It takes a village -- Guest Post

They say it takes a village to raise a child. I think that in some ways, our "villages" are getting smaller as the years pass. Times are changing. There is an ominous feeling that we can't - or at least probably shouldn't - trust anyone with our kids except ourselves. We are solely responsible for bringing up our own kids. We almost have no choice but to become "helicopter parents," hovering over our children, fiercely protecting them and shielding them from the scary outside world.

However, when you are unexpectedly thrown into raising a child with special needs, you quickly realize that you have no choice but to find and embrace your village, to let go, and to trust others to help your family. Suddenly, there will be therapists entering your home and working with your child. There will be appointments with various doctors and specialists. There will be thorough evaluations, spanning hours, where you will watch your child's every move recorded and scrutinized. There will be advice. Oh goodness, so much well-meaning (but often frustrating) advice.

In the midst of all this confusion and uncertainty, this struggle between holding tightly and letting go, a few kind people will shine their lights into your world. These people are your villagers.

A villager will take the time to truly get to know your child, to gain her trust, get into her world, and to meet her where she is at that very moment. A villager will genuinely laugh at an awkwardly told knock-knock joke or a line of scripting from a TV show, even if it's the 8th time they've heard it that day, because they see the beauty in your child's attempts to communicate and connect. A villager will gently encourage growth, while still respecting your child's rights. A villager will watch, beaming with pride, just as you are, as your child achieves a milestone that you may have never thought was possible.

And....perhaps it wouldn't have even been possible, without the villagers' help.

Every single day, the villagers are showing up to their jobs, but not just working for a paycheck. They are changing lives - and not just the life of the child they are helping, but the parents, siblings, and other loved ones will be forever changed by their work. The villagers may not think often about the significance of what they are doing, but it is HUGE.

To our villagers: I thank you from the bottom of my heart. My children would not be where they are today without your kindness, your patience, your dedication, and your knowledge. There is a big world out there, and our villagers are paving the way for my child to find her place in it.

To the parents of special needs children: Seek out your villagers...you will know when you find them. Trust them. Learn from them. Gradually begin to let go....and watch your child travel from his village out into the world.

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"Amber Appleton Torres" is a stay at home mother of three, the eldest two of whom are diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder. After their diagnoses, she realized she is on the spectrum as well, and got her own Asperger's diagnosis. She blogs about her family's journey athttps://onebigaspiefamily.wordpress.com/

What do you picture when you think of an autistic child? You're wrong. -- Guest post

What do you imagine when you picture a child with autism?

I can tell you what I imagined.

A child who is antisocial. A child who refuses to make eye contact. A child who is withdrawn, sullen, disconnected, unaffectionate, devoid of empathy.

Which was why my first reaction when that word was brought up in relation to my daughter was to scoff. Autism? Juliette? Really?!

But she’s….so social!

And she is. From the moment she was born, that girl has radiated sunshine. People used to comment everywhere we went that she was just so happy. She was always smiling. She loved people. Not only was her personality bright, but so was her mind. She was inquisitive. She was magnetic. Well, she was just plain brilliant, in so many ways.

She was NOTHING like that image I had in my head of an autistic child.

Most people, before they have a loved one with autism, have that same image of the withdrawn autistic child in their minds. Sadly, many health professionals do as well. That image is the biggest roadblock getting in the way of autistic children gaining the proper diagnosis and support. I can’t even tell you how many times I have heard parents recounting stories of how they went to their doctor, concerned about their child’s development, only to be waved away and told their child couldn’t possibly have autism because he/she “made eye contact” or appears to be “too social.” Some parents are satisfied with that response, and the child continues to struggle through life without help. Some parents continue to fight for YEARS before finally getting their child diagnosed and accessing supports and resources. We were very lucky that we found a wonderful psychologist who easily diagnosed Juliette, then Lennon, and then myself. All of us make eye contact and are quote-unquote “social,” by the way. Not one of us looks anything like that image you’ve got in your head.

