Week Three - Wilson

I did ask for the challenge. Still, I didn't expect to be bitten as early as 9:20 on Monday morning.

This week I worked with Wilson, the 8 year old boy with BLUEST, most striking eyes I have ever seen! Together we perfected two kinds of dives: the "Regular Dive", which involved just lunging forward, and the "Super Big Dive", which is identified with a steeple action made with your arms and hands clasped over your head (really, these were just belly flops into the swimming area). We painted approximately 20 rocks over the course of 5 days, in addition to 12 paintings on paper. We pushed the jogger approximately 20k over the course of the week as well! We spoke mainly in sign language, because even though Wilson understood spoken word, (sending a pruned/shriveled child home from camp is frowned upon at the YMCA). So when I added various PCS (Picture Communication Symbols) to his daily schedule each day, he'd look at it, shake his head, sign "NO!" rip it off, throw it at me, possibly throw a rock at me, or else kick me/grab my hair/scratch me/ bite me. It was a highly physical week with all the self-defence and NVCI (Non-Violent Crisis Intervention) usage, but I learned SO much MORE about working with children who have autism.

On Monday morning, I was bit on a camp inappropriate upper half location (it's a lovely shade of purple at the moment :). But the day smoothed out as it progressed and we were able to use the red canoe, push the wheel chair (he LOVED to push the jogger/terra trek {essentially our efficient movers for immobile campers}, in particular the green one!), and eventually got swimming.

Tuesday however was drastically different. Challenging from start to end. Our canoe tipped on a trip to the Specialty side of the camp, as another 1:1 counselor was getting in with her own camper in the front, Wilson in front of me on the floor, and myself in the back seat. Scared at first, Wil thought it was fantastic and that this would be our swim time. I signed "No, Wilson. We can't swim here because it isn't safe. Lets go back to the camp swimming." "NO!" - cue ensuing tantrum and associated scratching, hitting, and then my NVCI restraint. Eventually we did get back and ready for our own swimming time, but naturally getting out and dressed to go home was another struggle.

Wednesday was the worst. Almost an entire day of physical restraint, and towards the end a 5 person team with me. Wilson was tired (he had been at camp the week prior as well) and missing his mom. Maybe it would be wise to take a break from camp tomorrow...

Thursday was a lot better. He had a very good night of sleep the night before, and he would only be coming for the morning hours. We swam for 2.5 hours in the glorious sun and had a blast!

Friday was my favourite day. We swam in the rain all morning, pretended to be seagulls, traveled in the green jogger, played "sick", watched the cars come and go on the camp path, finger talked about the ambulance that had been there on Wednesday, finger talked about when we fell out of the red canoe and how our shirts, shoes, and pants all got wet and how we had to swim to shore and our shoes made a "slop slop slop" sound. We had a birthday party for Nathaniel, and Wilson imitated Nathaniel sneezing the candles out (we made a pretend cake out of legos and a pretend candle which we took turns sneezing to blow out). We pretended to drive the golf cart to the drive in, where we "watched" Finding Nemo and had popcorn and chocolate milk. I love that little boy so much!

Wilson enlightened me on what I am capable of, and taught me new skills too. I perfected the concept of task analysis (ask if you want to know what that is), and got to practice my NVCI techniques. He opened my eyes to the kinds of sensitivities some children have and what I am capable of doing myself in order to help them. He taught me that all kids essentially want the same things, exceptionality or no exceptionality (I think that is to swim all day and not ever eat lunch or a snack or to do anything else). He taught me that I have a whole lot more patience than I may have once believed, and he showed me that I love what I do. Because even though he took out his frustrations on me in a pretty aggressive manner, I never stopped believing in him and his potential. I didn't really realize this until I got home this afternoon.

He had a devilish smile and the most beautiful eyes on anyone I've ever seen. I will miss him very much <3 .


(next week: Mackenzie!)