Be A Good Dad

I managed to catch whatever stomach thing Pookie and BeAGoodMom a couple days after they were all recovered. Yuck and blah.

So, that’s one of my kids of sick.

The other is about shock jocks on the radio. Michael Savage just decided to say that 99% of autism is not really autism but bad parenting and parents trying to get benefit money. The autism community is of course pissed. AFLAC and a couple other sponsors have apparently pulled advertising on the show.

But before we get into a why are people picking on autistic kids and their parents, lets remember this guy makes a living picking on people. He is constantly getting in trouble for making fun of people for race, religion, color and whatever else will piss off as many people as possible. Those people then call into the radio station to complain. Ratings go up and both he and the station makes money.

Sometimes people complain loudly enough to the stations and/or the sponsors and guys like him lose their job…for a while. Savage has been fired in the past for over the top statements and is currently on the air. Imus has been fired a time or two in recent memory but is back on the air just waiting for a chance to say something shocking and newsworthy.

I’m not going to waste any more of my time complaining to or even about Michael Savage. He truly does not care about my opinion. He knows that survival on the radio is all about making as many people either love or hate you. People that just don’t give a crap are what actually hurt his wallet.

I will say that I am no more offended than when he bashes some other demographic that I don’t happen to belong to and it made me ponder whether or not the groups that are around to support/promote these various groups spend any time getting irate when members of the other groups are attacked. For example, are autism groups upset about the lack of gay rights? Are the Hispanic groups upset at the school conditions in mostly black communities? Don’t all of these issues really all feed into the same types of discrimination and misinformation? I just think it would make a much stronger impact if somebody was bashing a group and members of all the other groups came out to voice their opinion that it was not acceptable.

For some more friendly autism reading, Angela from Mommy Bytes has a nice post about autism and learning to understand the world from their perspective a little better.

While researching Michael Savage, I also found an interesting article from Kim Stagliano of The Huggington Post where she expresses a great deal of frustration about the public perception that kids with autism just need more discipline which I think is worth a read.

My daughter’s favorite book this week is called Diary of a Worm and is written by Doreen Cronin of Click Clack Moo fame. If you don’t know, Click Clack Moo, I suggest you check it out too.

Diary of a Worm is, as the title suggests, the diary of a little boy worm with a red baseball cap. The book mixes text from the “diary” with illustrations of the diary entries. In it we learn little worms aren’t so different than little people.

Here are some of the worm’s diary entries:

• “Never bother Dad when he’s eating the newspaper.”
• “I forgot my school lunch. I was so hungry I ate my homework The teacher punished me by making me write. When I was finished I ate that too.”
• “Today was the school dance. You put your head in. You put your head out. You do the hokey pokey and you turn yourself about. That all we could do.”

That last one really cracked me up. The book is filled with that type of humor. It’s just a really cute book. My 2 year old doesn’t get all the jokes, but she loves the illustrations and hearing about this little worm. And I love reading aloud about this little worm.

I wholeheartedly recommend this book.

So, when your son has been sick and unable to keep solids or fluids in for a couple days and your wife just started having the same symptoms, do you start eating as much food as possible before the inevitable sickfest hoping to stockpile as many calories as possible or do you stop eating so that when it happens you get over it quicker.

I happened to go with eating normally and hope that I magically dodge the bullet.

What would you have done?

For the record, everybody seems to be pretty much back to normal today. Which means of course that my turn should be coming in the next day or so and we are off to a big pork chop, chips, desserts family and friends get together a couple hours from home tomorrow. Let’s hope it doesn’t catch up with me on the way home.

Pookie is sick. Bad stomach sick. He hasn’t eaten in a couple days because the food just will not stay down. He even had trouble keeping fluids down. So far this morning his been drinking about 1/2 inch of water every fifteen minutes and it seems to be sticking so maybe we are on the road to recovery.

I did learn a few interesting things during this.

• It is possible to feed a baby, help a kid change his clothes, and clean up puke all at the same time. These types of things normally don’t tend to happen when I am home alone with the kids.
• Pookie clearly understands being sick. He will tell us that his belly itches, will aim at a garbage can or into the toilet if you get him there in time, and loves to lay around watching TV and cuddling with stuffed animals.
• Geetle clearly understands Pookie being sick. When the original incident occured, I was in another room. She ran to me and yelled, “Come quick. It’s an emergency.” Last night, Geetle and I went to Kyuki-Do. In the car, she randomly said, “I feel sorry that Pookie is sick.” During the ride home, she talked to BeAGoodMom on the phone and right away asked how Pookie was feeling.

Unfortunately, she just ran into the office because Pookie threw up (it’s more of a spit up at this point) again. It looks like it is time to call the doctor and see if we should bring him in.

The other day I had the horrible realization that I am not spending as much 1 on 1 time with Pookie as I would like. Geetle and I fairly frequently read chapter books together and have started playing Crazy 8s. She’s even started asking me to play Polly Pockets and stuff like that with her which is great because of how much we end up talking.

I haven’t been doing that as much with Pookie. His interests are just so self-stimming that it is way too easy to just let him play by himself. Plus, I spend time helping him through Kyuki-Do class which is kind of 1 on 1 with 20 other people around which isn’t really 1 on 1 at all.

The other day, BeAGoodMom took Geetle to the gym and grocery store. I was watching Giggles and Pookie at the house. I decided it was time for Giggles to play with her toys for a while and for Pookie and me to have some good father-son time.

I decided to take them into the back yard and play with the swing set, sandbox, and all the other toys out there. He quickly said that no, he did not want to play outside.

Crap. Shot down before we could even start.

I asked what he wanted to do. He said he wanted to play motorcycles. That might work.

I cleared of the train table and we set the motorcycle track up together and then raced them for about a half hour. Then he wanted to build block towers. We played with the blocks for another hour hour.

Then it was dinner time. He said he wanted to have a picnic inside. So, I made raviolis and we watched Spongbob together using the train table as our dinner table.

It was the most fun I’ve had with Pookie in quite a while outside of Kyuki-Do class which bums me out that I haven’t done a better job of finding little ways to get into his world more often.

I really need to work on remembering that doing little things like drawing pictures with him is often just as exciting as doing something fancier and more expensive.