KSU bsektball, Temple Grandin, and Adele

This week on Monday, I got to hear Temple Grandin speak. She's a 63 year old famous, successful woman who has autism. She lectures on what it is like to have autism as well as her field of study, animal handling. We got to ask her questions for two hours! I learned so much that I am already applying to the kids I work with at school and to my time with Adelle.
I had Adelle's mom help me talk Adelle into going with me to a Women's basektball game. I had asked her last time we got together if she wanted to go and she said, "No, let's just do the around the house stuff." Temple Grandin said that people with autism need to be pushed outside thier comfort zone, not to the point of overload or panic, but encouraged to do new things and not just the solitary activities that they prefer. So Rosie said she talked Adelle into going to the first half. I know that Adelle loves sports so I thought she might like to go watch them. She hated the JC soccer game I took her to this season which surprised me. I also know that Adelle is a pattern thinker and loves to look at numbers and charts so I had her bring a notebook.
Well, Adelle liked the game. At first, she kept asking if she could PLAY, not watch. She wanted to go shoot some baskets while the team was warming up but got her out notebook and wrote down the starting lineup. Keeping track of points and fouls kept her entertained for quite a while. She watched the game, too, and asked some good questions. Then she got out another peice of paper and listed a bunch of classmates, I think she was assigning them to all star teams. We made it to halftime and to te promised hotdogs. We had quite a snack of pizza, hot dogs and slushies. The only thing that upset Adelle was when one of our players helped the other team up off the court. Adelle said, "What! Why is the player helping the enemy up?" I explained that they aren't enemies, but opponents who have respect for each other and that that is good sportsmanship. I also had to explain to Adelle how to say, "excuse me" and wait instead of just climbing over people to get out of the row.
Adelle did super at the grocery store. I had reminded her the two rules before we went in, "Don't touch anything you aren't going to pay for" and "you must stay where I can see you." The first rule was from Temple Grandin and took care of the problem we had last week when Adelle picked up some tic tacs and helped herself to one then put it back. Today Adelle was perfectly appropriate, pushed the cart carefully, shook hands with the people I knew that we stopped to talk to, and didn't do anything she shouldn't. She didn't even ask for anything! She did ask if we could just hang out at the house next week (and have ice cream).