A Year in the Life of Hallie

As 2010 drew to a close, we've been reflecting on how much Hallie's life has changed over the past year.

This was really brought home to us by the differences we saw in Hallie's response to her school holiday party this year, relative to last.  As I think I mentioned a few posts ago, last year we had to drag her kicking, screaming, and crying back to school on the evening of the party.  Everything was a bit amiss that evening:  Sharon picked her up from school instead of me; instead of getting out of the car at our house, I got into the car with Baby Lea (who was very much a baby at that stage) and a huge dish of macaroni and cheese and we headed back to school.  We tried to explain to Hallie that there was a party at school and that we'd all be having dinner there (never much of a draw for Hallie) and that she'd see her friends and teachers and sing holiday songs.  But Hallie was overwhelmed, in tears, and heard none of it.  Once we got there, things were sort of okay but only just sort of:  as expected, dinner was not much of a draw, and there was a lot of noise and general mayhem.  Kids were racing around and playing with one another but Hallie couldn't make much sense of what was going on.  She sat off to the side when the singing began (as she has done at pretty much every school performance up until just recently) and did not/could not engage with the other kids.  We survived the evening but only just:  our threshold for survival was low and basically entailed making it through without a major meltdown, Hallie vomiting, or Hallie running off through the church hall door when some unsuspecting parent opened it.  It wasn't exactly a low-key, stress-free event and, needless to say, neither Sharon nor I networked or chatted with other parents (which is what parents do at such events).   We kept an eye on Hallie, dealt with Lea who was a bit out of sorts in her own right, and were glad to just to escape unscathed.

Fast forward to this year:  The YCCA had the good sense to break up the dinner/concert into two locations.  The little kids would perform their songs first in the upstairs classroom and then eat.  The older kids would perform an hour later in the big church hall in the middle of the pot-luck feast.  There are only seven families (our own amongst them) who have kids both younger and older, and we were welcome to spend time at both events or either event as we wished.

We opted to head over to the little kid's concert first to hear Lea perform.  Lea, like Hallie, enjoys music immensely and was the only kid in her group (which is the youngest) who participates regularly in sing-along activities.  We knew she'd be psyched to be part of the group.  Hallie also knows the younger kids (the YCCA is small--about 60 or 70 kids altogether--and while kids spend much of their time with their age cohort, they do mix it up with other age groups, especially when they have siblings at school, at various points during the day.  This, plus the fact that Hallie is peer buddy to some of the younger kids in the inclusion program that she helps guide through activities, means that she is quite comfortable with a lot of the younger kids.  So she was excited to partake in the little kids' performance, too.

 

The real surprise for us came when we went over to the main hall of the church for the big kids' party. In stark contrast to last year, Hallie ran in, saw all of her friends, and immediately ran off to join them.  

She was an eager participant in the concert and sat right in the middle of all of the other kids:

 

And, while she wanted no part of eating dinner, she was far from alone in this respect.  After all, it was much more fun to run around the table than to sit down at it:

I know that this video footage was a bit dark and noisy, but it did capture the atmosphere of the holiday party (in other words, mayhem) quite accurately.

So, unlike last year when the four of us were among the first to leave the shindig, this year we pretty much closed down the house.  This suited Lea quite well: she spent much of the final half hour doing an impersonation of Cookie Monster (she went around grabbing cookies from all of the tables, and apparently eating most of them).

 

Towards the end of the evening, I stopped A., the preschool director, to let her know how grateful we were for everything.  I explained that I meant more than just that the school's teachers and staff had organized such a lovely holiday gathering; rather, we were so thankful for the opportunity that she had given our family, and especially Hallie.

