GENGAR STYLE

I’m calling G because we are at a big, kid-filled birthday party and the dj is playing “Gangnam Style,” which he loves. He calls his version of the song and dance “Gengar Style,” after a naughty, levitating Shadow Type Pokemon called Gengar.* He’s way out on the playground with some kids he doesn’t know and, between calls to him to come boogie with me, I hear those loud “eeeeeh” noises that he makes sometimes because he likes them -- and other times because he’s socially overwhelmed. I hurry over and he’s progressed to shouting unintelligible sounds and making faces in the general direction of a play structure. Some younger kids are cowering and glowering nearby.

“What happened?” I ask, pulling him away as fast as I can.

“A girl threatened me.”

“How?”

“She told me she was going to beat me up!”

“That little girl with the sour face, who is much, much smaller than you?”

“Yes.” (G tends not to pay attention to his own size or age relative to others.)

I sigh, hug him. “She couldn’t, honey.”

“But she said she had beat up a 15 year old!”

“But baby, that’s not true. She’s a little girl.”

We pause. He’s probably taking in the fact that here again someone has lied and he has been unaware of that possibility.

“Well…Why?” I continue.

“Why what?”

“Why do you think that happened?”

Another pause.

“Because she said I was ‘in her face?’”

“Were you?”

“Yes.”

“Were you trying to threaten her?”

“No!”

The playground is a place where family and friends who know G in his home or social comfort zone often suddenly realize the extent of his social challenges.  Putting his face right in someone else’s face is one way he tries to connect, because he really does want to connect - so very much! He’s still figuring out other ways to do so, and in the meantime doesn’t seem to have integrated extensive advice against face-in-face.

I try to seize the teachable moment: “How do you think she felt when you got in her personal space, you know, ‘in her face’?”

“Mad?”

“I don’t think so…try again.”

“Angry?”

“Try again. Angry and mad are pretty much the same.”

“Threatened?”

“Yes. So I bet that’s why she threatened you, don’tcha think?”

He nods.

“And G, did you notice all those kids were much younger than you?”

"Not really.”

“They probably thought you were being a bully, G. Which of course you weren’t.”

G is the most gentle person I know, but he’s a really big dude with no idea of his own size or the impression it might give. 

I sigh. Again. “Oh sweety, I know you’d never want to scare anyone. But you have to try to think about whether other kids are bigger or smaller than you and what they might think you mean in your actions and words, okay? Do you think you can remember this next time?”

“I don’t know,” G says, shrugging.

By the time we reach the party shed, the song has ended. G goes in and sits back in a corner alone, looking perplexed. Eventually, some extra cupcake frosting comforts and cheers him up.

Sometimes G is served well by his unique neurology. His omnipresent honesty, truly original creativity, staunch reliability, deep loyalty and lack of regard for conventional measures of success or “coolness” are just a few traits that come to mind in this regard. I know he takes satisfaction in living by what he deems right and good. Those of us who “get” him celebrate his living by his own lights as well. Nevertheless, even these arguably superb qualities are not necessarily ones that lead to mainstream social acceptance!

Of course there’s neurologically-rooted stuff to work on too, like developing the tools to navigate playground dynamics, many of which are analogous to adult social milieus. It just sometimes seems the neurotypical world currently remains more inclined to marginalize both G’s particular gifts and his challenges than to celebrate or accommodate them.

Suppose G – because, as things stand, it’ll be on him to do so - takes a very long time to adapt here, what is the adult equivalent of frosting?

Oh yeah. Frosting. **

Love,

Full Spectrum Mama

* OMG I Just found this site: http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Gengar_(Pok%C3%A9mon).

Please, nobody show G – I will never see him again!

** We have a hunch that Pumpkin Pie may work, too and are going to find out next week! Happy Thanksgiving everybody!!!!

THIS IS AUTISM

I wrote this for the Flash Blog. "This is Autism" @
http://thisisautismflashblog.blogspot.ca/

This is autism for our family:

A - ALL different
U - Untypical
T - Talk to US about it!
I - Integrity
S - Special Interests (or...Seals [and Pokemon, and plants, and animals...])
M - My son, me, our faMily, our coMMunity...