Look. That image….it simply doesn’t exist in real life. That autistic kid who is completely in his own world, refusing to look anyone in the eyes under any circumstances…..doesn’t exist. At least, I’ve never met him. And I’ve met my fair share of autistic children, on both ends of the spectrum. Beautiful, bright, curious, magnetic, sensitive, funny, and gosh-darn adorable autistic kids who are literally the direct opposite of what I had imagined. They are completely “normal” looking children who are so full of life, only their brains are just wired a bit differently.

When my son, Lennon was a baby, I knew he was different right away. He was the most wide awake, alert newborn I had ever seen. He cried a lot, and he almost never slept. He seemed unable to shut his brain off. His eyes were always wide open, taking everything in. He hit all his developmental milestones early, especially speaking. He talked like a miniature adult, and he was so incredibly intelligent. He was a challenging child in many ways. He was very strong-willed. He knew what he wanted, and he did not respond well to being told “no.” When he set a goal, he would never give up. He had traits that we admire in adults, but are challenging to deal with in children.

Somewhere along the way, in my obsessive searching for answers as to why my child was so different, I came across the terms “high needs child” and “spirited child.” He is both of those things, but it would be six years before I would realize that he is also a child who has Asperger’s. When he was a toddler, I got the book “Raising Your Spirited Child,” and the author describes spirited children as being “MORE.” More intense, sensitive, perceptive, persistent, and energetic than a typical child. What a perfect description! While the book isn’t about autistic children directly, many children on the spectrum would definitely fall into the category of spirited as well. Lennon is, and always has been, more. He may be small in stature, but he is larger than life in personality.

Let’s go back to the image of the autistic child in your head. Picture him. Do you think of that child as being MORE? Or LESS?

I am telling you….forget about that image, because that child doesn’t exist.

Also, forget about the eye contact thing. It should be taken out of the equation, as far as I’m concerned. Yes, some people with autism struggle with direct eye contact (usually more often in unfamiliar situations with unfamiliar people. Most find eye contact easier at home, with their families). However, it is just one of MANY factors to be considered when diagnosing a child. A child can have flawless eye contact and still be very much autistic. And yet, somehow, we have chosen to latch onto this one small trait as THE definitive trait of autism. If a child makes brief eye contact at a doctor’s appointment, they are immediately dismissed from the spectrum? C’mon, people, we can do better than this. We are failing our children because we can’t get over that stereotypical image of the sullen, autistic child with the downcast eyes; the child who is somehow “less” than other children. We imagine that they are less social, less connected, less emotional, less intelligent, and less empathetic. We need to consider that we may have this all backward. These are kids who experience everything more intensely: sensory information, emotions, empathy. Their nervous systems are more fragile, and they are much more easily overwhelmed. Because they are MORE, they have more needs and require more support.

Most importantly, they are human beings. They are individuals. Generalizing all autistic people as antisocial is doing them a big disservice. There are introverted and extroverted autistic people. There is as much variation among autistic people as there is among neurotypical people. I see this firsthand with my children. Lennon and Juliette are both diagnosed with autism, yet they are so different from each other. They each have their own unique strengths and challenges. Lennon has impressive verbal skills, and he is very driven to achieve his goals, but he sometimes has trouble going with the flow. Juliette struggles more with communication, but she is more adaptable to change and more conventionally “social.” Again, neither of them is anything like what I imagined an autistic child would be like. That was the hardest thing for me to wrap my head around when Juliette was diagnosed. She just didn’t SEEM autistic to me.

But then I realized, I had been wrong all along about what autism looks like. I’ve learned to replace the incorrect image in my head with images like this, of my beautiful, creative, smart, kind, loving, and MORE children.

 ...

"Amber Appleton Torres" is a stay at home mother of three, the eldest two of whom are diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder. After their diagnoses, she realized she is on the spectrum as well, and got her own Asperger's diagnosis. She blogs about her family's journey athttps://onebigaspiefamily.wordpress.com/

You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one -- Guest Post

I was a weird kid.

A shy kid. A sensitive kid.

A dreamer.