A. had allowed us to enroll Hallie outside of the usual waiting list back when we were having so many problems negotiating the agency that runs the preschool (3-5) program for Early Childhood Intervention in Philly.  We were given such a huge runaround and no straight answers and the school in which the agency sought to place Hallie was so clearly inappropriate (and likely unsafe) for her.  I blogged about all of this here and here.  Anyway, even though she didn't really know us and she knew that she was taking on a fairly complicated little three year old who did not talk (Hallie was utterly silent at school for about the first four months), refused to eat, had trouble settling down to nap, was not toilet trained, and was about 30% behind an average kid her age (so closer to being just 2 than just 3), A. was happy to admit Hallie.  It's not like the YCCA needed more kids to make the desired level of tuition receipts either; like most of the decent preschools in the area, the YCCA has a waiting list of children whose parents are eager to enroll them in the program.  A. accepted Hallie because she is interested in providing opportunities for children who have special needs (A. has a Master's degree in Creative Arts Therapy and teaching degrees in Music and  Special Education).  Hallie certainly fit the bill.

Anyway, we were (and are) exceedingly grateful that A. decided to open the doors to the program to Hallie and I just wanted to let her know this.

What A. said in response to me really touched me deeply.  She said, "If I were ever to have the opportunity to make a documentary about the school, I'd want to feature Hallie in it.  I've never encountered a child who underwent such a big change in such a short period of time."

She went on to say that the entire system was ranged against Hallie and that the folks who were responsible for evaluating and placing her were quite happy to write her off as a child who would be forever excluded from regular general education.  Everything they were pushing for suggested that they thought she'd be in a self-contained Special Education system for the balance of her school career.   We were fighting this (and still are) but the reality was that we needed somewhere to place Hallie that did provide an inclusive environment and one where children with special needs were not just accepted or tolerated but actively included.  We needed a school where the staff was trained to work with special needs children, where they taught other children to be buddies with kids who have special needs, and where the curriculum was eclectic enough to be individualized for kids (and not just kids with special needs, either; I think that everyone, special needs or otherwise, learns differently.  A good teacher will be aware of the different ways children learn and a good curriculum will be flexible enough to be adapted to visual learners, auditory learners, etc).  

That's where the YCCA came into things; Hallie has thrived there.  She has gone from a silent, marginal child who watched from the sidelines even when she knew enough to participate to an active, engaged, child who initiates conversations and play with her peers and who is demonstrating real academic strengths that place her at the top of her class (her reading, spelling, counting, and analogizing skills are very obvious to everyone around her, especially her teachers).  

A. believes that Hallie will be fine in a general education setting and that we no longer have nothing to worry about.

Of course we hope she is correct.   Some days it seems to us that this is the direction in which Hallie is headed:  she is eager to read and follows along with words (moving her fingers across the words and sounding things out) almost all of the time.  She wants to know how to spell words she likes to use and, apparently, once she can identify a word, she never forgets what it looks like.  She can pick out which shows she'd like to watch this way and even distinguish between various episodes of these.  (Sadly, this means that she was able to catch me in my fib that our television does not receive Max and Ruby, which is a show that we have refused to let her watch too often because of her capacity to mimic Max's behavior and verbal patterns.  The last time I tried this line, she helpfully pointed out that our Comcast On Demand list did, indeed, contain Max and Ruby).  Hallie loves to learn stuff and I think this will take her quite far.