Love,
Full Spectrum Mama

HOP N SNACK

You know what? I started a whole heartfelt response to Autism Speaks' terror mongering, homogenizing "Call to Action," along with everybody and her mother.

Then, while I was bounding around, naked, hemorrhaging some of the 2.3 million dollars - each - it apparently takes to raise me and my son, I found, via my friend One Quarter Mama (http://www.onequartermama.ca/2013/11/wondrouswednesdays-hop-n-snack.html#),  a response that will be hard to top:

http://wayshelter.com/Toolbox/InitiativeAction/Hop_n_Snack.htm

Hopping and snacking -- hope you are too, ya deviants,

Love,
Full Spectrum Mama

YEP

The other day, à propos nothing so far as I could tell, Z told me, “Maybe when I grow up, I’ll go to a place in Africa...”

She paused.

(Somehow, I expected her to talk next about how she wanted to do some kind of volunteer work there, as we’ve been trying to figure out something like that to do together as a family in our community -- and we also have family involved in such endeavors locally and abroad. Accordingly, during her pause, I began to formulate a speech about the notions of needy people and starving children in Africa as part truth/part stereotype, explaining how there are also people in various regions of Africa living in the middle classes and above, just like here.

I would add how there are starving people here in the United States, too, and in our own state and town.

The people at that wedding we recently attended were mostly from Africa, I would point out momentarily, and as you can see they have what they need just like us and are in many cases better off: they can travel here, whereas we couldn’t right now afford to take a big trip like that…

But no.)

“…and get diamonds,” she continued.

(Well, there are other reasons to go to Africa, as well! Like making bridges between countries, learning about new cultures…

We need to be very careful with our priorities, my daughter, always honoring living beings above things, even valuable things. {I do so worry about Z’s attachment disorder making her always feel she is lacking something. After all, she herself was severely undernourished when she first came home.})

“…and gold.”

(Also, I might mention, Africa is not a country. It’s many nations, all with different politics, cultures, populations…)

“…Lots of diamonds!”

“Yep,” I replied.

Well…Good! Somebody in this family needs to be on the practical end of the Finance Spectrum.

Love,

Full Spectrum Mama

COMPLAINTS?

Full Spectrum Mama’s help meet, Guest Writer and Troubleshooter, Partial/incomplete Monochrome Persona (PiMP) has asked that she announce a call for submissions of COMPLAINTS.

During the months of November and December, Full Spectrum Mama will be accepting entries for PiMP’s annual anniversary guest post, “Second Anniversary Lists IV: The Complaint Department,” to be published in late January 2014.  Please email any and all COMPLAINTS to jineffable@gmail.com.

Guidelines for acceptable COMPLAINTS are loose. Simply put, COMPLAINTS must be…acceptable. Please see http://fullspectrummama.blogspot.com/2013/01/first-anniversary-lists-iv-complaint.html for previous examples. Please note that COMPLAINTS needn’t be limited to parenting, differences, adoption, attachment disorders, autism, asperger’s, etc., since a Vast Spectrum of COMPLAINTS in their myriad forms may be complained, whined, and sometimes shared, by a Spectrum of individuals.

For multiple or multifaceted COMPLAINTS, list form is highly encouraged.

COMPLAINTS will be posted anonymously and may be edited for clarity or acceptability.

The Complaint Department will respond to acceptable COMPLAINTS in an appropriate fashion.

You may remember that PiMP’s day job is with The Complaint Department. PiMP cautions you that this solicitation on PiMP’s behalf does NOT indicate that The Complaint Department is in fact open.

Love,

Full Spectrum Mama

P.S. You can also email COMMENTS to this same email. Readers’ inability to comment is a very common, as yet unresolved COMPLAINT  L

REESE’S THEORY OF HOMEOPATHY

The Full Spectrum Household has been avoiding refined sugar for over six months now.

With the younguns, this move is behavior-driven; for Maman, it’s a serious health issue.

As Halloween approaches, I find my mind wandering to – well, what do you think?

Candy.