I knew instinctively, from early childhood on, that I was somehow different from nearly everyone around me. I was perplexed by people, and they, in turn, seemed somewhat perplexed by me.

I was fascinated by them, though. I watched them constantly, everywhere I went. I watched them walking around, making small talk with each other as they passed. I watched their gestures, their easy, spontaneous laughter. I studied their faces, picking apart their features, observing the way they smiled and the way their eyes danced while they talked to each other, sharing some small momentary connection with one another. They were beautiful creatures.

But I wasn’t one of them.

Why?

I didn’t know. But I was somehow certain of it.

I made a conscious decision to become one of them. Surely I could do that if I really tried. I was smart enough, and I knew it. I could figure this out with sheer willpower and brain power.

One of the first things I realized by my observations is that people didn’t like smart, though. At least not in girls. My brother was smart and he was practically worshipped. I was three years younger, painfully shy and awkward, and I wanted what he had: an easy air of confidence and the respect and admiration of everyone around him. He deserved it; he was awesome! I wanted it too, and was determined to get it.

Good grades came effortlessly to me. I loved standardized testing days, and looked forward to them all year. School was fairly boring – even with gifted/talented classes – but it gave me plenty of time to observe my peers and try my damnedest to emulate their behaviors. Somehow, though, I always fell short. I still replay my childhood social errors in my head, over and over, and berate myself for being “so stupid.” I had a hard time reconciling the fact that I could be simultaneously intelligent and stupid. And it seemed that people disapproved of me if I displayed either trait. I yearned to be average, yet I liked being smart, because it made me feel competent in a world that was confusing and overwhelming. However, the smarter I appeared, the less people liked me. Well, the teachers liked me….the children, not so much. I made a few good friends over the years who accepted me, guided me, and even came to appreciate my weirdness. The rest of the kids, by and large, treated me with a mixture of mild curiosity and contempt. They called me things like “bookworm,” “geek,” and “schoolie.” They teased me for being horrifically inept at all things phys ed-related, for being “gullible,” and for the way I used to bite my nails and the skin on my fingertips until they were raw and bloody.

I kept trying though. Oh, lord, did I try to fit in. I’d choose a girl I admired – a cool, confident girl – and try to become her. I’d emulate everything from her clothing to her mannerisms and speech. I made an effort to tone down my use of big words while speaking to peers. It was almost physically painful to do so. In class, I knew just about every answer to the teacher’s questions, but I made a “rule” for myself: I could only raise my hand for every 6th question. I spent my school days sitting at my desk, daydreaming, humming tunes to myself, watching kids and counting questions, sitting on my hand to avoid it automatically shooting into the air with each of the teacher’s queries.

I had the typical “pedantic speech” of a child with Asperger’s Syndrome, a true “little professor.” At age one, I could speak in full sentences, yet I did not walk until 17 months. My mother said she thought I could have walked earlier, but I just too stubborn and scared to try (yep, that sounds about right). Even as a baby, I was not comfortable with change or trying new things. I ate basically NOTHING, which was a major source of contention in our family throughout my childhood. I knew that my “picky” eating habits (which I now know is actually an eating disorder called Avoidant/Restrictive Food Intake Disorder) were causing my parents to tear their hair out. I was also keenly aware that my entire extended family was raising their collective eyebrows and wondering why my parents weren’t force-feeding me ham or the assortment of terrifying, mayonnaise-laden salads at holiday parties. I wanted to please my family so much, but it wasn’t enough to make me overcome my significant sensory issues and try new foods. Still, to this day, my diet is quite limited. I basically survive on assorted cheeses. My eating habits have only improved marginally since I was that little girl feeling disapproval every time I couldn’t eat what was served for dinner.

My childhood wasn’t all bad. In fact, in many ways, it was great. I may have been different, but I was definitely loved. My parents were unknowingly doing all the right things: consistency, schedules, and routines were big in my family. My social life may have been tumultuous, but I had stability and support at home. Dinner was at 5:00 pm sharp every single day. My mother was a stay-at-home mom, and kept a nice, tidy home. She and I were close. I think she was unsure how to handle my intense sensitivity and frequent emotional outbursts, but she understood me in a way that no one else could. I think she is somewhat of a “dreamer” herself.