Still, we have concerns:  her verbal/conversational skills lag far behind those of her peers.  I am not a speech therapist (or any kind of therapist), but I'd guess that she's still dealing with about a 30% delay in this area (making her closer to an early 3 year old than a later 4 year old).  Her interpersonal skills often seem less well developed than Lea's:  Lea is quicker to empathize and comfort; more interested in taking care of others and meeting their needs, be it by ministering to her babies or bringing Hallie her slippers and toys; and Lea watches for your responses and tailors her own relative to these.  Hallie does none of these things and still has pretty horrible eye contact most of the time.  Lea also surpasses Hallie in terms of capacity for imaginative play.  Lea stages elaborate scenarios with her babies (she dresses them, takes them to the playground, plays hide-and-seek with them, feeds them, gets them ready for bed, brings them toys and engages in play with them etc).  Hallie sets up scenes:  she often poses her plastic figures (she pairs off Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Tianna and other princesses with stand-ins for their respective Princes, for example) or she might line up all of her figures in front of the television (real or imagined) or stage for a puppet show, but she doesn't actually stage the show or have them do anything beyond this.   Finally, lately, Hallie has been having a really hard time with being flexible.  Things have to be played with a particular way.  If they are not, Hallie tries to step in to right the wrong.  Lea, her most frequent playmate, has her own ideas but Hallie seems not to realize this.  Rather, she gets frustrated when Lea tries to do things in her own way and makes this very broadly known to us.  While some of this is just run of the mill preschooler bossiness, my sense is that this is exacerbated by a deficit in Theory of Mind. 

All of this points to a continued problem that Hallie is having in terms of social skills.  But this will also get in the way of higher order learning down the road.

None of this is to say that the transformation that Hallie has undergone over the past year is anything but huge.  A vast chasm separates where she was when she began school and where she is now.  She has grown cognitively by leaps and bounds and she has given us no indication that she about to stop doing this.  Still, we cannot help but worry what awaits us down the road, and more importantly, plan for how to take on Hallie's residual issues proactively so that we at least smooth them out even if we cannot make them go away entirely.

Playing Sure Helps Work Up an Appetite!

On Friday when I picked up Hallie from preschool, Lea was sleeping in the stroller. Hallie had just finished a PT session that involved a lot of running, jumping, and climbing up and down the stairs, but she was still full of pent-up energy. There were a couple of other kids hanging out on the grounds of the preschool and I know that one of the little girls is someone that Hallie has occasionally played with at our local playground (we actually have quite a few local playgrounds, but one is a mere half a block from our house so, even though it's far from the nicest of the bunch, it's the one we frequent most often). Anyway, I was hopeful that Hallie might join in with them in their play since their small number wouldn't overwhelm her. Hallie had other ideas, and while they didn't involve other kids, they did involve using her imagination.

She crept behind one of the evergreen bushes and when I came and stood next to her, she said, "look, that's a spooky forest!" Since she went on to say, "look, there's the Boots the Monkey!" she was apparently referring to a Dora the Explorer Halloween special that aired last about nine months ago. I can't confirm this since I have nowhere near the prodigious memory that Hallie possesses. But never mind: in what I think was good Floortime form, I shouted, "look, there's a ghost!" and proceeded to make all sorts of scary goblin ghoulish noises. She thought this was hilarious, and the whole thing ended up turning into a big game of chase with sound effects.

Then we went on to play Hide and Go Seek. She still doesn't get the idea of hiding when it's her turn to do so, but she gets a kick out of looking for me (I do, however, suspect she's peeking since she seems a tad bit too good at this game). We raced around and hid from one another for quite some time.


Just as Lea awoke from her nap, Hallie asked if we could go get ice cream. This has turned into a ritual of sorts: at least once a week she'll request ice cream--chocolate, of course--and we'll head off to the Haagen Dazs shop on South Street for a kiddie sized cup. This time, however, Hallie requested a cone. She's never requested a cone, let alone eaten one before, and I was happy to indulge her.

Hallie did not quite get that you are supposed to leave the napkin wrapped around the waffle cone to catch the drips. Nor did she actually eat the cone. But she loved holding it. Ultimately, however, things got too messy to eat that way so I dumped the remaining contents of the cone into a cup and Hallie proceeded to devour the remnants of her treat. Start to finish it took her less than 20 minutes to eat about 4 ounces of ice cream.



