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Saturday: internet woes, citric acid FTW
Mar. 30th, 2024 11:54 amR. is attempting to get the home internet working again. Apparently something in the basement is connected to a GFI breaker that keeps flipping and he’s trying to track that all down. In the meantime, cellular. Really, a reminder about the utility of automated failover systems. Not that I needed it.
We let water sit in the citric acid cleaned water bottles overnight, and they were still tasty this morning, so I think we have a strategy going forward! A few observations. First, the bottle with the straw needed a lot of treatment on the straw specifically. Second, these are both _new_ bottles, one metal (from WDW) and one plastic (from Fusion). The objection was to “new” related smell/taste. In generally, we only put water in our water bottles, and once they’ve been in use for a while, ordinary water rinse or occasional soap and water (and even less often brush with soap and water) is fine to maintain them at acceptable levels of smell/taste. I _assume_ that what A. is complaining about (and which I can only sometimes detect myself) is chemicals association with manufacturing, and once we’ve had something in use for a while the microbiome is stable enough to not generate anything gross. It helps that we have some whole-house filtration, so we never have to deal with scale or anything like that, and we only fill from double-filtered (cold water in the kitchen, cold water in the master bath and the fridge all have their own filter) sources (except when out and about, but usually there is will be from a water bottle filler or a bubbler which _usually_ have filtration as well).
The therapist described A.’s meltdown on Wednesday (when I was not there) as being anxiety related, and it took until _today_, as I was re-downloading The Worry Trick and buying the audible book of it so A. could also read it easily, that I went, wait a second. That is NOT right! This is NOT The Worry Trick problem. That’s, “But What If” self-jump-scare, and A. does that only extremely occasionally and it is stupidly easy to resolve. She has some long-standing, life-limiting fears associated with heights/elevators, crossing streets alone that do not have a guard or a light control, that are reality based and that I expect we will eventually resolve the same way her water issues were resolved (talk it to death, basically, and increase her skills so that she believes that she has the skills needed to adequately manage the risk), which is to say, NOT stupidly easy, but this is not the looping jump scare stuff of The Worry Trick.
A.’s meltdowns are driven by a combination of sensory overload plus frustration, so I’ve been tackling this by trying to get her into environments that are less sensorily challenging, and which will provide understandable explanations to her (which has been a major source of frustration). I’m also really excited that Fusion offers the potential to have martial arts and/or dance as PE, one on one, and the instructor totally gets the proprioception issue and seems excited to help her with that. A. recently sent me a quote from something (probably wikipedia) she was reading about proprioception and autism, and then summarized it as follows:
“ Wait, let me get this straight, neurotypicals can walk around without hurting themselves accidentally without thinking about it _at all_? Were you aware of this?”
Obviously, I was aware of this, and obviously, I would love to get this fixed for her _before_ she turns 30, unlike how it worked for me.
Anyway. Functionally, a frustration driven autism rage cycle is going to look suspiciously like a panic attack or severe anxiety in some respects — ya got woofed and it took a while for all those chemicals to clear back out of your system and it’s somewhat psychologically traumatizing.
It occurs to me that getting woofed might be an unfamiliar concept. So I googled that for you!
https://www.martialtalk.com/threads/adrenaline-stress-training.29836/
Also, think about that for a while. When I retired and did martial arts for a few years, a component of what I did (minus the suit) was practicing skills in the context of the instructor _intentionally_ woofing me. All, obviously, pre-discussed, consent was observed yada yada yada. I paid for this, and this absolutely was not how we _started_. The reason for incorporating this was _because_, as noted in the thread, “It's amazing how many highly skilled martial artists cannot adequately defend themselves under stress.”
I talk all the time about how martial arts stopped me running into things, and how amazing that lasting change in my body is one of the best things that has ever happened to me. I only occasionally talk about this training, altho I am reminded often that _other people_ respond to that adrenaline dump wildly differently than I do. I probably should talk about this more.
We let water sit in the citric acid cleaned water bottles overnight, and they were still tasty this morning, so I think we have a strategy going forward! A few observations. First, the bottle with the straw needed a lot of treatment on the straw specifically. Second, these are both _new_ bottles, one metal (from WDW) and one plastic (from Fusion). The objection was to “new” related smell/taste. In generally, we only put water in our water bottles, and once they’ve been in use for a while, ordinary water rinse or occasional soap and water (and even less often brush with soap and water) is fine to maintain them at acceptable levels of smell/taste. I _assume_ that what A. is complaining about (and which I can only sometimes detect myself) is chemicals association with manufacturing, and once we’ve had something in use for a while the microbiome is stable enough to not generate anything gross. It helps that we have some whole-house filtration, so we never have to deal with scale or anything like that, and we only fill from double-filtered (cold water in the kitchen, cold water in the master bath and the fridge all have their own filter) sources (except when out and about, but usually there is will be from a water bottle filler or a bubbler which _usually_ have filtration as well).
The therapist described A.’s meltdown on Wednesday (when I was not there) as being anxiety related, and it took until _today_, as I was re-downloading The Worry Trick and buying the audible book of it so A. could also read it easily, that I went, wait a second. That is NOT right! This is NOT The Worry Trick problem. That’s, “But What If” self-jump-scare, and A. does that only extremely occasionally and it is stupidly easy to resolve. She has some long-standing, life-limiting fears associated with heights/elevators, crossing streets alone that do not have a guard or a light control, that are reality based and that I expect we will eventually resolve the same way her water issues were resolved (talk it to death, basically, and increase her skills so that she believes that she has the skills needed to adequately manage the risk), which is to say, NOT stupidly easy, but this is not the looping jump scare stuff of The Worry Trick.
A.’s meltdowns are driven by a combination of sensory overload plus frustration, so I’ve been tackling this by trying to get her into environments that are less sensorily challenging, and which will provide understandable explanations to her (which has been a major source of frustration). I’m also really excited that Fusion offers the potential to have martial arts and/or dance as PE, one on one, and the instructor totally gets the proprioception issue and seems excited to help her with that. A. recently sent me a quote from something (probably wikipedia) she was reading about proprioception and autism, and then summarized it as follows:
“ Wait, let me get this straight, neurotypicals can walk around without hurting themselves accidentally without thinking about it _at all_? Were you aware of this?”
Obviously, I was aware of this, and obviously, I would love to get this fixed for her _before_ she turns 30, unlike how it worked for me.
Anyway. Functionally, a frustration driven autism rage cycle is going to look suspiciously like a panic attack or severe anxiety in some respects — ya got woofed and it took a while for all those chemicals to clear back out of your system and it’s somewhat psychologically traumatizing.
It occurs to me that getting woofed might be an unfamiliar concept. So I googled that for you!
https://www.martialtalk.com/threads/adrenaline-stress-training.29836/
Also, think about that for a while. When I retired and did martial arts for a few years, a component of what I did (minus the suit) was practicing skills in the context of the instructor _intentionally_ woofing me. All, obviously, pre-discussed, consent was observed yada yada yada. I paid for this, and this absolutely was not how we _started_. The reason for incorporating this was _because_, as noted in the thread, “It's amazing how many highly skilled martial artists cannot adequately defend themselves under stress.”
I talk all the time about how martial arts stopped me running into things, and how amazing that lasting change in my body is one of the best things that has ever happened to me. I only occasionally talk about this training, altho I am reminded often that _other people_ respond to that adrenaline dump wildly differently than I do. I probably should talk about this more.