Obsessions

I have really been enjoying my children lately. Not that I haven't before, but what I mean is I am really enjoying this age and this stage of our lives. Most of you know that almost two years ago Josiah was diagnosed with high functioning autism. It has been the neatest thing to me to watch him grown and develop and function through his autism. Most people, if you haven't spent much time with him, wouldn't know that Josiah had autism, but you might think he was a silly little boy, not really desirous of talking to many people that he doesn't know well, and also a little hyper, and if he does talk to you, you might notice he has some obsessions. These obsessions, to me, are the most intriguing thing to me in regards to Josiah's autism.

Before Josiah was diagnosed with autism, he had a love that was great. This love was of Veggie Tales movies. This love of Veggie Tales started when he was around 9 months old. Whenever the Veggie Tales theme song would come on and he would bounce to life dancing and singing and so excited. For many years, I could never get Josiah willing to watch any movies other than Veggie Tales. I didn't mind, I mean, if he was going to love something so much, it could have been something worse. I noticed that after Josiah would watch one of the different episodes, he would completely memorize the video. He would talk to us about the videos and the characters with way more knowledge than anyone should have, and most of the time we didn't know what he was talking about. This obsession with the Veggie Tales was not only with watching the movies, but one of his favorite things to do was go to Goodwill and look and see if they had Veggie Tale movies. He would go into a Goodwill, run over to the movies racks and start calling out excitedly the names of the movies and whether or not we had that movie at home. This was such a delight to him! Around 4 1/2 years old, he finally watched another movie besides Veggie Tales and immediately had a love for Toy Story. He watched it once or twice and basically had the movie memorized. At night, when it was time to go to bed, we had to start setting a timer for 15 minutes and instituting this time for Josiah to "say his movies" as he lay in bed. So, for 15 minutes he was allowed to recite his movies and when the timer went off, there was no more talking and it was time to sleep. This was a wonderful way for Josiah to understand that there is a time for everything. It worked well! Josiah has now branched out, but still doesn't watch too many varieties of movies. He has his favorites, and with these favorites, he has them memorized backwards and forwards and loves to break out ofttimes "saying his movies". Some of the movies that are his favorite are: Monsters Inc, he Incredibles, Cars, Finding Nemo, and by far, Lilo and Stitch has seemed to be his favorite movie EVER! He loves hearing about all of "Jamba's Experiments" and loves learning their names and numbers...which brings me to another of Josiah's obsessions...

He loves numbers and anything to do with numbers. We hardly ever watch TV and don't have cable, but we have been known to watch Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy two or three nights a week. We had to start turning the TV off or muting it during commercials because before we knew it, Josiah was memorizing phone numbers in the commercials. His favorite was a lawyers commercial and he would tell everyone to "Call Kalfus and Nachmann on the Hurtline now" and they would state the number. Oh goodness, he loves numbers. In the movie Lilo and Stitch, before you watch the movie, in the directory, you can watch a special about all of the experiments. There is an English speaking narrator telling about the experiment, their name and their number. Josiah now lays in bed at night reciting the experiments, their numbers and functions...which leads me to another obsession....

Josiah also loves movies or shows that have a narrator. We have recently been watching a National Geographic special about Animals in the Wild. His favorite is one where the English speaking narrator speaks of Arctic Polar Bears and Arctic White Foxes. He is so funny! He hates it when the movie is silent and just shows what the animal is doing, Josiah gets frustrated and wants to hear the narrator.

Also, speaking of numbers, Josiah's teacher contacted me and said that he was showing significant boredom when in math class. She said that even when she was almost positive Josiah wasn't paying attention to the lesson at hand, he would work quickly on his papers and then move on to working on his classmates papers or telling them how to do their work. So, they decided to move him into what she called "the gifted math class". He is doing wonderfully and keeping up well, He simply loves his numbers!

These are not the only obsessions Josiah has. He moves in and out of obsessions quickly, but one he has had for a long time, but has recently seemed to take a back seat to others is in regards to anything with "fire". The fire alarm at school sparked this. While he is now okay with the fire alarm, in the past, he really goes crazy when the fire alarm in school goes off once a month for training. This sparked an obsession with fire alarms in public, a fear of fire sprinklers in public places, emergency signs in public places, fire trucks, fire extinguishers, and emergency exits in public places. This was a hard obsession to work through with Josiah. He was afraid that if anyone touched any of these things that fire would come out of these things. Thank goodness, we seem to have overcome most of this obsession!