This was, of course, far from a neat prospect. She ended up wearing quite a lot of the creamy chocolaty stuff:




After Hallie was done with her ice cream, Taylor and Renee joined us. The girls were thrilled to see each other for the third time this week. We ended up having a grand time at Three Bears Playground, which was virtually empty. Of course, it was about 6:00pm, which is probably prime preschooler dinner hour. Hallie had already finished up her 'dinner', which was the ice cream. She did go on to eat a couple of slices of bread and butter when we got home later on but I think most of her calories came from the ice cream. As of her last weigh-in a couple of weeks ago, Hallie tipped the scale at 34 lbs, 5 ounces and we are hopeful that she might keep it on this time. I think Haagen Dazs must be responsible for at least a couple of pounds of this healthy weight (Hallie is at the 50th percentile for weight and 90th for height---she is now just shy of 43 inches tall).

Fun at the YCCA!

Yesterday evening, Hallie's preschool, the YCCA, held its annual Family Fun Day. It's one of a series of fundraisers that they hold in the spring so that they can do important things like upgrade their facilities (they recently did a complete renovation), buy excellent new toys (they own most of the Lakeshore Learning catalog from what I can tell, and this is a good thing), install air conditioning in their 17th-century building, and other fun stuff like that. We're thrilled to participate because, really, these events are a ton of fun. And, most importantly, let's not forget that the YCCA is one of the few preschools of which we are aware that's not just willing to tolerate a special needs kid (often implying that this is true as long as they are not too needy), but are actually inclusive by mandate: the school director, who is a trained music therapist and special educator, long aspired to open a preschool that welcomed kids who were not developing in completely typical ways. I dare say that she has achieved her goal: long before Hallie was willing to say a single word at school, Hallie's teachers made sure that she was not left off on the sidelines but that she actually was central to her peer group. As she's begun to speak more at school, they make sure that she is heard even though her voice is raspy and faint as a result of her vocal cord paralysis. They don't see a kid on the spectrum whose eye contact could be better and who can't really hold an age-appropriate conversation. They see, and appreciate, a little girl who knows the name of every animal and insect and sea creature out there; who has a prodigious memory; who loves books and stories and who is beginning to read; who knows a great deal of ASL (she still uses it with us and several of her teachers sign while they speak or sing); who loves art even if she has little strength in her fingers and cannot use a tripod grasp; and who, by their account, is one of the sweetest and most helpful kids out there who always gives instruments to peers who lack them during music time and who brings joy and unbounded enthusiasm into the room with her when she shows up at school. Of course, they also highlight her exceptional clean up skills; we see little of this at home but, then again, she's never playing teacher's pet at home, either. This, like clean up monitor, is a role that she reserves for school. I suspect that they are related.

Anyway, Hallie's buddies Taylor and Alex joined us for the evening.

Here are a couple of pictures of Kim and Taylor hanging out on the grounds of Old Swede's Church:

And here's one of Alex waiting patiently for her face to be painted by Hallie's teacher, Kristen:

Hallie was happy to watch the whole process unfold and she really liked some of the designs, but there was no way in the world she was going to allow anyone to take a paint brush to her face!

Lea, however, might have been game for it; she certainly took active interest in it:

While face painting was interesting, the real highlight for our kids was the Ernie and Neal concert that the school had booked. From the moment she saw the musical instruments and heard the band warming up, Hallie's attention was riveted. While everyone else was chowing down on hot dogs, pretzels, and hummus and pita (which, of course, hold very little interest for our girl), Hallie was rocking out and dancing to Ernie and Neal's opening numbers.

Apparently, this was not lost on the duo. While I was off chasing Lea, they called Hallie up on "stage" and asked her to play lead air guitar on one of their numbers. Hallie was happy to participate:

Sadly, my skills as a videographer are limited, to say the very least. So, not only do you have to ignore the smudge in the lower right hand corner of this video, but you also might need a dose or two of dramamine. Apparently, having a PhD does not, in fact, provide one with sufficient common sense to realize that bopping up and down while taking a video is perhaps not the smartest thing one can do. On the upside, though, I did manage to get the entire song on digital video:




Later in the evening, a ladybug jumped onto Sharon's shirt and when we showed it to Hallie, she was thrilled and wanted to hold it.