Because we will be trick-or-treating, complete with all the quirks of Full Spectrum boundary awkwardness in doorways (every year G wanders casually into at least one random stranger’s home, focused on an enticing trinket or element of decor) and social ineptitudes (hey, now we really can’t recognize you, um, everyone) and violations (quick - watch Z’s hands in the serve-yourself bowls).

Many of our ‘specially fun qualities are exponentially amplified by being all hopped up on sugar.

So, then, post trick-or-treating, there will be these bags of candy. In the kitchen. After the Full Spectrum children are snug in their beds. In their bedrooms.

As you would expect, this little voice in the back of my mind is all, “You know what? If you just had a little bit of candy, say, a few Reese’s peanut butter cups, basically, that would be like…homeopathy!”

“How so?” the small remaining rational part of my mind wonders.

“Because, duh, if you never EAT Reese’s Cups, how will your body build up immunity? How will it know how to process Reese’s Cups, should it ever be exposed to said Cups???”

Exactly. Thus, have I put forth the prestigious, correct-ish “Reese’s Theory of Homeopathy.”

And I think it’s safe to say this scientific-homeopathic model may, in moderation, be applied to a number of other aspects of life…At least until the Special Candy Fairy comes and replaces all the candy with nurturing, commercial-free, organic playthings and natural, lo-flavor veggie-butter-leather.

Happy Halloween!

Love,

Dr. Full Spectrum Mama, Ph.D.

LEARNING TO “FLY” – A NEURO-MOMENT

An October 8^th NEW YORK TIMES “Profiles in Science” piece on Michael Dickinson and fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster) completely (technical term alert) blew my mind. Although fruit flies, obviously, have very small brains, the flexibility and mutability of their neurons result in a per-neuron superior functionality than is found in humans. Because “the presence of different chemicals called neuromodulators in the fly brain can change how a given group of neurons acts at different times” (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/08/science/focusing-on-fruit-flies-curiosity-takes-flight.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0), fruit flies have an astounding capacity for (relatively speaking, of course) adaptation and development.

I was inspired by this article to do a little research on neuromodulators in humans and it turns out this is a pretty new concept in neuroscience, one which looks very promising for human development in the long term.  Neuromodulators include serotonin and dopamine, with which scientists have been experimenting for decades with somewhat limited success; however, our knowledge of how neuromodulators influence and transform brain activity is now expanding exponentially.

Dickinson’s work will contribute to this understanding, as well as to our respect for the complexity and genius of the lowly creatures he studies. The wonders of flying, he suggests, rest chiefly in the brain. Just as the brain flexibility of fruit flies enables flight in an ever-changing variety of circumstances, so might the relatively less-flexible human brain be influenced to adapt and develop -- if we can more effectively identify and utilize neuromodulatory mechanisms. 

There’s a lot of talk about neuroplasticity around autism, hinting at enhanced brain-healing capacity in spectrum-y brains, but I am encouraged by the potential for healing, among other things, brain traumas (such as are found in attachment disorders and PTSD) as well. These neurological differences – autism, attachment disorders and PTSD - are all significant factors in our Full Spectrum household. (Please stay tuned for an upcoming post on HEALING in a Full Spectrum!)

Apart from the NEW YORK TIMES’ “Science” section, just a quick dabble shows the world of neuroscience is all abuzz (and awiggle) in popular culture.

In VOGUE, Rebecca Johnson’s “New Frontier” (October 2013) profiles the neuroscientist Cori Bargmann and her work with a tiny worm (the nemotode C. elegans) that has 302 neurons (humans have 10 billion). Bargmann’s work sketches filaments of hope for brain-science progress between increasing computer capacities, advances in electrodes for the measurement of nerve cells, and improved microfabrication…She sees psychiatric medicine as just one of the more promising subfields among the many in which neuroscientific developments will benefit humanity.

“Now,” Bargmann marvels in VOGUE, “we are not just watching the flow of information [via neurons] but trying to change it.”

One part scary, one part breathtakingly hopeful, eh?

