I have been blogging now for about 6 weeks and am enjoying it immensely. Since finding out my son was autistic I have always been frustrated by the "doom and gloom" approach to autism. It has been such a relief to find such positive (yet realistic and honest) viewpoints towards autism in the many many blogs I have come across. I wish I had looked into this much sooner than I did!
I love all the different kinds of blogs that are out there... the creative, the plain, the well-written and not-so-well-written, the artsy, the dramatic, the popular and not-so-popular. I have had lots of fun getting started and fine-tuning the features of my blog. I absolutely love the freedom we are given to make our own forums by blogging!
Six weeks ago I was just about at my wits end over my son's situation at school . I started looking up some things about neurodiversity and ended up coming across numerous blogs composed by people who do respect their autistic children by accepting them for who they are. I initially had no intention of setting up my own blog, but after a few days of wanting to comment and feeling inspired to tell my own family's story, I did just that! I shared the fact that I had a blog with a very few friends and family members after I had it for a month. It's kind of scary for me to share some of these thoughts with people that I know.
In these six weeks I have become much more settled regarding Samuel. I have met with his special education teacher two times. His learning requirements have been relaxed in his subjects. His teacher is also using a token board to provide small reinforcements for Samuel as he does his work at school. The incidence of behavioral outbursts has dropped since these changes were made. I think his overall stress level has gone down too. He seems more eager to get to school in the morning. His test scores have improved. The exercise I have put myself through in making up homework assignments has been exhausting, but it's nice to know that it is paying off. I better understand what Samuel is capable of and not capable of. Samuel's teacher has been attentive to my questions and requests, and our regular meetings, e-mails, and phone calls to each other are helping me to feel better about Samuel being at school. This has been a tough year of adjustment for both me and Samuel, but now, almost 3/4 of the way through the school year, we're both quite settled.
On the lighter side of things, we had another weather surprise today, about 5 inches of snow! It started as rain Thursday night, which continued Friday morning and started mixing with sleet. School was closed at noon and shortly after we got home it changed to snow. Samuel was happy to have the afternoon free. The only work I gave him the rest of the day was some tidying up in his bedroom. Friday is cleaning day around here!
2 comments:
You are in such a better place than I was when I first found out. I mourned for a long time.
I am in awe of you and others like you who have embraced it and found the positive.
Well done!
Thank you so much for your nice remarks. I hope that I do not sound like I am gloating or bragging when I say that I have never mourned over Samuel's autism. Each of us has such a unique experience with our children and how they present their personalities (I don't want to say "condition") that it makes it hard to do an "apples with apples" comparison with each other. There are so many factors that go into the experience of finding out that our children are on the spectrum. I remember in the early days hearing so much about one of the steps after receiving a diagnosis being one of grieving for one's child. I did not experience that, and I kept waiting for it to hit me. In the five years that have gone by since then I now realize that I just have a different approach. Of course there are difficult moments and moments of unbelievable frustration, but as I reach them I try to think "Okay, what do we do now to deal with this?" I also try to remember that, like any of our children, our children on the spectrum are "works in progress." They can always learn and it is our job to teach them. I also try to remember how fortunate we are to have our children in this age as opposed to an age where society just wanted to hide them.
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