She walked around with it for quite some time until it decided to take flight.

We left at 7:30pm; by then the kids were a hot and sticky mess and covered in water ice and assorted grime. Hallie, Alex, and Lea (and Sharon, Sheila, and I) headed over to our house where I threw the kids in the bathtub and awaited pizza delivery. Bedtime was not terribly late last night, which is a very good thing.

On an only tangentially related note, here are some pictures from the Memorial Day picnic that was held at the YCCA on the Friday preceding the holiday weekend. The school regularly takes pictures of stuff like this and uploads them to a gallery that parents can access (and from which they can also download). We really like this feature.

Whoever took the pictures got some nice close up shots of Hallie.

They also took some group photos of our girl and her peers.

These two are notable because Hallie ordered, and apparently ate at least part of, a grilled cheese sandwich. We only occasionally serve her this (with mixed results) but maybe she prefers her teachers' cooking to mine?

Halloween Season 2009

One of the wonderful things about the fall/winter holiday season is that the holidays fall in such proximity to one another that it prevents those of us bloggers prone to bouts of procrastination from doing so indefinitely. Anyway, that's the motivator for finally getting this post up and running and, in contrast to a couple of the most recent posts, this one is going to be heavy on the pictures and light on the commentary.

Halloween season got off to a roaring start with a visit to the Please Touch Museum for their members-only Halloween event. We went at the gracious invitation of Hallie's friend, Alex, who was extremely excited to have her little buddy with her for the occasion. The museum was packed with kids and, at first, Hallie found the whole thing a bit overwhelming (and overstimulating). But, after a bit of adjustment, Hallie settled right in. She began her visit with a fun carousel ride, which was of course fitting given her costume choice:

Then, after some time at a few of her favorite exhibits, Hallie, Sharon, and Alex and her mom, Sheila took in a puppet show. We weren't quite sure whether Hallie would enjoy the actual show as much as she liked the idea of it, but, as it turns out, she had a splendid time and talked about the puppet show for days. The characters included a pirate, and that's always a good thing. Hallie loves pirates and likes to walk around covering one eye with her hand or a spoon and saying "Ar Matey!" while holding her telescope up to the 'working' eye. I think there may have been a duck involved, too. I'm not sure because I was speed-walking Lea through the museum while she napped. Anyway, the puppet show was grand and then we repaired to the Please Eat cafe where we grabbed a dinner of pizza, apples, and juice boxes. Hallie did eat some, but the highlight of her evening meal was collecting the trash--all of ours and some of other patrons, too--and throwing it out. It was nice that she felt so comfortable walking up to strangers and asking them if she could toss out their garbage.

The next day we paid a visit to the Johnson Farm with Hallie's preschool. I don't know why I thought this--perhaps it was the homeyness of the name?--but I thought we were going to be going to a relatively small working farm with a little pumpkin patch and a tiny petting zoo, all scaled to the size of your average three to five year old. Instead, we got this. I should have known that any locale with a spiffy website and that sells its pies online would be the opposite of homey. The place was buzzing--with people and bees--which makes some great sense the weekend prior to Halloween. The huge hayrides were very full; the pumpkin patch was enormous; and there was a performance area set up that featured locale country acts; 4H dance troupes and the like.

It was also very very hard to find the other members of our group (we were, admittedly, a bit late, as is par for the course with us. The part of Medford, NJ where the farm is located is a great deal further than we thought and we needed to stop and pick up a pizza for Hallie's lunch). We did finally meet up with our fellow YCCAers--a few on the hayride and in the pumpkin patch and more at lunch time.

Anyway, the experience was pretty overwhelming for us adults, but Hallie seemed to have a pretty good time.

