The 'Cosmonaut' stylus from Studio Neat

There are loads of choices when it comes to finding a stylus for your iPad or other tablet device. So of course, there are loads of reviews of styluses out there. But all the reviews I found were meant to help adults choose a stylus for themselves. Kids have different needs when it comes to choosing things like styluses, so I'm attempting to review some of the options out there.

If you're looking for a stylus for your child, consult with their occupational therapist or teacher to see what shape you should be looking for, short, long, fat, thin, etc

Don't miss my next post, about Wacom's Bamboo Solo stylus.

The Cosmonaut by Studio Neat
MSRP $25

The first stylus I received gratis from Studio Neat, which they've named the Cosmonaut. It's fatter and shorter than the typical pen or pencil that many styluses are modeled after.The barrel is rubberized from end to end and the conical rubber tip is separate from the rubberized barrel. Though I've not had problems with the cover of the tip coming off, it is a concern in the long run as the Cosmonaut's texture invites gnawing from my youngest two. But I think that activity is naturally directed at the opposite end.

The Cosmonaut's monolithic design make it pretty simple to describe. It's two distinctive features are it's size, which is comparable to a dry-erase marker, and it's rubberized grip. In Joseph's case, the size seems to be more of a hindrance than a help, making it more difficult for him to form the proper tripod grip which he's been working on for a while and is coming along nicely. That's not to say this is a flaw, every kid is going to have their own needs. So if your child's OT says that wider writing tools would be easier for them to use, then this is a great bonusin their case. I've been informed that the fatter size is better for people tired hands and motor skill deficits.

The rubber that encases the Cosmonaut is the same texture as the outer layer of our OtterBox iPad case. It makes it very easy to grip, which means that it's easy for food and dirt to stick to it, but it wipes off easily.

Chewability: Excellent. If your kid is an oral stimmer like mine, the Cosmonaut is a good choice.

Adaptability: Not so much. It's unique size makes it impossible to use all the little attachments that help build a good tripod grip, but that may not be an issue if this is otherwise a good stylus for your child.

In a Nutshell: Great for oral stimmers, for kiddos with weak grips and fine motor difficulties, and for activities that would normally be done with a marker (coloring, some drawing, etc). I think the durability is the Cosmonaut's strongest feature.

Seeing Things a Little Differently

^not my photo :)

Friday we visited Joseph's new classroom for the walk-through. I saw something that I haven't seen since before his diagnosis. I watched Joseph in the middle of a group of typically developing kids of his own age.

Just before Joseph turned 3, my wife and I had to put the kids both in daycare for a few hours a week while I was in school and she was at work. That's when we were told that he needed to be evaluated for developmental delays. One day, when I arrived to pick Joseph up, I approached the classroom and saw them through the window. The teacher was sitting in a chair reading a book to the kids. There were probably 6 to 8 other kids sitting attentively in a semi-circle in front of her. And on one end of this row of children, Joseph laid on the floor, rocking gently from side to side, with his hand stuck in the back of his shirt fidgeting with the tag.

After his diagnosis, the only times I've seen him as part of a group of peers has been in his special needs pre-k class, which was half developmentally delayed kids and half typical peer models. It was frequently hard to tell which kids were which, but Joseph always stood out as he was consistently the most "high-spirited" in his class. But the classes were generally pretty small, and Joseph didn't seem so different from the other kids.

So Friday, Joseph visited his new classroom and his new teacher along with most of his new classmates. Dublin is an inclusive school system, so he will be in a general education classroom and taken out to their special ed "resource room" by his intervention specialist as needed. So the new teacher (who was Maria's Kindergarten teacher two years ago) took all the kids to her classroom. She introduced herself and then took the kids on a short tour of the room. Joseph got distracted by something halfway through and got left behind. After the tour, the class had a little mini-circle time. The teacher had them all introduce themselves by name (which Joseph is very good at: "My name's Joseph!"), then she read them a story about the first day of Kindergarten, and she talked to the kids about the story.