Things completely fell apart when my parents got divorced, right at the time I was approaching adolescence, when the social stakes get higher. I needed support more than ever before, and there was none to be found. I’m not sure I would have made it through middle school without the help of a very supportive guidance counselor. I felt….simply lost. I didn’t know exactly who I was yet, but I knew without a doubt that I was a failure. A defective person. I had tried SO HARD to be like everyone else, and I had failed. Effort and intellect weren’t enough.

It all came to a head at age 14, when I made the decision I had been seriously considering for four years. I decided to kill myself.

I rummaged through our medicine cabinet and found several bottles of prescription pills. One said in bold capital letters: “DO NOT TAKE WITH ALCOHOL.” “Perfect,” I thought, as I raided the liquor cabinet, took out my mom’s signature bottle of store-brand Light Vodka, and mixed it with orange soda pop. I brought all my supplies up to my room, and shook the pills out into three neat piles on the white dresser that used to reside in my pepto-pink little girl bedroom, but was now in a run-down house owned by my mom’s second husband.

Before I started popping the pills in groups of threes and washing them down with swigs of my vodka drink, I set my alarm clock for 6:30 AM. I thought that if this suicide attempt didn’t work, I’d better be prepared to get up and go to school in the morning, just like any other weekday. As silly as that action sounds….it saved my life. The next morning, my brother heard my alarm blaring incessantly and found me in bed, unconscious. The doctors later told my mom that if I hadn’t been found when I was, I wouldn’t have made it. Thank goodness for my compulsion for routines!

I’ve come a long, long way since that incident. That was my darkest moment, and although there were many other dark times in my life after that, they paled in comparison to that singular act of complete desperation and despair at age 14. Still, I didn’t quite find myself until I was 32…

You see, I’d had a daughter, and she was like me. She was different too.

She was a weird kid.

A sensitive kid.

A dreamer.

Her eyes shone bright like sunbeams. She was different, yes, but in a magnificent, magical way. And I saw myself in her.

I found myself through her.

We dream together now.

...

"Amber Appleton Torres" is a stay at home mother of three, the eldest two of whom are diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder. After their diagnoses, she realized she is on the spectrum as well, and got her own Asperger's diagnosis. She blogs about her family's journey at https://onebigaspiefamily.wordpress.com/

Gazelles and Elephants: Fitting in at five years old -- Contributor Post

Pi and Phi are 5 now. They attend Kindergarten (two different classes so they can both shine their stars individually as bright as possible). They both insisted that they are old enough to ride the bus to school, and because the bus is actually available to them now that they are in Kinder, I agreed. So they ride the bus to school every school day morning.

I drop them off and watch them interact at the bus stop with the other kids. They’re the only Kinder kids in our little neighborhood, so mostly the big kids are leaving them alone and letting them run around like animals waiting for the bus.

Run around they do, too. Every single day, they drop their packs in the bus shelter and then have races from one sign to the other. About 200 feet of a race they do over and over until the bus gets there. Squealing, rambunctious, and overall dorky. Phi runs with his hands clutched high to his sides, a bit like a T-Rex. A smile of pure happiness. His feet hit the ground with the strange, awkward, delicate gait so familiar to other parents who have children on the spectrum. Toes pointed down, still somewhat clompy somehow. Like an elephant doing ballet. So happy.

Pi’s arms are thrown back and her clomping hits whole foot down, her face also has the same smile. So happy. She is a gazelle.

The other kids are mostly silent while Pi and Phi enact these daily races. Pi and Phi encircle them, run between them, around them, near them. You can see the other kids pull back, stare at them. I want to tell Pi and Phi to chill. Be cool. The kids are judging them. I keep my mouth shut. One kid does a mock tiptoe of Phi to his other friends, and they cover their mouths to smile behind their hands. They know better than to laugh where parents can see them. Phi doesn’t notice, just keeps running. Keeps being happy.

