Tag: autism

Hip365 – Week 1

Posted on by Inappropriate Girl

In a valiant attempt to catch up, I’m going to post all of my 365 photos from earlier this year in a week-by-week format. Maybe then I’ll be able to keep current. Ha!

One of the challenging things about taking on this project is that I’ve had to come up with ideas on a daily basis. Yeah, that’s kind of the point, but going into the project I didn’t realize how much it would affect the way I look at my life.

364 – Country roads, take me home…

Heading back from West Virginia to our home in Virginia, we always have time to appreciate the lovely scenery. This is partly because the police force in Wardensville, WV is notorious for insisting that the speed limit not be exceeded. They even ticketed their own congressman for going slightly over 25. Nothing like regular enforcement to ensure compliance.

363 – It must be January again.

If this isn’t a typical slice of my life, then I don’t know what is. Time to try sticking with a diet and exercise plan, yet again. After action report – I stuck with it a few days before coming down with hives from an unknown source. Between the itchiness and Benadryl-induced stupor, I wasn’t good for anything for a few more days. I never did get back to exercising regularly. Maybe that should be my new goal, now that I’ve actually managed to stick with another activity (pictures!) for more than three weeks and made it become a habit.

362 – If it’s Tuesday, it must be time to stuff folders.

Every Tuesday during the school years, students at my younger two children’s schools send home a folder containing completed homework, school information, and other announcements (the eldest’s school sends them home on Thursday, which means I can’t even refer to them as ‘Tuesday folders’ safely anymore). I volunteered to stuff the folders in the youngest’s classroom, thus fulfilling the need to occasionally volunteer in the classroom. Otherwise,I don’t spend too much time in their schools. There’s a reason I didn’t become a teacher.

361 – Home sick, but still doing his reading homework.

‘Sick’ is technically correct. Really, the school sent him home because he’d thrown up. He’d thrown up because he didn’t eat enough before taking his meds. Every morning, the Son takes Strattera and Concerta. He has to eat a full breakfast before taking them, both to ensure he gets some food in before the medication affects his appetite and to ensure that he doesn’t throw up. Guess breakfast didn’t go so well that morning, but at least he had a nice day at home afterwards.

360 – EEG

We often refer to The Youngest’s membership in the “Disease of the Month Club.” We joke about it, but really she has a bigger medical file than the rest of us combined. This day, she was getting a sleep-deprived EEG to check for seizure activity. Her teacher had noticed some seizure-like activity a couple of months before and the neurologist ordered the test. In preparation for the test, she hadn’t been allowed more than four hours of sleep. Later on, she and I took a well-deserved nap. In this picture, she’s trying to sleep but had to wait until the approved time during the test until we’d let her drift off.

359 – Either a dead body or a stylish homeless person. Neither option makes me want to shop in this store.

You see the strangest things at the mall. I’m not a fashionista by any stretch of anyone’s imagination, but I think this window display was a little odder than most. Torsos and appendages sticking out of boxes – what were they trying to advertise, anyway? If you lived in a box, you could afford to buy this outfit? Weird.

358 – Let it snow! (but not too much – this is Virginia)

Oh, the South. Not a place that snow should ever touch. Admittedly, we have a better chance of dealing with it now that we’ve had so many big storms recently. Coming from New Jersey, where it can snow one foot at night and the streets are clear and dry the next day, I find the whole process a bit disheartening. But, the plow drivers here have finally figured out that the snowplow blade can touch the pavement, instead of hovering several inches above it. Much more effective street clearing that way. There’s hope yet, but snow should still stay up North. This was just the right amount of snow for Virginia – a pretty dusting that melted by mid-morning.

The Gift of Autism

Posted on by Inappropriate Girl

It’s in the letting go of expectations that we find the freedom to truly be.

The expectations. Oh, the plans I had for my kids. I’m not even sure what they were anymore. Time has a way of blurring our memories. That’s good, because reality has a way of changing our plans. It’s hard to be disappointed that things didn’t turn out the way you planned if you can’t remember what you planned in the first place.

Our kids and their futures go from a concept to a fact faster than you ever realize it could happen. One minute you’re dreaming of having kids and the next they’re walking out the door, heading off to pursue their own plans. That’s just how life goes. As much as we try to control it, time has a mind of its own. So, too, do our children. So why does it come as a surprise that we can’t control them either?

I’m not even going to get into the concept of controlling your teenagers. I don’t have one yet. Mine are 8, 10, and 12. Even at this young age they’ve proven that, as much as I’d like to control their destiny, I can only do so much. The rest is up to them.

None of my kids has done so much to reinforce this concept as The Son. He was our second-born child and our first-born (and only) boy. So, boys. You probably have some sort of preconceived notion of how boys are supposed to be. Certainly we did. He’d be a rough-and-tumble type, play baseball or soccer, be a Boy Scout, and maybe someday join the armed forces. We nurtured those dreams for the first few years, but even then he seemed so different from other boys. Eventually we found out he that he hates sports, doesn’t like to participate in group activities, and doesn’t like being outdoors because there are bugs outside. We also found out that he has High-Functioning Autism and ADHD.

