I was filing today and came upon my New Frontier’s notes. I decided to write them down. Hopefully they can help some of you as well. Most of it is pretty disjointed, because when we were working with Bears there was no real curriculum other than self-discovery.

I am the vessel. How I live my life is how I come into the playroom. It’s not about what I do in the playroom, but how I live my life. Be in the world, what you want to see in the world. What you do is what you teach.

“Trying” is what people say when they are “not doing”.

If you want to change something about yourself, does making yourself really unhappy, and beating yourself up about it really help? Does it motivate you more than happiness?

Love yourself for the things you hate about yourself.

The most support you can give is to be calm and happy. Don’t join others in their anger, misery, whining, sadness.

The son-rise program is a way of being that extends beyond the physical boundaries of the playroom and the time limits set. We are the program with everyone around us, everywhere we are.

The biasis we have with ourselves we take out on our children.

Being stuck is a decision, not an event. All it means is “I haven’t figured it out yet”.

The method of changing yourself:

1) Self-Awareness: a) What am I thinking, b) What am I doing, c) what am I feeling
2) Self-Acknowledgement: for example “I am tired a lot.”
3) Don’t judge: For example “OK. I am tired a lot.”
4) Self understanding: Why do I operate like this? Do dialogues to figure out the belief behind action/thought
5) Self-Change: Once I understand what and why I’m doing it I can change my belief.

Design yourself the way you want to be!!!

INSPIRING GROWTH

Go into the playroom with an attitude of acceptance and love.

Joining is not about accommodating your autistic child, or doing it so you can get him to do something else. It’s about loving and liking. PASSION-CELEBRATION-PERSISTENCE-CREATIVITY-PATIENCE

People who think they aren’t creative are scared and judgmental. If you need to get a result from your child/spouse/self you will have zero patience. LOVE first and ACT second!!!

Life is about putting in your best effort, and trying your hardest. You fall down 7 times and get up 8. You are planting the seed of hard work. Our kids know the difference between passion and lack of passion.

Use dialogue sessions after time in playroom. We need to look at why we don’t feel good so we can create a good experience. Self-criticism gets in the way of creativity and fun.

Chronophobia and control are at the bottom of getting distracted by dirt and messes, because I think I will have no time for myself.

Everything we do we do for ourselves, because we want to feel what it is we feel when we help.

BEING CREATIVE: Just add one thing. Don’t try to map the whole plan out. Act weird. Be goofy. The only reason we build on the isms is to increase interactive attention span.
Building is about making yourself interesting, so much so that Kid A will think: hm, this person is much more interesting than writing my name over and over. If you ask your child: “what do you want to do” you’re simply requesting, telling yourself you are not interesting, perform for me.
STOP WITH THE QUESTIONS.
Game to help with eye contact: look at my eyes. They will stop somewhere where I’ve hidden something.

Saying “I don’t know” really means “I don’t want to know/admit”. You can help people by saying: Take a gues. Not answering questions is abdicating responsibility.
Unhappiness is a slow suicide, emotional, psychological suicide.
The desire of predictability is the fear of future unhappiness. The desire for control is so we can make it predictable, because when they happen the way we want them to we equate it with happiness. So not getting what we want we equate with unhappiness. We tie our un-/happiness to outcomes.

Failure is not an option (Apollo 13). Imagine if we had that conviction. Trying to protect others is really just self-protection. Discomfort results in pushing away. It is all about fear.
when you are teaching, make it memorable.
You yourself as much as anybody else in the universe deserve your love and affection. (Buddha)
If you judge people you have no time to love them. (Mother Theresa)

Trials are stepping stones. Everything I am doing now will help me in the future.
Give yourself a choice. Don’t “should” yourself. It is more important to take care of yourself than your child. Then ask yourself -what do I want, why do I want it.
What am I doing to undermine my energy?

Saying “I forgot” really means “it wasn’t important enough to remember”.