THE NEW YORKER recently published “Mindless: The new neuro-skeptics,” by Adam Gopnik, about the mind-brain divisions and debunkings posited in some circles (September 9, 2013). Gopnik likens the “brain” camp, with its currently culturally dominant emphasis on neuroscience, to Mr. Spock (now you know I love a good Star Trek reference, plus Spock was my pretend-fiancé when I was little). The “mind” camp, which sometimes compares neuroscience to the now thoroughly discredited early-nineteenth-century “science” of phrenology (or mapping the mind through the shape of the skull), he frames as akin to Captain Kirk. He points to the rich literature and inquiry on both “teams” and concludes that both responsibility and possibility lie in the whole package – mind-plus-brain (plus environment), all working together in a way so “complex and contingent” as to boggle the, ahem, mind.

Complexity notwithstanding, evolution of many sorts is ongoing, whether scientific, philosophical, even personal: “We learn and shape our neurology as much as we inherit it,” says Gopnik. ”Our selves shape our brains at least as much as our brains our selves.”

What he said.

More neuroscience-boom proof: the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for 2013 went to some neuroscience dudes…And Obama recently launched the BRAIN (Brain Research Through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies) project, an unprecedented neuroscience initiative (in fact, Cori Bargmann will co-chair this endeavor).

But then, working on the mind is nothing new.

From ancient philosophers to contemporary mystics, wise people have always known it is possible to train (ideally) and re-train (less-ideally, but more commonly) the mind. From Plato’s (and his student, Aristotle’s) thoughts on ideal environments and habits for exercising the virtues, to the Buddha’s writings on practices to calm and discipline the mind and actions; from Confucius on good habits and self-discipline in harmony (the Tao), to Teresa of Avila on practicing devotions of imagination and contemplation; from Thomas Merton on spiritual disciplines as the way to liberation,* to Starhawk on “psychological techniques and personal disciplines” as tools for transformation;** and on and on (I’ve left so many out in the interest of brevity!!)…all the great traditions offer tools for behavioral, mental, emotional, and – sometimes – spiritual development of the mind.

Now we are just beginning to enter this heretofore sci-fi realm of attaining real knowledge about the brain itself. It’s exciting.

Disclaimer: Full Spectrum Mama loves her children and self just as they are, and is NOT looking for a “cure” for Asperger’s!!!! ***

But wouldn’t it be great to have the option of tweaking our own neurology in positive ways? Even if we have no desire whatsoever to change, this knowledge itself will be awe-inspiring: we have the potential to understand, if not emulate, what Dickinson calls the “great success stories” borne of adaptable, flexible (fruitfly) neurology.

Full Spectrum Mama is certainly gung ho about adding new tools to our quests for health and healing, especially in terms of reducing suffering.  To wit, my neurology has always been sensitive and prone to migraines, but with age and/or a major concussion a few years back and/or something else (?) my migraines and PTSD triggers have increased dramatically over the years. I’d try just about anything – meditation to neuromodulation - to soothe these neurological responses. Just – don’t you touch my Special Interests!

I guess that last is the key, though.

 Bargmann bemoans the “dismal state” of today’s psychiatric medicines, and the field of neuromodulators remains in its infancy. All the beautiful possibilities mentioned in these articles are still just ideas. Early on, would tweaking my neurology result in unintended consequences such as losing my precious Special Interests or other things about me that I treasure or see as integral to who I am? Furthermore, the idea of such tools being used against our will or unbeknownst to us is unsettling, at best. “Neuromodulism” (I just made that up) could become “the new eugenics.” Ew.

 With all these caveats, I am still intrigued by the potential for human beings to develop and adapt more effectively. Reducing certain kinds of obstacles to flourishing, such as unwanted manifestations of mental illness, physiological trauma and physical pain, will help us “fly” higher – and with more flexibility.

Now come on, Homo sapiens! If D. melanogaster can do it, we can too!

Love,

Full Spectrum Mama

* Admittedly, Merton’s deeply entwined Catholicism and Zen Buddhism were somewhat controversial, but FSM always errs on the side of acceptance.

** http://www.starhawk.org/activism/trainer-resources/nonviolencework.html

*** Speaking of Asperger’s: between you and me and the fencepost, take a look at the picture of Dickinson and then read his words and ask yourself who’s got Asperger’s all up in that article.