Imagine taking all of your plans and expectations, and realizing that most of them are no longer an option. Military service is obviously out. We could force the sports issue, but he hates it. Why try to make the kid unhappy? He doesn’t like to spend much time with people, so Boy Scouts isn’t a great option either.

What’s left? Him, just being himself, and us trying to figure out how to help him be the best person he can be. Instead of trying to get him to meet our expectations of what he should be, we’re helping him to be successful as himself – and oh, what a self he has. He’s more self-confident than most people I know. He’s content to let his freak flag fly. The other day, as I was picking him up from school, I noticed that he was wearing his ball cap on top of the hood of his jacket. It looked a little silly to me, so as he got in the car I mentioned to him that it was supposed to go on his head. He told me that he knew, but that’s the way he wanted to wear it. Good enough for me, but not good enough for his younger sister, who also remarked upon it when we picked her up at her school. He told her that he wore his hat that way because it looked weird and that’s the way he liked it. “Cool!” she said, in her typically enthusiastic way. It hit me then – her approach to him went from derogatory to celebratory just because he displayed some confidence in his approach to life. Why can’t we all be that brave and strong?

Most fourth graders want to fit in. Mine’s ok with standing out and being his own person. I can attribute this directly to his autism. He honestly doesn’t care what other people think of him. He’s empathetic towards others, but he’s self-possessed enough to not really care about their feelings towards him.

This gift of his has helped me be a better parent. I don’t try to make the kids be how I want them to be. I try to let them be the best person they can be.They only get one shot at their life. It should be theirs to live for themselves, not to live for what I want. If I don’t have expectations about how they will be, I’ll never be disappointed that they didn’t turn out that way. That’ll just leave me more time to love them for themselves, which is what a parent should do.

‘Tis Ausm!

Posted on by Inappropriate Girl

Today is Autism Awareness Day.  In fact, April is Autism Awareness Month.  So much awareness directed toward something I can never quite forget.  You see, my son has Autism.  It is as much a part of him as his beautiful green eyes, wavy hair, fantastic sense of humor, and bright smile.  It’s not something I’d change about him, nor is it something I think he’d want to have changed.

So many people are unhappy with the way they are.  They change their hair, makeup, body parts, clothing, anything, just to be happier with themselves, or to make others happy with them.  The Son, at 10, is one of the most self-confident, self-assured, and self-aware people I know.  This may change as he navigates his teenage years, but for now he’s comfortable with who he is.  He can articulate the intricacies of how autism affects his life, even if he doesn’t realize that autism causes them.  What a gift it is for him.  He’s comfortable being himself.  It’s others, including sometimes his father and I, who have the difficulty of accepting him the way he is.

Being diagnosed with Autism means that the Son get a lot of services from the school.  He’s had an IEP since preschool.  No one has ever contested his diagnosis.  Indeed, his doctor once remarked that the Son was one of the kids the cleaning crew could diagnose.  One of the services he’s given is social skills training – teaching him how to get along with others in society.  I’ve often remarked that it’s those in the world around him who need the social skills training.  We can teach him how to deal with them, but they need to be able to deal with him.

Take lunchtime, for example. The Son explained to me that he was trying to sit alone when some other kids wanted to sit with him.  He’s trying to decompress while they are trying to spend more time with him. He’s lucky – he’s quite funny and apparently well liked, but he has very little desire to have friends.  How can we figure out how to get him to spend more time with other people while at the same time get them to not spend too much time with him?  Such are the mysteries of Autism.

He has it easier at home – we understand him here.  Still, we fight to get him to be more social overall.  That sometimes means accepting that he’s had enough, and other times encouraging him to spend just a bit more time with us.  We get him to have dinner with us at the table, but acknowledge that he has no interest in lingering long past mealtime to chat with others.  At the same time, we try to be available when he is feeling social.  The ride home from school is prime time for him – he’ll talk nearly non-stop during the pick-up time for his younger sister but then head to his room as soon as he gets home.  He needs that time for himself.  Other times he’ll come to us for a snuggle and a chat before announcing “end of conversation” and walking away.  He’s not trying to be rude, he’s just done with interacting and needs time to process.

Those conversations, however brief, are fascinating.  The things that come out of his mouth are often heart-breaking or jaw-dropping.  He makes observations that most adults aren’t capable of.  Maybe all that lack of socializing gives his brain time to produce genious thoughts?  Of course, the conversations are also peppered with 10-year-old-boy-isms.  He does have some age-appropriate behaviors, even if he tends to express them in language that often sends us to the dictionary.

We just need to finesse certain behaviors so he blends in with society a bit better.  At the same time, we need to realize that just because we have certain social needs, doesn’t mean his are the same.  He just has just a different way of doing things.  Not wrong, just different.  He is an like an anagram – same little boy like so many others, but put together a bit differently. Just like Autism = ‘Tis Ausm.  And he is, indeed, quite awesome.