Here are the girls on the hayride en route to the pumpkin patch:

Here's Lea in the pumpkin patch:

And Hallie:

Here's Hallie trudging alongside Sharon, who was in search of the perfect pumpkins (more on this later). This took entirely too long and the kids were all a bit antsy. It didn't help that Hallie kept tripping over the pumpkin vines on the ground.

You can get a sense of just how big the pumpkin patch was from this photo.

And here they are on the way back:

After lunch, Hallie was excited about jumping in the bouncy house (she LOVES these):

And she proved just as excited about visiting the animals on the farm. I'm pretty sure, given how many times Hallie returned for large handfuls of corn, that the pigs were quite overfed that day:

She also found the playground area to be pretty grand and had a wonderful time sliding through the PVC piping tunnel that they had set up for these purposes:

When we got home, it became abundantly clear to me that all that time that Sharon had spent in the pumpkin patch assessing the individual merits of each pumpkin really paid off. You see, she was on a mission. A couple of years ago, Aunt Laura had given us pumpkin decorations that she had made when the two oldest cousins, Sarah and Megan, were little. Even though Megan grew up not watching Sesame Street (since Sarah was too old for the show by the time Megan came around) and hence thought that Big Bird was in fact Big Yellow Chicken, she definitely knew who these two guys were:

Hallie had a blast making them. We were very impressed at how much power of concentration and attention she brought to this art project. School is really paying off in this respect. Hallie was very proud of the final project. She was proud to pose the little finger puppets in front of their pumpkin likenesses:

Lea also got in on the action:

I think this is a fitting tribute to Sesame Street on its 40th birthday, don't you?

The next week brought the YCCA Halloween parade (see my Pumpkinhenge post above for more details on this...) and the main event, the big day itself.

We were thrilled because our friends Anne, Eliza Grace, and Bessie (Anne's mom and Eliza's Nana) came down to join in the festivities.

When Eliza decided at the last minute to jettison her Native American garb for that of a ballerina, Hallie followed suit. Soon, our two little dancers and their entourage were ready to hit the neighborhood:

The girls both proved to be very quick adopters of the trick-or-treating ritual:

Here's a nice shot of Eliza and her Nana trick-or-treating:

While collecting candy was definitely fun, what's even greater about Halloween in our neighborhood is that there's this one block where the residents close off the entire street and everyone, regardless of whether they have kids of trick-or-treating age, gets into the holiday spirit. Not only do they give out vast quantities of candy, but they also set up craft tables where kids can decorate their own gourds; color pumpkin or witch or similar cut outs with markers; watch as their balloon animal of choice is blown and twisted; or oversee the production of pom-pom spiders. Our girls had a blast doing all of these things:

The whole group had a grand time and we got home to our place in the nick of time to avoid a major downpour. After a nice visit, our friends headed back to New Jersey.

The next day, Hallie sampled some of her loot. It turns out that, though she doesn't eat much at one sitting, she very much enjoys chocolate (Hershey's bars, Kit Kats, and Reese's Peanut Butter Cups all pass muster, even if she takes a few small bites of each before moving on, and Hallie's fairly willing to sample--or at least open--anything that comes in a wrapper that might pass for junk food). She also finds cheese balls (but apparently not cheese puff sticks) quite delicious and has a fondness for bats-and-jacks pretzels. Now if you could only pass off green beans as junk food by giving it a pretty colored paper wrapper...

Anyway, that about sums up our Halloween fortnight!!! But even though the holiday is over, costume-, pretend-play and some candy eating live on (though not much this week, since Hallie's been home sick and not feeling up to eating much; probably it's H1N1 but we'll never really know for sure. Whatever it is, the fever is down and has been gone a whole day now and we've gotten away without any respiratory issues whatsoever, so we're pretty happy right now. Just two days of vomit, likely due to antibiotics to treat a suspected ear infection. So we're now up to 230 days without vomit this year for those of you still counting).

