an appropriate situation and get a laugh.  We can often identify the television character or show where the joke originated.  This week Tate keeps telling a joke that he modified from a “Sponge Bob” Xmas show.  He modified it to fit Easter, which is tomorrow.  It goes like this: “I cannot believe that anyone would celebrate a holiday where a bunny breaks into your house and leaves gifts in a basket!”  It is cute.  He does understand the joke.  He did generalize it and make it fit the occasion.  However, it is not his own original thought.  He isn’t there yet.  After Tate’s autism diagnosis, at age two and a half, we began early intervention.  We taught him to pretend, but he could then only pretend the things he had been shown.  He could not come up with anything on his own.  However, he does come up with his own sequence of events and original ideas now when pretending. 

Tate is very visual as most people with autism are and cartoons are what he laughs at the most.  Tate LOVES the movie theater and we have spent a lot of time there lately.  We have seen “The Muppet Movie,” “The Big Miracle,” “The Secret World of Arriety,” “Journey to the Mysterious Island,” and “The Lorrax.” When a preferred movie is coming to the big screen or is going to be released on dvd, he knows the date and plans an outing to go to the theater or purchase the dvd.  He can be very persuasive too.  Because he is interested in so few things and asks for almost nothing, I try to accommodate his desires in this area.  I can say “no” when I need to though.  If we see a movie at the theater and I was not happy with the language or storyline then I let him know we will not be purchasing the dvd.  A couple of conversations about it will usually convince him that I am not going to change my mind and he accepts it.    

We have seen the previews to a new release called “Pirates: Band of Misfits” that we are looking forward to.  We have also seen previews for “The Three Stooges” and I am a bit worried about that one but he sure wants to see it.  I try to steer my kids clear of the movies and shows that are crude or crass.  I especially hate bathroom humor.  I told Tate that I would NOT be taking him to see a movie about the stooges so he has asked Dad to take him.  Shawn likes the stooges.  The preview we saw showed the classic move that is used by the stooges where one of them pokes someone in the eyes with two fingers. Tate doubles up laughing, as most boys his age would.  I guess that is a good thing?  I am aiming for “age appropriate behavior.”