Listening to Joseph's peers talking, articulating their understanding of the story, the contrast made me realize just how far he still has to go to "catch up." It was sobering, but not discouraging, depressing or disappointing (probably in part thanks to Celexa and Wellbutrin.)

We're at a point of new beginnings with Joseph. On Monday, he starts Kindergarten and will be surrounded by 90% typical peers for the first time in two years. Also, we are finally getting his ABA program started. We're so close, we had the start-up training scheduled and our psychologist had to leave town suddenly and it got postponed the day before it was supposed to happen. The point is, my resolve has been strengthened, and I'm more confident than ever that he is on the precipice of great progress.

For example, this morning he told me that last night he dreamt of unicorns. That was pretty remarkable, it is the first time that he's told us anything about his dreams. He asked me if I dream about dragons. Then he asked his baby sister what she does at night. :)

Mini-post: Free Stuff Your Kid Might Like

Joseph doesn't get obsessions to the extent that some people with autism do, but he does tend to get hyper-focus on things for short periods of time (until he discovers something more interesting comes along.) Right now, he loves maps and prefers the paper ones (that he can somehow refold correctly!)

Across the street from my therapists office is a AAA location. I got a AAA membership from my folks last Christmas. I remembered that back in the old days, before MapQuest, AAA gave members free maps.

I was early today, so I stopped in to check it out. They do still give free maps to members, and guidebooks too. Maria and I loaded up on maps to give Joseph as rewards. I think we might also use a trip to AAA to pick out his own map as a special reward.

How to Use Tech to Help Manage Your Time

I promised a couple of months ago that I would write about how I use tech to make my life as a special needs parent easier. The system I use can be used by any busy person really (and it is). Of course I started a post, got distracted and then totally forgot about it until I came back yesterday to post about something entirely unrelated. So I'm going to try again. I'm not an expert, I just think I have found a system that works for me. So take from it what you feel would be useful in your situation. I'll be glad to offer what advice I can if you need to adapt what I've done to meet your own unique needs.

There are two main components to my scheduling system:

• a smartphone (iPhone or Android) or an iPod Touch
• a GMail account

Everything I do is on a shoestring budget. If you can't afford a smartphone, look at used iPod Touches. They have all the same calendar features. Our first iOS device was an 8gb 2nd generation iPod Touch for which we paid $80 on Craigslist. Even if you have a non-smartphone, if you can receive text messages, you can add and edit appointments at home, and get text message reminders. And GMail accounts are free.

Both iOS and Android devices will allow you to directly access your Google Calendars through their own calendar apps. I'm not going into detail here, but you can find configuration instructions for iOS, and since you have to enter your GMail info into your Android phone, it does the rest for you.

Once I had a GMail account and an iPod Touch, I created multiple calendars in GMail that I could view concurrently. There are calendars for me, my wife, Joseph, Maria, Anna, and my work stuff. Whether I'm viewing my calendar in a web browser or from my mobile device, I can choose to view all the calendars, some, or one. When I'm scheduling a new appointment, I just have to look at that day and I see a color coded schedule so I can make sure I don't double-book someone and I have enough travel time (promptness is very important to me). See this YouTube video that some other helpful person made, and which I've embedded below.



Once you have your calendars set up, you can add repeating events, like your weekly OT and SLP appointments. I've got two kids in speech therapy, one weekly and the other bi-weekly. Without this, I would be totally lost. After you've created a repeating event, you can make "exceptions", where you edit a single instance of the event, or delete it, without changing the rest of your series. So your SLP is on vacation, just delete that instance of the event.

GMail/Google Calendar can remind you about your appointments in several ways. If you're using an iOS or Android device, a pop-up is probably the easiest way. In any case, I prefer to be notified 24 hours before an appointment, and then again 1 hour before. Though I'm considering switching from 24 hrs to 12 hrs for the first reminder. Anyway, you can learn how to change your default reminders here. That way, when you create a new event it will have the default reminders already set.