Pumpkinhenge

Today was the big Halloween parade at Hallie's preschool. It was kind of a madhouse and a lot of the kids (including Hallie) were a bit perplexed about why their parents, who had picked them up at 3:00pm, were dropping them off again at 4:00pm. From what I understand, there was general mayhem in the classroom as the kids were lining up to come outside and that the tears that some kids were shedding were pretty infectious. While the crying kiddos included Hallie, briefly, her tears were about having to give up her bottle three blocks from school -- since I draw the line at allowing her to have it anywhere near 'campus' -- and not about being dropped off again by me.

Anyway, the scene in the schoolyard was equally chaotic; tons of parents and grandparents and siblings and assorted others showed up to witness the annual event and everyone was jockeying for the best view. Being short, it was a bit hard for me to see, let alone take pictures, of the parade. But the kids hung out to trick or treat at the church that leases space to the school and to run around the graveyard. Yes, the graveyard. Very Halloweenish and very cool from a historical perspective.

The pastor and his family had decorated the graveyard (which is going to be the backdrop of a large dance with live rock music tomorrow night) and, along with various blow up ghouls and ghostly characters, they had liberally peppered the expanse with small pumpkins in an effort to create a sort of pumpkin patch effect on the premises.

Hallie was enthralled with the pumpkins but not with the sort of display that the family had created with them. So she set about changing it:

Some of the pumpkins were a tad out of reach but this did not stop our girl from her mission:

Soon, the display looked like this:

And some of the kids thought that Hallie's plan was a really, really excellent one, so they joined in and helped advance her architectural endeavor:

Of course, others were very disturbed by this and set about trying to put the pumpkins back where they came from. Sadly, I was unable to get a shot of the industrious little boy who spearheaded the return-the-pumpkins-to-their-gravestones movement.

But, ultimately, Hallie prevailed. This is the masterpiece that she created:

Hallie, having reasserted order in the disorderly world, then set about running, playing, and chasing after her friends. She had a great time, even if her idea of play and order are a bit different than that of some of the other kids. And the other kids adore her and she adores them, and in the sweet way that preschoolers often have, they don't seem to care if she is a bit eccentric and not so good at communication (yes, I still need to write that post....really, I am working on it and intend to have it done before November begins. At least that's my intention). But I am pretty sure that, had our developmental pediatrician been lurking in the graveyard at today's shindig, she would have had no doubt that placing Hallie on the autism spectrum was spot on.

My sense is that Hallie's pumpkinhenge construction was related to the fact that she was completely overwhelmed by the Halloween event at school this evening. First of all, the atmosphere was one of chaos involving about sixty kids and easily a hundred strange adults. Not only that, but all the kids were dressed up and did not necessarily look like themselves. That was probably a bit disconcerting to Hallie. Second, there was very little structure to the event. Hallie had no idea what was expected of her and, given that I had no idea what to expect either, there was no way that I could devise a social story for her that might explain the event for her beforehand. Next year, this will be a bit easier. And hopefully I can get her teachers to provide her with a social story in advance of other similar events that no doubt will be held for other upcoming holidays. Third, the parade itself was followed by a long session of free play. Hallie does a lot less well at free play than she does at structured play. So, all of this amounted to a disorderly universe for a kid who often feels out of place. What better way of responding than by building pumpkinhenge? This helped her feel more in control of things and, after the structure was built, Hallie could go on and play with her friends and enjoy things more fully. In other words, Hallie needed to build pumpkinhenge in much the same way as she needs to jump on trampolines/chairs, needs to roll around in her stuffed animal collection, and needs other forms of sensory input. Her body works less well than those of other kids and she finds these activities to be self-organizing and self-regulating. Lining up pumpkins involves a lot of heavy work, joint compression, and proprioceptive activity. So, if this is what my kid needs right now, so be it. There's nothing wrong with lining up a few gazillion pumpkins. Plus, it's probably a whole lot of fun. Heck, next time I'll probably help line them up with her and turn it into a very nice Floortime activity.