I forget that my son has Autism.  It seems incredible that I could forget.  Our entire lives revolve around therapies, picture schedules, and routines.  I spend endless hours working on learning materials to help him better understand the world.  I even have a website that I use to make those materials available to other parents who have children with Autism.  But, still there are days I totally forget my son has Autism.

It's been a long week here in our house.  My son has been engaging in a lot of repetitive behaviors, hand flapping, lack of eye contact, unwillingness to socialize... yadda yadda...  All the typical "Autism Stuff" that I should recognize.  But, I don't.  My son is so "typical" most days that I forget what the symptoms of his Autism involve.  Even his speech therapist sighed in exasperation a few times before suddenly remembering that "Oh, that's right, these behaviors are consistent with his diagnosis."

His father was the one that had to remind them.  My son had just walked by and hit me for the hundredth time that day and I was at my melting point.  Somehow I had totally forgot that my son wasn't just out to make mommy pull out her hair... that he just couldn't help it this time.
And so I feel terrible for getting aggravated and frustrated with MYSELF for not noticing what’s going on and making adjustments so that my son can better cope.

My house is fairly clean for the first time in what feels like months. To be honest, it gets this clean on a weekly basis, but somehow all the catharsis of living in a clean house wears off after the third day when little bits of nasty start to accumulate in the corners of chairs and on the tables. If only my kid would sit in ONE spot to eat...

All that is left is the spare room. I am always amazed at the human capacity for collecting junk. My spare room was initially supposed to be a room for me to craft, sew, and relax. However, once my son figured out that I was having a good time without him in there it became yet another place in my house that I have to defend from ever prying fingers. A craft/sewing room can be filled with lots of dangerous things, ya know. So I locked it up. It's not worth the effort to try to sew while dragging him out of the adhesives and exacto blades. I'd rather just be stressed out and sitting in the living room instead.

Since locking it up it's become a repository for everyone's JUNK. I can't say I'm blameless, there's plenty of my stuff in there too. But, the whole room, which once was suppose to be my sanctuary, is now a seething pit of random crap that no one needs but everyone is terrified to live without. I can't tell you how it impacts me emotionally to look at that room. So, now I'm trying to figure out how to carve out the six hours it's going to take to go through it all, arrange for someone to watch my son while I do it so that he doesn't get hurt trying to investigate one thing or another, and where it's all going to go when I'm done. Next time, I'll just live in a smaller apartment and save myself the trouble.

On the shinier side of the coin What Monkey?

Free Printable What Questions for Children with Autism  read more »

I wrote this for another site, but thought the information would be good enough for a blog post:  read more »

I have a job that allows me to work from home.  The only problem is that I struggle to get any real WORK done.  It takes me three times as long to finsih my work than anyone else in my company.  Why?  Because something bad happens everytime I pick up the phone.  My first call of the day, which lasted all of two minutes, resulted in my son sneaking into my room and dumping out an entire can of baby powder.  My second call took twenty minutes to make because my son wouldn't stop yelling catch phrases from various cartoons and computer games.  The rest will go the same way since I just told him that he can't have any more junk food and the pantry is locked.

Everyone thinks that since I work from home I have it easy but it is far from it.  It takes me 12 hours to do what should be done in 8, plus the cooking, cleaning, and home making, PLUS taking care of the boy who is not always agreeable to my agenda.  It's really difficult and I'm constantly behind.  I feel like I'm being swallowed up on most days.

Sometimes when my son goes to bed on time I get a few minutes to work on my website or to do the dishes, but usually I'm stuck having to catch up on the work I should have been doing nine to five.   I tried having someone in home to help, but it's not really worth it past having them pick up because the boy demands my attention regardless.

 So while everyone else wishes they could work from home, I wish I could "WORK" from home.  If child care and transportation were available I'd work outside the house just so I could shorter working days and more time to myself and for my kid.

I have been working on a couple interactive books to teach my son "wh" questions for a while.  I'm so happy they are finished.  Well, to be honest the ones that I put up on the website (http://www.freeprintablefun.org) aren't totally finished.  There are a few very minor mistakes and some images that could be clearer.  BUT, they are finished enough to be used.

We did a trial run with both books today and I was totally impressed with how well my son did!  His speech therapist said that "why" is the most difficult of the "wh" questions and that it is normally taught last, but he went through the book just GREAT.  I don't think he'll have a total grasp on it any time soon but I'm very encouraged by his ability to use picture cues to figure out the answer.   He still struggled with a few of the prepositions.  "Behind" seems to get him every time.  At speech therapy and at home he often confuses it with either "in" or "next to."    While "in" is never really correct "next to" is very realitive and I find it hard to correct him on it.  I can see where it gets difficult for him.

I will probably tackle "What" next, then "Who", then "When."  I think "When" will be the hardest to write since my own personal grasp on time is very weak.  read more »

My son has had a terrible time dealing with the summer vacation transition.  He has been literally begging for school every day for two solid months.  We did everything we could to get him into a summer program but he was either too young or we didn't have the financial resources to apply to various programs. He's been so miserable that he's reverted to headbanging and spitting and nothing I do calms him. 

Two weeks ago I received a call stating that school was starting again on the 25th.  We went school shopping, talked about school, and got all excited about it.  When the day came he got up early, dressed himself smartly, and even wanted to gel his hair into spikes (first time EVER!)  He was so excited.

We got to the school and guess what?  No school for preschoolers till Sept. 8th.  The message I got was not intended for him.

Both of us were CRUSHED.  It took all my strength not to cry. It meant so much to him and we had been talking about it for weeks.

He's not been in a good mood today, though I can hardly blame him.  The bus goes by and he can't ride and he doesn't understand why.

I just hope this two weeks goes by fast.