I want to scream at these kids. You think it’s awesome that you can run better than him? Running is hard for him. He’s a different animal. You are gazelles, and he is an elephant. His squealing trumpet of glee comes from a differently shaped throat than your own. Is it such a point of pride that yours was shaped different? Do you work for hours to make your gazelle throat shape the sounds that all the other gazelles make?

No he does not have grace. What he has, instead, is hard work. He has perseverance. Thank goodness that’s part of the package with Autism. The same thing that makes him line up puzzles for hours is what makes it possible for him to make words that others understand. He works past the point of wanting to stop. I am furiously proud of his words.

I remember his testing, and them asking us for a list of his words. For a week we tried to put together even ten words that he said at the age of 18 months. Duck. Ball. … Umm.. Daddy? We struggled to find any words that he had actually said. Now, at age 5, his vocabulary is huge. He inherits the wide breadth of spoken word that his father and I use daily, and it shows.

But the kids at the bus stop don’t see that he is a hard working elephant stuck in the land of the graceful gazelles. They see that he is not part of their herd. They close ranks.

So he runs with Pi. Pi who doesn’t care, yet, about gazelles and elephants. All animals are different to her. She takes it in stride.

I want the other kids at the bus stop to see what she sees. I want them to feel the pure joy that he feels.

I’m proud of my mismatched animals, and so furious at the herd that closes them both out. I know that in their classes there are other mismatched animals, and they find them and befriend them. The herd at the bus stop is not their whole world of experience, but only a small window onto it.

I also know that the herd at the bus stop is going to grow. That as they get bigger, it will become more and more evident how different they both are to the herds they encounter. Him for his everything, and her for her acceptance of these things and for her own differences. That the ruthlessness of peers will run their world for the next fifteen some odd years. There is not a thing I can do to change it.

I know that they are going to spend their lives collecting their own herds of mismatched animals. I hope they do not spend too long trying to assimilate into herds that are not their own and do not accept them. I also feel sad for the limited scope of the herd of gazelles at the bus stop. They have not yet learned the value of the different animals. I hope they learn it someday.


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Polly is a twin mother who writes at Pollychromatic. Check out her blog.




 

My autistic child is not your inspiration - Guest post

Originally titled: "She's no angel (but feel free to say something nice about her)"

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My two-year-old scrunched up her face and frowned in concentration. She balled up her chubby fist, extending her pointer finger, and selected icons on her iPad screen.

"I. Want. Banana. Please. I want banana, please," said the childlike computer voice. My daughter looked at me, expectantly.

I frowned. "You can't have a banana right now," I told her. "You still have chicken and broccoli on your plate." Months of giving her any food she requested because we were so excited to encourage her language skills were starting to backfire on us.

"I want banana, please," she insisted, selecting the sentence over and over. "I want-- I want-- I want banana, please."

"No banana," I said firmly. "Chicken and broccoli."

She shoved her plate away, arched her back and let out a series of piercing shrieks, kicking her legs angrily.

My daughter-- "Ham"-- is nonverbal and developmentally delayed (with a diagnosis of autism that I'm considering potentially 'in flux' for a variety of reasons I won't try to get into right now). She'll be three in a few months and has about as many speech sounds as the typical ten-month-old. This hasn't changed  substantially in the seventeen months she and her sister have been in Early Intervention, or in the nine months since they started applied behavior analysis (ABA) therapy. In the meantime, though, we saw that she was clearly intelligent and easily frustrated when she couldn't communicate, so we got her an iPad and a communication app called "Speak for Yourself" and the rest is history. It's no easy road, but she can use her iPad and communication app to make simple requests, comments, or even tell jokes (like saying "booboo sad crying" or "oops! oh no! what happened?" and then laughing).

Things I would like to say about my girls: they love swimming, popsicles, Elmo, soccer balls, tutus, toy cars, books, the ocean, never napping ever, visiting their grandparents, going for a walk, and watching our dog go nuts running around on the hardwood floor and slamming into furniture.