The New Frontiers Program taught us how to assess our child and how to write goals to inspire his growth. We wrote goals for all the areas of development that we’re working on, and after two weeks I can see how powerful it is to have a direction and work towards it. I’ll mention only two goals here. One of the areas of development is communication. Ezra has basic speech now, but really struggles with answering basic, simple questions. So our goals is to help him answer and ask simple questions. Using his current motivation (planets, spelling names of family members) I created a quiz game for him that would ask an answer these simple questions. Every time he answered right I would cheer like crazy. He quickly caught on to it, and of course felt really good about himself because he knows all the answers. The progress he has made is evidence of how great the Son-Rise program model really works. He barely answered any questions two weeks ago, and in our latest session I had him answer simple questions for 25 minutes. That is amazing. He even tried to formulate his own questions, although I can tell that that will take a bit longer.
The other goal is in the area of interactive attention span. We had a goal to help him play simple games with peer and increase his interactive attention span to 10 minutes. We totally blew that one out of the water today. Two weeks ago, I showed him how to play a goose game where we have to take turns, roll the dice, count the steps, and then wait while the other person takes a turn. That is shockingly difficult for him, because he keeps on putting the dice and the little avatars in his mouth. He also doesn’t really get the counting the spaces part yet, but I was only focusing on getting him to take turns and wait. At first all we managed was about 4 minutes. Today I played a card game with him, where he took turns picking up and laying cards with me for 40 minutes! All it took was focus and two weeks. I’m so excited for the possibilities of this program.

I had two sessions today with Ezra. The first one was great and the second one started out totally awful. What made the difference? Expectations! With the first session I went in expecting only to have fun myself. Ezra ended up loving the quiz game I prepared. The second session I went in thinking I was really tired, and it would be a long session, and expecting of Ezra to engage with the other game I had prepared. It was no fun at all. I gave away my happiness for Ezra to control, to destroy at his whim, if he chose not to engage. And so I was very unhappy. I got frustrated with him, lost patience, and was really totally useless…until I was able to talk sense into myself, and drop all expectations of completing the game.
At first the frustration I felt was so intense, that I doubted I would be able to change my feelings. I knew that I should be able to change them, so I kept trying to let go of the outcome. I focused on just enjoying Ezra, and loving him how he is. We ended up having a super second half of the session with us playing a card game together for 40 minutes!!!!!!! That is the longest he has ever calmly played a game. He took turns, didn’t try to control or hold on to a specific card, patiently waited…it was incredible.
How often do we hand over control for our happiness to others, by setting expectations for them. Do we expect our husband to just take out the trash, buy us flowers/gifts for important occasions, mind read when those occasions are, and then get terribly depressed when he doesn’t? Do we expect our boss to praise and notice our efforts and feel badly about ourselves when he doesn’t? Or do we expect our children to be happy and grateful, play nicely and then lose it when they’re not? How much easier and funner could our lives be if we started our day with only one expectation: to enjoy ourselves, no matter of what anyone else decides to do or say to us.

After 4.5 years Ezra is finally potty trained. Today he went NR 2 in the potty and got the lollipop he had been staring at for the last five months. We hadn’t really tried to potty train him before. It was clear he was not ready to give up control. He has been going NR 1 in the potty for close to a year, but only sporadically. Then four weeks ago he decided he wanted underwear and was promptly dry during the whole day, and even the nights. Every time he went potty we praised him for staying dry (not for going potty) and rewarded him with his major motivation, stickers of airplanes. However when it came to going NR 2 he was just terrified and ran away screaming every time. Whenever it was time to go he would get completely undressed grab a diaper, do his business, and then dump it in the toilet and wipe his bum, like I trained him to do. After we came back from the New Frontiers program, we decided to use our new tools to help him go. We simply stopped buying diapers. We were always encouraging, but left it up to him to go. He held it in for three days, refusing to go. He kept asking for a diaper, and I apologized that I didn’t have any more. The clever kid even told me which store I could go buy them at. Then today, the third day, he lay miserable in the playroom, and held his stomach. Every time he complained that his stomach hurt, I explained it was because he needed to go to the bathroom. I gave him a bottle of apple juice as a laxative. After waddling around for an hour with a pinched bottom, he finally went NR 2 in the potty. Of course all appropriate parties were notified, and the act duly admired and celebrated. A new helicopter and fighter jet grace the potty page in his sticker book, and the lollipop was greatly enjoyed, and discarded.