Finally, you can share your calendars on an individual basis with other GMail users. My wife and one of our aides have GMail accounts, so my wife can see and make changes to all of our calendars, and our aide can see Joseph's calendar (which includes events that tell us which aide is scheduled for what time.) That way, if Joseph has an appointment that is outside of his regular routine, or he doesn't have an appointment that he would normally have, everyone with access to the calendar can see that.

Please ask questions. I'm sure there's something that I've failed to mention here.

Next time, I'll be writing about how I use a scanner an Dropbox to keep all the mountains of paperwork, forms, and questionnaires organized, and I'll share how it's saved my ass.

Does Autism Suck?

I read this blog post from another autism dad. It's complaining about people who say that they "wouldn't change their (autistic) child for the world." I was resharing the link on Facebook, but my comment started to get lengthy so I decided to see if I could eke an entire blog post of my own out of this idea.

I'm very concerned about what autistic self-advocates have to say. My son can't get philosophical about his diagnosis yet, so I listen to what people like Ari Ne'eman and Temple Grandin have to say about it. The impression that I get, generally, is that high functioning adults with autism would not choose to be neuro-typical. But that's over-simplifying things. I don't know quite so much about Ari, because no one has made a biopic about him yet, but Temple Grandin has always suffered from crippling anxiety. You can't tell me that if she could take away that anxiety and leave everything else the same that she wouldn't do it. She just wouldn't want to give up the strengths her autism gives her to get rid of the deficits and challenges.

I've got my own psychological diagnoses. I have been diagnosed with ADHD, depression, anxiety, etc. The ADHD is the only one that I think it's fair to compare in this situation. ADHD has benefits and disadvantages.  Whereas depression and anxiety, they just suck all the time. ADHD lets me hyperfocus on a task, whether it's reading a fascinating book or trying to solve a problem or just researching a subject that I'm curious about. ADHD also kept me from getting decent grades in any math class I've taken, ever. Well, ok, except geometry. I got a B in that one. My graduating GPA in high school was 1.666. But I digress. (That's the ADHD too.)

If I could snap my fingers and not be ADHD anymore, would I? I can't say for sure. If I could snap my fingers and not have trouble focusing on stuff that I find boring? In a heartbeat.

Joseph's expressive communication is pretty limited. It's far better than it was two years ago when he was diagnosed with autism and he was effectively non-verbal, but he doesn't come home from school and tell me what he did that day without a lot of help, and he never tells me about his classmates unless I remind him who they are.

Joseph also has a genius level IQ and extraordinary spatial reasoning skills. He builds wonderful creations with his LEGOS and K'nex, or out of cardboard boxes and tubes. His teachers and therapists are always talking about how they expect him to become an amazing architect or civil engineer.

If I could choose for him, would I choose for him to be hitting all his developmental milestones right where the docs say he should, have a 100 point IQ, a C average in school, etc, in exchange for him being able to communicate more effectively? No. I don't think so. And I think that's what people are talking about when they say they wouldn't choose to be neuro-typical, or for their child to not be autistic.

But a little more talking would be super. And a little more awareness of danger. And it would have been nice to have him toilet trained before his 5th birthday. And I'd love to be able to take him to the store and not have to worry about him disappearing at warp speed if I let go of his hand for a moment.

It doesn't mean I love my son any less than I would if he was some abnormally normal kid. Every rose has its thorn. Except now they have these genetically modified roses that actually don't have thorns or something. But that breaks the metaphor that's supposed to anchor this whole post, so let's forget about them.

Upcoming series: How to be the digital parent of a child with special needs

I'm planning a series of blog posts about how to effectively (and cheaply) use the digital tools that are available to us to better manage the business of being a special needs parent.

The posts will include:

• Scheduling - How to effectively manage your time and keep track of who needs to be where when
• Record keeping - Stop killing trees and be able to find that ONE paper that you need
• Communication management - Keeping in touch with parents, teachers, therapists and everyone else
• Social media - Having a digital social life

What are your favorite tricks, apps, that you can't imagine living without? Can you think of any other subjects that should be covered? Do you want to write a guest post?

