Random Apologies

It has been brought to my attention that all the pretty pics and funny memes that I've posted have gone bye bye.

I dunno folks, technology is not my thang.

So I'm sorry if you can't see them, they were good eh!

Maybe one of my more tech savvy friends will fix it ?

Anyone wanna help HFL Mama out?

Hello.....


(insert sounds of crickets)


Sorry, I'm more popular in France than here in Canada.

Désolé mes amis, j'essaie ... un peu

The High Functioning Life, being lived all over the world.

Green Eyed Monster

Tigerlily has inherited my green eyes, both physically and emotionally.

I'll say it, I get jealous ... a lot and over a lot of things. Thick eyebrows, sleeping in, time for anything lol.

Daddybear finds it hilarious when I scowl at waitresses for being too flirty with him, he swears its in my head, but I know what I have with him is precious and like a dragon, I'm guarding my treasure of a man.
(He's going to laugh when he reads that line, but it doesn't make it any less true).

Yes I'm a green eyed monster.


So if you follow this blog you may remember my finally giving in and opening a home daycare in order to make some money. Not making much over here, I tend to spend it as fast as I make it eh.
Well daycare means, little monsters in my house who all need my attention and  Tiger is not pleased with this.

One of the munchkins has taken to calling me MamaMissa and this moniker makes Tigerlily furious.

"She's not your Mama, She's my Mama!"
"I want my Mama!"

Yes Tigerlily is a green eyed monster, it doesn't matter how little they are, she does not like sharing.
Only child syndrome maybe,  just a little more extreme.  She latches on to me and refuses to let go whenever she hears another kid call me Mama.

Daycare may have been a mistake, as the littles make her furious in the mornings.
Every kid cries when they get dropped at daycare, & she hates the noise.
However when she gets off the bus, she loves to help change nappies and play outside with them.
I just can't carry or cuddle any of the wee beasties in front of her or watch out!

She really is ferocious in her ownership of me! She has been laying on the love like you wouldn't believe. It's been a few months now and she won't let up.
I'm hoping she'll be better about my carrying the 10 month old around or maybe she'll relent when she is home for the summer.

I guess we will see.

Only six weeks until our Canada Day 150 Party! and then its summer holidays.


The High Functioning Life, be jealous of me, I've got a Tigerlily who loves me.

Battle Story #5 The Infamous Car Ride

I've been writing some negative stuff lately and just thought I'd share another win with my High Functioning Lifers.

Tigerlily used to make every car trip, a highway to hell. The moment she was put in the car seat she would start screaming. By the time we started daycare, I absolutely dreaded getting in the car with her.

 I'm not exaggerating here folks, Tigers scream is ear splitting, Her screams are so intense that I once had a friend actually apologize, for every judgemental thought they had ever had about my parenting and coping skills. I mean unless you are subjected to it, its pretty hard to fathom just how much pain my kids shrieking can generate. They admitted that they had no idea how bad it was... until they had to deal with it, that they had never heard anything like it, and that I am way more patient than one might suppose, based off my FB b*tching. (Yes, I've always b*tched  online eh!)

Now I admit, I don't like to drive, I find it stressful and I'm not particularly good at it. Now add a screaming demon to the mix and you can see why I would avoid any unnecessary trips with Tiger. The kicker is I lived in the country and it was 20min to an hour to get anywhere and I had to drive everywhere back then. It just plain sucked. It got so bad that I would have to stop and get out of the car so I wouldn't lose my mind.

I just couldn't figure out what her problem was. I tried playing music, singing rythmes, telling stories, giving her toys, snacks, treats, a mirror, fidgets, a new car seat, another new car seat, windows down, windows up a combo , heat up, air conditioning on, sun visors, shades for her, a blanket, a stuffy, a binky everything and anything to get her to stop screaming in the car.

Finally I tried a new vehicle, I put her car seat in the middle of the back seat of a great big truck.

Guess what, she stopped screaming, mostly. I still needed to keep the car cold, and the music off BUT the screaming was seriously curbed. I didn't have to pull over anymore. My theory is that once she could reconcile the sensation of moving with being able to see us moving through the windshield the sensation was less disconcerting or easier to reconcile within her own mind.

