Dan and Autism

Friday, January 29, 2010

I still do this!

I still work with children with autism, years later. Who would have thought?

Kids beat you up considerably less, by the way.

Sunday, December 16, 2007

I still work with autistic people

So, just in case anyone that used to read this thought, "Hey, I wonder if Dan updated this in the last year and a half," boy, are you psyched!

I now teach a very young autistic kid in a school setting.
I never officially left the old job, but I haven't worked there since September. I am going to try to work there in the next couple of weeks though because I'll have some free time and I miss the old starts of this blog.

Wednesday, September 13, 2006

Oh hey, I never made a last post.

In conclusion, working with autistic adults is awesome and you should all do it.

My internship and summer are over, but I still work there at least once a week.

I'm probably not going to update this anymore, so I hope you all enjoyed reading it and hopefully this can be a resource for people thinking about working with autistism.

Thanks for reading,
Dan Yost

Friday, August 18, 2006

Monday the only two people working were myself and the other intern. It was the first time we worked without any other staff with us. We held it together and I think we did a fine job.

The only thing that went wrong during the day was that the "presser" started squeezing his fingers together while he was poolside and I was on the porch, so I had to sprint over to the pool and calm him down.

Thursday I did the overnight. It was nice and quiet since the guy who usually makes all the noise at night was on vacation with his family.

In the morning, the presser started pressing again, and when I touched his hands to put them on his lap, he started making the "I'm about to freak out and get violent" face. Luckily, he just calmed down, because I really dislike having to put him in restraints.

I only have one or two more days of work before the summer semester ends and I'm done my internship. Actually, I think I was technically done months ago, because I fulfilled my required 160 hours months ago.

Either way, when the internship ends, I'm probably going to stop updating the blog. Incase you didn't notice, the posts have been less detailed, but that's becaues less "new and exciting" things are happening.

Sunday, August 13, 2006

Full Moon Week Sucks

I worked Monday and did the overnight. I took the upstairs bedroom so I could get some sleep and avoid a repeat of the last time I slept downstairs. But instead of the guy with the bone problem waking me up in the middle of the night, another resident did by just yelling while in bed. I'd go into his room, and he'd give me the "quiet" sign and roll over and go back to bed. So why'd he make the noise in the first place?

When we drop the guys off to work in the morning, I usually give the bone disorder guy a break and just carry him inside because he hates wearing shoes and usually kicks them a half dozen times during a walk that would normally take 30 seconds. But when I was helping him out of his seat, he clawed at my face and threw my glasses around the van, so I told him that he's walking. I guess I sounded mad, because he listened and didn't kick off his shoes until he was in his seat inside.

On Wednesday, nothing of note happened.

On Thursday, we had to put the aggressive guy in restraints, but we didn't have to put him in the wedge, and he didn't fight anyone back, which was a huge relief.

Friday he was pretty tense, so I told him to sit next to me and I talked him down until he relaxed.

All week, everyone was acting really strange. They were shouting random things, or using incorrect sign language (One of them would give the sign for "I need the bathroom" and then go sit on the porch). And this week was a full moon. I don't know if there's a scientific explanation for it, but it really seems like they act up during full moons.

Sunday, August 06, 2006

Oh, You Can Actually Do Stuff?

On Monday, nothing particularly interesting happened.

I did the overnight on Tuesday night. I slept in the staff bedroom that's next to the bedroom of our resident with the bone disorder. That night, however, I learned that he's much more mobile than he would lead one to believe. At around 3:30 AM, I heard him doing his "Someone pay attention to me even though it's the middle of the night" scream, so I found him sitting in the middle of the room that used to be the office (we need a better name for the room than that). Interestingly, he wasn't wearing any pants. I found that peculiar. I found his pajama pants and diaper on the floor of the bathroom. I guessed that he went in his diaper and wanted to get a clean one, so that's why he was shouting in the middle of the night. So, I got him a new diaper and new pants. What was interesting was that when I went to the bathroom to discard his dirty diaper, I found that he had actually pooped in the toilet. Normally, when this guy wants to go the bathroom, he gets me to walk him there, and half the time, he just goes in his pants before he gets there. There's actually a particular spot we'll get to on the walk there where he'll just stop and urinate or defecate there. But inside the toilet is proof that his guy, who acts totally helpless, can actually go to the bathroom by himself when he wants to. He was able to walk from his bed, open his door, walk to the bathroom, open that door, pull down his pants, and go to the bathroom without any help. This was quite the discovery for our household, because now we know not to baby him so much, becuase he's physically capable of alot more than we thought.

