Blogs

I came a great autism site  www.autism-outreach.com.  Check it out.  Had a lot of great information and resources.

New to this site and blogging all together. So if I am posting in the wrong place, please let me know.I have an 8 year old autistic son who has  finally discovered how to unbuckle his seatbelt in the car. The other day he was in the back, unbuckled his seatbelt, climbed up to the front seat and opened the front passenger door, all while I was traveling at 60mph on a busy Hwy.  It all happened so fast, I could not pull over fast enough without causing mayhem on the Hwy. He has since done this a few times. The child locks are always set in the back, so he could not open the back doors.  But even with the door locked in the front, the car door can be opened just by pulling the handle. Has anyone else ever experienced this!! Do you know of any additional restraints that are available in the market so that he cannot unbuckle his seatbelt?

Y'know, sometimes in the midst of my chidren screaming, resisting doing stuff, and just plain, misbehaving, my wife and I wax philosophical about how their misbehavior may actually be consistent with that of typical children their age. And isn't that a relief? Don't we feel so much better knowing that our kids may be acting like typical children? Yes. Yes, we do.

Then the kids actually find ways to increase the volume.

And why yes, that DOES feel like a migraine coming on.

And yes, yelling at them - ineffective as it may be - suddenly seems like it might make ME feel a bit better, if only temporarily.

I haven't. Well.... yet.

And I have to also remind myself - If this IS typical misbehavior, then we - as parents of kids with special needs - have one advantage that parents of typical kids don't have.

Respite.

And then I laugh.... Maniacally.

Kids, I love you.

Wa hoo!  Wyatt got to ride 'em.  They said he was a little intimidated at first, but he had a great time.  Right when I walked through the door to pick Wyatt up today, a worker whom I hadn't met before ran up to me and exclaimed, "I LOVE YOUR SON!"  So, he must've been soooo cute riding that horse.

Gotta pick my mom up tonight at the airport.  She'll be here until the end of next week.  This morning I gave my kitchen a lot of attention, vacuumed a bunch, and washed the guest linens.  That way it looks like I'm not desperately hoping that my mom will whip herself up into a cleaning frenzy and scour my house from top to bottom.  Even though I am desperately hoping that very thing. 

Ok perhaps this is not a new site. But I just discovered it. I have become a free sample nut. In 4-8 weeks my mail box should start getting full with little oddities. I even requested samples for men's deoderant and shampoo. Unsure why.

http://freesampleforager.com/

It has basically anything under the sun. But hey if I want to try something it is a whole lot cheaper then going out and buying it! Anything to save myself a penny or two.

At one time I was talking to David's sisters regularly. Then it sort of blew up in my face. Ironically right about when his daughter was born and I was starting my fight to get Michael seen by the Specialty Clinic. I started getting annoyed because they stopped speaking to me yet checked out everything on Myspace. I had trackers (yeah I know against Myspace rules) hidden and a friend and I set something up. They literally would read my comments then go read his to see what I replied. The final straw was when they went to check out my mother's myspace. I thought my friends deserved a little privacy. They assumed things written in my blogs were about them and would always try to think I was saying something other than I did. Then they all got torked because I deleted them. One of David's sisters tried accusing me of being an ungrateful little *cth saying I have never said thank you for the presents they had gotten him. Yet they seem to have forgotten the numerious textxs comments, shoot even me breaking down in tears when I thanked their mother in person one Christmas.

OK, time to jump in hot water.  My wife thinks I'm just asking to be flamed for posting this on this site, but, I'd like to honestly discuss this with my parenting peers.  So, here goes.

I am a mother of six children, four of them are adopted and of those four, two of them have autism.  I went from being a successful realtor to being a full time caregiver for these three kids who are still at home.  As they have gotten older it has been more and more expensive to take care of all their needs.  I have been doing all kinds of research on biomedical approaches to recovering these children.  In that research, I started looking for high antioxidant foods that could help to heal their brains.  I came upon a product that is made from an unprocessed raw chocolate, that was so healthy, you'd have to eat 7 lbs of spinach to equal the antioxidant levels that just three pieces will get you.  I have started my own home based business selling this product and helping others do the same.  My youngest child with autism has finally begun to be potty trained, because he gets the chocolate as a reward, and I can give it to him because it is gf/cf free.  He is making all kinds of progress, and I am having fun earning money to continue to look for anything that will help him

Donna 

Wyatt didn't get to go bowling yesterday, after all.  Only the older/higher functioning kids got to go.  I thought that was really crummy.  And sort of insulting.  Wyatt did get to go walk along the pier, but he wanted to go run in the waves and they wouldn't let him.  So we took him to the beach and let him run in the sand when Marc got home.

Tomorrow and Thursday is the equestrian program.  They told me to make sure Wyatt brings his sneakers, so I'm assuming they are actually going to let Wyatt get near a horse.

In preparation for my kids' kindgergarten IEP plan in December, we've begun the latest rounds of new assessments / follow-up.  We had a new assessment at Santa Teresa Kaiser and we're having our follow-up with Dr. Bryna Siegel at UCSF at end of September. 

 Santa Teresa was nice.  The practitioners had more pleasant and relaxing bedside manner for one thing.  They encouraged my wife and I to relax when addressing our children's needs and not be as wound up about providing them structure 24/7.  They encouraged us to remember to have fun with them as well as teaching. 

They confirmed my son's autism - not a surprise there.  They revised my daughter's PDD-NOS diagnosis to Aspergers.  We were a little surprised, but not hugely, and not to the extent that we were upset.  What I didn't know is, apparently, it is hard to diagnose Aspergers until kids are a little older and so specific developmental milestones can be examined..  The twins are 4 and a half years old now. 

We also know that diagnoses tend to vary between practitioners and also over the years and things change. 

 So - shrug - latest thing to learn more about....