Now I don't want to overstate this win. Car rides with Tiger still suck the life out of me. Instead of screaming now she b*tches at me ( wonder where she gets that from ?). She still has a low threshold for car time but we can go about an hour without her meltingdown, which gets us to most places we need to be.


The High Functioning Life, driving with earplugs in is not recommended.


HFL Mama.

Oh No, I Don't Think So.

First term at school ended and the long awaited report card appeared.

Maybe you remember how I talked about the transition to the new school having gone better than expected, or how Tiger was gaining weight etc. Suffice to say, from my end I thought things were going swimmingly.

We have a communication book that goes back and forth daily, and I've only received the expected messages, Tiger got hurt in gym, exited music for the hub, had a confrontation and so on and so forth.

She hasn't been sent home with any homework, other than her reading and spelling.
My IEP goals  are focused on increasing her safety, social skills, motor skills and improve her reading. She's seeing the OT, using the hub, she's been happy. I wasn't really concerned with her academics as she had already completed grade 1 at the private school.

So imagine my surprise when her report card came and discovered that she was failing.

Yeah! Tigerlily the kid with the above average IQ is flunking her second run at grade one.

Now this shouldn't have come as quite the surprise it did. There were calls about her refusing to print, thus the OT. & she refused to participate in music and gym. I just didn't realize and wasn't told that she was refusing to do ANY of the work.

Again at home, I was reading with her everyday, and she was taking a pile of books to bed with her every night. We practiced her spelling she was showing obvious improvements.... to me, but above all she was happier. She had started typing in her objectives on the computer search engines. She learned to play computer games using the keyboard and mouse and was really good at it switching seamlessly between the two.

Now I know the Tiger can be a handful, willful, difficult etc. I know she likes to try and manipulate you into giving her the answer and spends more time fighting about completing a task that it takes to actually do the work but come on, give me a bleeping break. Let's just say I was a wee bit miffed by this having gotten so far without my knowing about it.

Now I'm not blaming the school.... entirely. Tiger made some choices here.

So step one was to lay down the law on Tigerlily. Yeah those electronics went bye bye.
Out came our flash cards, workbooks, and homeschool curriculum.
Talks about honesty, effort, manipulation and choices were held.
Daddybear even had a heart to heart  about "gettin er dun" & his expectations of her both at school and home. ( He almost never criticizes her so this was a big deal )

Step 2 was for me to get in touch with the school,  and ask them to kindly explain themselves, book more meetings and conference calls and basically call them out on letting Tiger get away with such obvious bullsh*t.

They of course said that they had to grade her based on the work she was, or in Tigers case wasn't producing and insisted that she was performing at JK-K level.

I sent them examples of Tigerlily's work from last year.
Reopened her IEP and added private assessments out of classroom in quiet space one on one and asked that a copy of every test be sent home.

& Guess what?

Last week she scored 42/42 on her science test.
They had her at a level B for reading...... we are now at level E in just 3 weeks.
Just by following the accommodations laid out in our IEP.

Surprise the HFA/ ADHD girl can do the work, if, you provide her with an environment she can cope with.


The High Functioning Life, if our kids our failing, it's because the system is failing them.


HFL Mama

Backsliding Into Baking

Well it happened again. It seems that early in the year, every year, my Tiger gets seriously ill.
Not  just a cold kind of ill, I mean weight loss, unconsciousness and this year a racing heartbeat off to the emergency department we go, kind of ill.

 Last year it was almost a month before they figured out it wasn't a virus but a lymph node infection.
The year before that, it was bronchial pneumonia. This year it was, a new super virus. I know this, because it took four people to hold my Tiger down for a blood draw  and 2 people, to hold her for the chest Xrays and we never did manage to get her to pee in the cup. The kid can withhold for days. Eventually her fever broke and her heart rate slowed and we were home around  4 am.

Anyways, this years illness came with a sore throat, which meant Tigerlily wouldn't eat.
If you ever say "They'll eat when they're hungry" I'll tell ya to " Kiss my sashimi."
but that's an argument for another day.