Unfortunately, since he was up, he spent the rest of the night screaming to himself or rolling off the bed over and over.

Wednesday, when the guys came home from work, I told my bedroom neighbor that since he kept me up all night for no good reason, I'm not letting him fall asleep during the day. We try to prevent the guys from falling asleep during the day anyway, because if we don't, they'll end up waking up in the middle of the night and keeping the staff up. So anytime this resident would try to fall asleep in his chair, I'd shout his name or shake the chair or throw the pillow across the room. And now I know he's actually able to get up and get the pillow himself if he really wants it.

One of the other interns and I decided to start running the teaching programs with our guys much more often than they have been. These are the programs that teach guys how to do simple things to benefit the household and themselves, such as vacuuming or brushing teeth. So, we ran a program with about every resident and plan to do so more often in the future.

After dinner, I lifeguarded as a few guys went swimming. Our one resident who's usually water-shy actually went in the pool all the way. I believe I've described how some of them act in the pool, and his actions were just as interesting. He jumped around making a siren noise and kept splashing water everywhere. Including on me. It looked like he got so lost in splashing the water that he didn't even realize what a mess he was making. These guys love swimming.

Sunday, July 30, 2006

Don't Get Too Attached

Sorry I haven't been updating much, but nothing interesting happened until yesterday.

Tuesday night I did an over night and nothing really happened.

I worked Thursday and we ran a bunch of programs with the guys and cleaned the house. I did an overnight that night too. Friday morning we ran out of someone's meds because we never picked up meds from around a week ago, so we had to stop to get them on the way to work.

Friday night I did another overnight. Around three in the morning, I heard alot of noise coming from a resident's room. I was concerned, so I checked in on him. I found him on the floor humping a pillow. I went back to bed after that and didn't get much sleep.

Saturday was what I want to write about. It was a reminder that I shouldn't get too attached to these guys, because one's feelings can really get hurt when something goes wrong. I won't lie, I definitely have a favorite amongst the six guys I take care of. I don't give him any better treatment than any of his housemates, but he's the one guy I volunteer to spend more time with whenever we have to split up. On Saturday, however, he was misbehaving alot. At around 7 PM, he was trying to ask me something, but can't talk and wouldn't give the sign for it, so I asked him to show me what he wanted. He took my hand and led me up to his room, then pointed at his bed. I asked him if he was trying to go to bed, and he nodded and gave me the sign for "go to sleep," but I had to tell him it was only 7 o'clock and he would have to wait awhile. The reason behind this is if he went to bed at 7, he'd wake up by 3 or 4 AM and start making that terrible siren noise he does and wake up everyone else in the house. At around 8, this resident started tamtruming non-stop. It was very uncomfortable, because he was jumping and doing a high pitched scream, and I couldn't tell if he was in pain or not. We thought he might have been constipated because he kept asking to go to the bathroom. But the real reason he was asking was because when we let him go to the bathroom, he would actually just try to sneak off to his room and go to bed. He also may have been tantruming because his parents visited earlier in the day, and he acts like a maniac around them, probably because they don't know what to do with him.
Anyway, the reason this bothered me on such a personal level was because it almost felt like a betrayel. It's because he knows he's my favorite, so when he's taking swings at me and screaming in my face because of something I wouldn't let him do, and I'm trying to calmly ask him to stop so I don't have to punish him. I feel guilty punishing him because all he wants to do his go to bed and he can't understand why I won't let him, but he's acting out of control. We eventually sat him down in another room and told him to stay there until he could sit quietely. He was still in there when my relief came in and I could go him.

It just stinks sometimes.