{"id":179,"date":"2011-04-02T16:36:03","date_gmt":"2011-04-02T20:36:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.inappropriategirl.com\/?p=179"},"modified":"2011-05-04T20:52:00","modified_gmt":"2011-05-05T00:52:00","slug":"tis-ausm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.inappropriategirl.com\/?p=179","title":{"rendered":"‘Tis Ausm!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today is Autism Awareness Day.\u00a0 In fact, April is Autism Awareness Month<\/a>.\u00a0 So much awareness directed toward something I can never quite forget.\u00a0 You see, my son has Autism.\u00a0 It is as much a part of him as his beautiful green eyes, wavy hair, fantastic sense of humor, and bright smile.\u00a0 It’s not something I’d change about him, nor is it something I think he’d want to have changed.<\/p>\n

So many people are unhappy with the way they are.\u00a0 They change their hair, makeup, body parts, clothing, anything, just to be happier with themselves, or to make others happy with them.\u00a0 The Son, at 10, is one of the most self-confident, self-assured, and self-aware people I know.\u00a0 This may change as he navigates his teenage years, but for now he’s comfortable with who he is.\u00a0 He can articulate the intricacies of how autism affects his life, even if he doesn’t realize that autism causes them.\u00a0 What a gift it is for him.\u00a0 He’s comfortable being himself.\u00a0 It’s others, including sometimes his father and I, who have the difficulty of accepting him the way he is.<\/p>\n

Being diagnosed with Autism means that the Son get a lot of services from the school.\u00a0 He’s had an IEP since preschool.\u00a0 No one has ever contested his diagnosis.\u00a0 Indeed, his doctor once remarked that the Son was one of the kids the cleaning crew could diagnose.\u00a0 One of the services he’s given is social skills training – teaching him how to get along with others in society.\u00a0 I’ve often remarked that it’s those in the world around him who need the social skills training.\u00a0 We can teach him how to deal with them, but they need to be able to deal with him.<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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?\u00a0 Such are the mysteries of Autism.<\/p>\n

He has it easier at home – we understand him here.\u00a0 Still, we fight to get him to be more social overall.\u00a0 That sometimes means accepting that he’s had enough, and other times encouraging him to spend just a bit more time with us.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 At the same time, we try to be available when he is feeling social.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 He needs that time for himself.\u00a0 Other times he’ll come to us for a snuggle and a chat before announcing “end of conversation” and walking away.\u00a0 He’s not trying to be rude, he’s just done with interacting and needs time to process.<\/p>\n

Those conversations, however brief, are fascinating.\u00a0 The things that come out of his mouth are often heart-breaking or jaw-dropping.\u00a0 He makes observations that most adults aren’t capable of.\u00a0 Maybe all that lack of socializing gives his brain time to produce genious thoughts?\u00a0 Of course, the conversations are also peppered with 10-year-old-boy-isms.\u00a0 He does have some age-appropriate behaviors, even if he tends to express them in language that often sends us to the dictionary.<\/p>\n

We just need to finesse certain behaviors so he blends in with society a bit better.\u00a0 At the same time, we need to realize that just because we have certain social needs, doesn’t mean his are the same.\u00a0 He just has just a different way of doing things.\u00a0 Not wrong, just different.\u00a0 He is an like an anagram – same little boy like so many others, but put together a bit differently. Just like Autism = ‘Tis Ausm.\u00a0 And he is, indeed, quite awesome.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[14,8],"class_list":["post-179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-parenting","tag-autism","tag-son"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.inappropriategirl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.inappropriategirl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.inappropriategirl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.inappropriategirl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.inappropriategirl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=179"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.inappropriategirl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":221,"href":"http:\/\/www.inappropriategirl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179\/revisions\/221"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.inappropriategirl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.inappropriategirl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.inappropriategirl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}