So that happy dance I was doing over Tiger having broken the  40 pound barrier is over.
She was really sick for four days and lost 4 lbs. I tried everything last week to get her to eat but it was crushed ice and icy water only with the occasional popsicle to pacify Daddy. Now her stomach has shrunk down to nothing and she hates the feeling of being full so its BAKING TIME! Cookies and cakes, muffins and breads,  as many calories as I can get into the girl before she has to return to school after our March break.

As you all know the other reason I bake is to relieve stress.
I admit it I'm a stress baker and stress eater, so those pounds I lost running back and forth between daycare munchkins and Tiger all week well  I don't think they'll stay gone long.

Oh yeah, I may have failed to mention that I opened a home daycare as my solution to not being able to find employment that wouldn't mess with Tigerlily care. (shhhhh I know, I know, quit with the I told you so, I admit it,  you were right).
Yes my new job is to play with kids all day and its lots of fun. After Tigerlily the neurotypicals are so easy. Seriously, I love the munchkins, I'm just not making any money, because I turn around and spend it on stuff for the rugrats, right now I've got my eye on a sweet wagon to get them home from the park in. Too bad I spent $650 on an emergency vet visit on Monday night.
Yeah its been a long week.

I think I'll go bake something for the rugrats.


The High Functioning Life, it's more like 2 steps forward and 10 steps back.


HFL Mama

No Need For An Iron Supplement.

Like most people I know what ADHD stands for, but when they added-CT to the diagnosis I was at a loss. (Remember I received our diagnostic letter in the mail, eh.) So what is actually stands for is combined type.

Did you know there was more than one type of ADHD?

Well I didn't and so I'm breaking it down in my attempts to understand my Tigerlily.

Type 1. Inattentive

These are the daydreamers.
They forget to listen, don't pay enough attention.
They have trouble following or understanding directions.
Misplace or lose necessary items.
Avoid difficult tasks.
Make careless mistakes
etc etc.

Type 2. Hyperactive Impulsive

These are the non stop, gogogo peeps.
They fidget and squirm.
Are in constant motion, get up all the time even when sitting is expected.
They are too loud, talk to much, and interrupt.
They run and climb and jump across the couch randomly.
Playing quietly takes a lot of effort.
Controlling impulses is really really hard.


Type 3. The Combined Type

The unpredictable type.
Sometimes we are type 1, sometimes we are type 2.
It's a mystery to all
Just what we are going to do!




After a lot of reading this is what it boils down to in relation to Tigerlily; there is no telling how she will behave or what she will do. Except her ASD requires routine. I can't imagine how conflicted the Tiger must be within her own mind. I seriously hope that someday she will be able to explain how she deals to me, because given her dual diagnosis she must have an iron will to have come so far.

Ok I need a coffee now as frankly I just find all the contradictions tiring.

The High Functioning Life, what will we do next?

HFL Mama

A Male Mind

 

 

Hardcore research mode has led me to an interesting idea. Now once again people this is just for entertainment purposes and I'm not any kind of authority on anything so don't take my word for it.

 

So I'm hunting for information on ASD and ADHD-CT in girls and not having much luck on getting any kind of stats and I'm scrolling through my google finds when this EMB theory comes up and it mentions PCOS as a potential cause for autism/ ADHD?

 

Hold up, I have PCOS, (poly cystic ovarian syndrome), but I thought the mysterious "they" had determined that autism genetic code was passed down from the father? I thought I was off the hook for this.  Well anyways EMB turned out to stand for extreme male brain caused by an overabundance of testosterone in the womb?

Ok my hormone levels are whacky that could've happened.

 

Yup so we all know male and female brains are different, Mars vs Venus etc. What I took from what I was reading is that Simon Baron-Cohen theorizes that male brains are better at systemizing, finding patterns, mathematics etc while female brains are better at empathizing recognizing social and emotional changes, cues and causes. Most brains can do both men leaning more to the S systemizing type and women lean more to the female E empathizing type etc. but when you get to the extreme S type you lose the E type skills and that this explains autism and ADHD diagnoses being attached to boys over girls statistically speaking.

 

 ( disclaimer again do your own research, I was reading this http://personal.lse.ac.uk/kanazawa/pdfs/JTB2005a.pdf )

 

Anyways this got me to thinking about double standards of behavior for boys and girls and how much my Tigerlily stands alone as having both predominately male disorders. & I remembered that when Tiger was starting school etc how I told her educators to think of her as a little boy. To try to school their responses and reprimands by always thinking if a little boy did this, would I say anything?

