Thursday, July 16, 2009

Noah tries not to touch

Some of Noah's behaviours are similar to those found in autism (he's at very high risk of autism -around 35%, because he had infantile spasms) especially the need to touch switches and wires. Every night as it gets dark he goes round and turns on every light in the house - EVERY light, even those in rooms we don't use or have already got adequate lighting, and every evening I try gradually increasing threats to no avail.
He also loves to pull all the wires out of computers, TVs and the DVD recorder he really knows this is wrong and will get him into a lot of trouble.
With Paul away I have explained again and again to Noah that if he breaks anything I will not be able to fix it and we'll have to wait until dad is home. I've told him when he gets up in the morning to come into my bedroom rather than going downstairs. He understands all this and wants to comply.
Why then have I had to send two emergency texts to Paul, the first saying we have no hot water (his suggestion to check the gas switch in the back garden showed that Noah had turned this so instead of being topped up by gas we were relying on solar heating which was only heating the water to 18 degrees in the middle of an NZ winter!) and today's that we have no reception at all on our DVD channel and no sound on the TV channels after Noah tried to plug in our video camera at 6am this morning (no thoughts from Paul on this one, mind you he was just about to catch an overnight flight from Boston to UK)
Isaac is now being fed sitting in front of Little Einsteins without sound, but Lily is helpfully improvising a sound track for him!

UPDATE
Noah and Hannah have recently arrived back from the church holiday programme, Hannah looking rather exhausted as she really thought she had lost Noah at the end. They found him sitting in the main church with another little boy with special needs they hadn't even realised was missing.

Noah came into our family room, saw Isaac was watching TV without sound, went over to the TV set, pulled out a wire and the sound came on! He had plugged in a lead meant for headphones apparently.
Hannah looked at the back of the set and found one set of wires that led from the TV set then back to it again which must have had something to do with Noah. She rearranged a few wires and at one point we got sound for our DVD but no picture so looks like we may not be able to watch the 'Sex in the City' DVD together tonight after all.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sometimes, I think that Noah may be an absolute genious, some of the things he does. Maybe he will be a very rich electrician or something.
I also loved the thought of Lily improvising to the Little Einsteins. How cool!
Have a great day,
Bridget

Mel said...

My kids have all been fascinated by the tv/ dvd/ buttons and wires. I thought it was just a Simons thing! Luke (now 18 months) has just worked out how to open and close the dvd tray. At least these are less likely to hold toast than the old vcr we had when Ben was little!

Rydon Family said...

What would you do without Noah!
Hayley's latest is to be the one who uses the toilet last when the toilet roll is almost empty so she can put on a new one.(Wouldn't get that from the men in our house)! Unfortuntely this means changing the roll anywhere from a few squares to half a roll left and you guessed it whatever is left on the roll goes down the toilet. Last week she wondered why the water was right up to the rim!!!!