Stop blaming yourself. We may never know in our lifetime what ultimately caused our precious child’s autism, but trying to reverse the clock or dwelling on the past is not going to be productive or helpful for you or your child. Take time for yourself. It took me about 3 years into our autism journey ...
A couple weeks ago I lost Eric for twenty gut-wrenching minutes at a water park in San Diego. You can read all about that little incident here: “The Day I Lost Him at the Water Park”. This was the fourth time we had “misplaced” our little renegade in his nine years and, by far, the ...
It was Day 8 of our vacation and our third day at this particular water park. As usual, his main love was the wave pool. He had already spent hours wave hopping when he looked up, peeled off his goggles, and asked to go to the “Splash Castle”. This was his name for an immense ...
Alec Speaks… Autism as some of us know, is a far complex disorder that continues to baffle doctors, scientists, and researchers till this day. For the most part, we (the autism community) have acknowledged a basic set of traits found in autism that we can associate with deficits in neurological response, sensory processing, and ...
We all wonder at times if we are doing enough for our child. Have we scheduled enough OT or Speech Therapy sessions? Should we have shoe-horned in some at-home ABA sessions after school? What about that music therapy I’ve heard about? Horse therapy? Should we look into a service dog? Biomedical treatments, special diets, feeding ...
“What Do You Say?” A friend of mine recently announced that he and his wife were expecting their first child. He explained that his wife was “worried sick” about the prospects of Autism. Another friend recently confided in me that he and his wife were beginning to “have concerns” that there might be issues with ...
I won’t… demand perfection. I will… demand your best effort. I won’t… excuse your misbehavior. I will… defend and advocate for you until my last breath. I won’t… abandon or ignore you in rough times. I will… give you room to succeed or fail on your own. I won’t… fight every battle for you. I ...
365 days ago I wrote my first blog post about my family’s journey with Autism. Throughout this year I have done a lot of soul searching. I have also begun to ask myself, “What if my son reads these things some day?” What message am I sending to my adult son who one day delves ...
http://ideas.time.com/2012/11/30/autisms-invisible-victims-the-siblings/ Dear Time, Look, I don’t want to be the word police. I think there is too much of that going around these days. But language does matter. The words we choose to describe our kids set a tone. Regardless of how you feel about the causes of Autism, labeling them and their siblings “victims” ...
Some have asked… others have whispered to friends and family (they think I don’t know)… Why do I do this? Why do I choose to open my life to the public so willfully and… so freaking much? The answers change depending on the day: Sometimes I just need to vent. I’m a very introverted person ...