 

I'm very annoyed by gender stereotyping, I want equality for my daughter in all things and I do my best to ensure that she understands that men and women are equal. So this new diagnosis has brought this up again for me and with the Womens' March and the United State Of Women campaign and all the conversations Tiger and I have been having about equality between the sexes, equal rights etc.

 I just thought the concept of her having an extreme male brain in a female body was interesting. I wonder if this extreme male brain would affect her sexuality? Will she go into a predominately male field of work as an adult etc.

 

Again just interesting to me and thought I'd share it.

 

The High Functioning Life , another day means another theory.

 

 

HFL Mama

Hardcore Mode

I live in Canada so like it or not weather has an  impact on my life. On January 4th 2017, the weather caused lots of road closures, it was basically a blizzard so we missed our specialist appointment. I did actually try to go,  but chickened out when I reached the highway and couldn't see the intersection lights.

So calls were made and eventually our specialist called us back. She was having a rough day being the only person who made it into her office. Anyways there are laws about disclosing medical information and she was unable to give the results of our latest evaluation on the phone, or schedule another appointment within the next 5 months (sigh*), so the decision was made to mail our results to us.

Three weeks later I'm holding a medical report that states not only does my Tiger have ASD, she's also ADHD-CT. ( CT stands for combined type and I'll write a post on my interpretation of that confusion later.)
 Awesome meme!

In all honesty this wasn't a surprise to me. In fact after my initial pity party where I allow myself to whine, b*tch and moan about the unfairness of it all. I'll admit that it doesn't really impact anything in a bad way. As Daddybear says" she's still our Tigerlily, she hasn't changed".

So we've doubled up on our diagnoses and we have more information to work with and another report  to slide across the table when some unfortunate administrator starts waiving red tape in my direction. What I need to do now, is further educate myself on ADHD-CT, dual diagnosis, next steps etc.
So far the recommendations  are eerily similar to what came with her ASD with the exception of medication being suggested.

M...m....mmm...medication?!?! That is just ...... Ok I'm about to launch into a whole debate lets also leave that for another post but I will say Daddybear has strong opinions on this.

So far now that's all I've got to say, I'm going to switch over to hardcore research mode and read a whole lot more on the subjects that have been raised by this new diagnosis.

The High Functioning Life, Hardcore is an accurate description some days.

HFL Mama

High Functioning Holiday Hell

Don't you just love the holidays?

 I do,  I love snow, eggnog and all the baking! I usually go through about 10 pounds of butter during December. I'm a stress baker, need I say more?

The fact of the matter is, that when I envisioned having children, I dreamed of Happy Christmas Mornings, cute school concerts and caroling around the neighbourhood. I dreamed of Holiday vacations to visit relatives far away, skiing, sledding and skating all day. Drinking hot chocolate with marshmallows and lots of happy noise.

Right now the above are not happening, and that's OK.
Tiger only went to school one day the week leading up to winter break and that's cool too.

The thing about holidays is that they are a break in our routine. I love that break, anticipating, planning, decorating, BAKING. I love the holidays,
It's fun for me,

I don't have autism.

My daughter is completely torn in two over the holidays. This is high functioning hell. She understands the holiday is coming, she anticipates the extra fun stuff we are going to be doing. She loves to decorate and lick the beaters, but as the holidays get closer routines get disrupted and then she can't cope.

Our amazing friends and family come to visit us, because Tiger and long car rides don't mix and we still have problems. 

She's fine they say, don't worry about it, it's ok.
It's ok for them and its ok for me, we can adjust and cope with her behaviours.

What about Tigerlily?

What hell it must be for a child to long for something that comes with so many challenges?

I watch her trying to decide if it will be worth the amount of effort she's going to have to put in & it breaks my heart that she usually decides against trying and it hurts more knowing that I agree with her decision. I'm willing to go, heck I offer up the activities and outings in the first place knowing that its going to be a struggle. I still want to try... as long as she wants to, because
when things go right, her joy is a sight to behold.

The High Functioning Life, sometimes its hell getting to Joyeux Noel.