Jon’s reading programme, as designed by Tami, works like this: each day Jon reads two stories, and on a day when he can read the first one comfortably with no meaningful errors (and/or corrects himself on anything significant without assistance), he “moves on” from the first story and he is introduced to the next story. Leapfrogging, basically, with one familiar story always there.

Tami has had a plan for Jon’s reading for the past three years, and Jon has been up to the challenge. But Tami hurt her ankle badly in March, and was away for about 8 weeks. Despite the best efforts of her assistants, there hadn’t been much reading at school, and we did what we could on the weekends. When Tami returned at the end of May, Jon was about 120 pages short of her target for the year.

We undertook to read with him in a second session daily, which was pretty intense: previously when we’ve tried it Jon just couldn’t see the page–his eyes were tuckered out for the day. But in May and June, Jon responded well, fighting exhaustion, humidity and hormones, and his first bout of academic pressure. Towards the end, he was so strong that he would move on in both stories at the same time. And last Monday, he completed the 120 pages, and finished the Grade 2 reading program, and started the Grade 3. With two days to spare. Yay, Jon!

(He’ll get a little break during the summer, but Tami has supplied us with lots of reading and spelling materials. No backsliding!)

So Jon has been somewhat emotional these days. He’s had several tantrums of late: explosive, sometimes physical, and very intense.

The weird thing about them is that he was turning on a dime. After the Sunday one, he turned around and did 16 pages of tough reading homework; cheerfully, anger completely evaporated.

Now, Jon has had tantrums before, and even waves of tantrums, but that was years ago. And all through all of them, none of his teachers had ever seen anything; they could barely believe that such an angel would ever do this.

This included Tami—until Monday, when Jon decided to try his new attitude at school. To sum up: demanding and surly, then kind of weepy when challenged on what was going on and why he was doing this.

He has been under a heavy workload at school. And there was the humidity. And he’s going through a new social phase, so he may be testing the waters. But we suspect there’s something else too.

Tami mentioned that it seemed “almost hormonal”, and the EA’s have noticed some other things that lead us to a new fact. New to us anyway, and we like facts. So how is it that we never learned—and no one ever told us—that it’s common for kids with CP to hit puberty early?

When I heard this interesting fact, I nonchalantly googled “cerebral palsy early onset +puberty”, thinking maybe one scientist had a study or two. 42,100 returns. Oh crap.

It’s called precocious puberty. (Of course it is.) Common in kids with brain injury, including kids with autism and FAS. For the boys, it tends to start early and end at the usual time, and the likelihood is inversely proportional to the amount of body fat. Oh craaap.

Looks like the future is now. With more coming soon. Anyone got some raw meat and a chair?