A few other obsessions:

• Bugs - he loves his play bugs and loves to read about them and loves to know what they eat
• Hair - can't stand to have his hair brushed, or for me to wet down his hair
• Toys - can't stand not to take some toys with him everywhere he goes...has to have a toy in the car and a toy to sleep with
• Asking the same questions over and over again even though he knows the answer
• Can't stand for us to go a different way somewhere other than the way he is used to..for example, he used to scream and cry if I told him we were going to Meemaw's house an I took the interstate as opposed to the backroads that we normally take...guess which way we ALWAYS go to Meemaw's house now?

Anyways, I have just been fascinated as of late in watching how my little boy's mind works. As far as his autism, it definitely manifests itself in his obsessions more than any other area of his life. We work hard trying to make him understand things and by helping him understand his own obsessions. This truly is a gifted boy I have been given from the Lord. I am amazed the more and more I watch him and help train and guide him daily. I love him so much!

Happy New Year!!! 2013

"How few there are who have courage enough to face their own their faults, or resolutions enough to mend them!"
 ~ Benjamin Franklin

Over the past few weeks, I have been reflecting over the year 2012. This time of reflection is, on one hand, a little bit depressing, or maybe embarrassing is a better word, while on the other hand, it is extremely motivating to me. I look back on where we have been compared to where we want to be. It seems like every year we miss the mark. Without fail. I seem to start out the new year with such great ideas and plans, but I usually fail to see them through. This year may or may not be the same way. I am praying to the Lord and trusting that we can make some changes this year, though.

Here are some areas we are eager to see changes in our life:

Eating out: We have a habit...a really bad habit. I won't even begin to tell you how much money we have spent eating out this year because, well, it is embarrassing. This has been such a weak area for us and we try every year to make changes. We sat down last night and I presented to my DH the amount of money I calculated, from our bank statements, that we spent eating out. It was not pretty. This year, we decided things were not going to change unless we had a strategy. So here it is:

GOAL: Eat out no more than two times per month while ultimately aiming at only one time per month.
 
WAYS TO ACHIEVE GOAL:

• Put it on the calendar and schedule it
• Have food ready for dinner [which is our worst time]
• Don't tempt each other, and when we are tempted, stop and pray with each other.

We have come to the realization that we are teaching the kids many bad habits with our eating out. It is time for some reversal of these bad habits! So far, in January, we have scheduled wo times we are going to eat out. My friend and I got back excellent results from our diabetes check-ups and we promised each other a couples night out to dinner when we did, so we are going out tis Saturday. I also have family coming to visit and we have scheduled one time to eat out while they are here. We have already scheduled a February date and a March date for eating out. I will keep you updated on how we are doing. Please pray for us!
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Menu Planning and Grocery Shopping: I love to menu plan. Have I ever mentioned that? In 2011 I tried a specific challenge and planned all of our dinners for the whole year. I realized many things in this venture. While it was neat to do this, it was not practical and it became boring. So, I won't be doing that again. But, it is a proven fact that people who menu plan and make grocery lists, and shop from their lists, save money for their family.

GOAL: Menu plan, Make Grocery Lists and go shopping only 1 time per week

WAYS TO ACHIEVE GOAL:

• Spend Thursdays menu planning, spend Fridays grocery shopping
• Be thorough, ask the family what items they really want and "need" that they can't seem to do without this week. Try to be accommodating but reasonable.
• Don't be a Nazi about it. You can make more than one trip to the store, it's no going to kill you. The point is, stop making every day trips to the store as this is a money waster! [Yeah, I counted 274 trips to KROGER with our debit card in 2012]

We have yet again come to the realization that our habits are playing a bad role in our kids lives. I really feel like we are teaching our kids not to be content and not to appreciate what they already have, so we are really striving to make these changes.
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So, the last goal I want to share is in the spiritual realm of things. We feel it very important to teach our children from the Word of God, but we sometimes become a little lackadaisical in our day to day walk. At dinner time, we go over memory verses and we sometimes read from the Bible story book, but we want more and we want to give the kids more, even though they may not understand of appreciate it now.

GOALS:

• Spend time in the Word of God daily with the children
• Continue to work on Scripture Memorization
• Spend alone time in the Word of God, preparing my own heart
• Pray with the children and take time to Count our MANY Blessings

WAYS TO ACHIEVE GOALS:

• I have started reading in the Proverbs with the kids every morning at breakfast. [I have already missed a day this week!]
• Continue after dinner devotions where we write notes for our "Count Your Blessings" Jar and work on our memory verses.
• I will read my Bible in the mornings as well.

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So, here you have it. Just a few things going on in our families and how we are trying to change our lives for the better and for a closer walk with the Lord and a more glorifying walk.

What are you doing differently in 2013? I would love to hear from you!