About nothing in particular

I've been neglecting my blogging terribly. I haven't written anything in three months. So what have we been up to?

Well, we have been preparing for the big transition to Kindergarten this fall. Everyone's excited. When we went to the meeting for Joseph's "school-age" IEP, the school psychologist mentioned how excited she was to work with Joseph because they don't often get special needs students with his level of intelligence.

His general education teacher will be Maria's teacher for Kindergarten and his intervention specialist was a para-pro for an ASD boy that was in Maria's class in Kindergarten, so we already know them.

Kristy and I are excited because we feel like keeping him around the typically developing peer models has paid off, and since Dublin's classes are inclusive, he will have a lot more peer models next year. We expect that his development is just going to explode, having the one-on-one help from a para-pro at all times during school, and having so many other typical kids to interact with and learn from.

Since the beginning of April, Joseph has been participating in an awesome program run by the Hilliard Ohio Soccer Associatiob called TOPSoccer. It's a soccer program for kids whose special needs prevent them from participating in typical soccer programs (which at this point I think Joseph's lack of focus and difficulty following instructions make him fit that qualification).

We knew that we wanted to start getting Joseph involved in some activities, particularly some physical ones geared towards kids with autism and/or other special needs. I'm really glad that we found TOPSoccer.

Registration was $10 for the season and he got shin guards, socks and a t-shirt. We might have gotten cleat from them or Kristy may have gotten them from the Dublin Soccer League when we were getting Maria signed up for their program.

In any case, there were 8 sessions this season, the first 5 (during the damp month of April) were indoors at Soccer First just outside Dublin. The last three (the final session is this coming Saturday) are outdoors at the Hilliard Soccer Complex.

Sometimes Joseph doesn't feel like participating, but that's ok. He's never the only one. Probably 80% of the kids there have "invisible" disabilities like autism. There were a few really brave kids there participating in wheelchairs and on crutches. It's chaotic, but what do you expect? :)

And thank God for Joseph's aide who goes with us. We would not be doing his without her. I'm about as far from "athletic" as you can get. I wouldn't be able to handle chasing Joseph around a soccer field for an hour!

Like I said, the last session is this weekend and I'm already looking forward to the fall season!

We've continued to struggle with getting his aide schedule filled completely. Around the time we got our third aide, the first one quit suddenly. We interviewed several more and hired 2 that never showed up at the agency to get signed on. At this point we've had the same 2 since I think February. We've got a third who is a student at OSU studying speech and hearing, which I think will be excellent for Joseph since one of his biggest challenges is verbal communication. She can't start until the end of the quarter, but she will be able to work 12 hours a week with him. I've been in touch with her by email a few times since we offered her the position and she seems enthusiastic about it, so I don't think she's going to disappear on us before she starts. :)

Coming up this summer, Joseph will go to one week of summer school before Buddy Camp starts. Buddy Camp is a half day camp where ASD kids attend with an aide and a you ally developing peer. The staff (from Children's Hospital's autism center) helps them work on heir interpersonal skills, socialization and cooperation and that sort of thing. I think Joseph is going to love it. We've also got him signed up for a two-hour a week pre-writing skills class and a one-hour a week pre-reading class. I want to try to get some of those IEP goal for next year mastered before the school year starts! And the structure will be good for him. I think we will need a more physical activity for the afternoons though, to help him burn off all that ADHD energy.

So I guess there's been a lot more going on to write about than I thought there was. Joseph has continued to make progress in leaps and bounds. I'm more optimistic than ever that he will eventually find his place in the world where he can be happy, healthy, independent, successful and fulfilled.

Until next time, I'd to hear your thoughts about something. I have a secret: I've always been uncomfortable around people with disabilities. Obviously, that's changed a lot over recent years. One feeling I struggle with though is a sort of guilt wrapped in pity. Do you ever feel guilty for feeling glad that your kiddo doesn't have some challenge or deficit that another child has?