But I will never post any of those sparkly GIFs you see plastered all over people's Facebook pages or say the things written on them, like, "my daughter is my Autistic Angel!", nor will you ever hear those words escape my lips.

Here's the thing: my kids are not "angels."

Geez, no one ever wrote this glowing an acrostic poem of ME.

I don't mean to say that they're badly behaved-- no more so than any other soon-to-be-preschooler. It's just that I don't see their deficits as being so devastating that I need to balance them out with a friendly but equally dehumanizing characterization of their personhood.

Calling someone an "angel" as a term of endearment is one thing. We all call babies any number of sticky-sweet, often food-related nicknames-- "pumpkin," "cupcake," etc. That's adorable and I'm the first to admit that my kids have a lot of nicknames,  including the "Chicken" and "Ham" I use to talk about them online.

"Autistic angel" and its ilk are different. It's a personality trope-- a designation that limits a person with special needs to something more palatable than their diagnoses.  I think it makes logical sense that people would want to balance the more negative messages about disability in our society with positive ones. But when the pendulum swings too far in the opposite direction, it's just as far from its origin as it was before. I'm not the first person to make this observation.

By talking about the value of a disabled "angel" as mitigated by what she has to "teach" you about yourself, you reduce her to a functional tool in your own development-- something less than a full and separate person on her own. See what I mean about how damaging even positive attributes can be?

Why not, "Never Ignore Somebody With a Disability Because That's Super Rude and Uncool"?

My children are still young, and I don't know what the future holds for them. But I do know that 83% of women with developmental or intellectual disabilities are sexually assaulted (and only 3% of assaults are reported). I know that people who are nonverbal or have limited communication are often unable to tell anyone that they have been abused or feel unsafe. The problem isn't the disabled person, but everyone else, when accessibility, safety, and access to resources are limited or nonexistent. This is the other thing that happens when we don't treat disabled individuals as people, the thing we don't like to talk about-- the other side of the pendulum.

Before saying something or sharing an "inspiring" image, ask yourself: does this statement or image turn a disabled person into a tool for boosting someone else's self-esteem or remind them that their own life could be worse? Does it distill someone's personhood and identity down to something that makes everyone else feel better about their disability? Does it "fix" the disability by neutralizing it and balancing it out with something palatable?

Instead of sharing these messages, you could listen to disabled people tell us about themselves. More and more, disabled teens and adults are speaking up and letting us know what they think and how they feel, including addressing the tendency of non-disabled people to be "inspired" by disabled people living their ordinary lives. Rob J. Quinn's book I'm Not Here to Inspire You: Essays on Disability From a Regular Guy Living With Cerebral Palsy, excerpted in his article here, and Stella Young's funny and powerful TED Talk "I'm Not Your Inspiration, Thank You" are two examples.

Please choose to share these messages and not your own manufactured ones. Let's amplify the disabled self-advocates's own thoughts and take a backseat on creating our own. Share the messages that will help them feel good about themselves, not the ones that help us feel better about them.

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Jules wrangles toddlers, herds therapists, and eats cereal hastily over the sink. Follow her occasionally-updated blog at The Adventures of Chicken and Ham.










 

Parents Aren't Causing Autism. Quit It. - Contributor Post

Janel over at Pollychromatic takes on some of the more persistent autism myths.


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You want a rant? I’ve got one.

This was shared on my feed and I pretty much had my brain spasm all over the place. Here’s what I said, try to ignore the twitching anger:

I can’t with this. I mean, I can’t even read it. I mean, I can’t read it and continue to not be seriously heated.

You want to celebrate diversity? Here’s one for you: people on the Autism Spectrum? They’re people.
Here’s another shocker: not all of them are “difficult to reach.” 

Autism is a spectrum “disorder.” It’s a collection of learning disabilities, and neurological conditions. Not all of them present, or at the same levels with all people on that Spectrum.

We haven’t really delved very far into where ASD comes from as much as we have a new scare every month about what’s causing it, and how we’re being bad mothers if our children are affected by it. As though, somehow, we are the sole gatekeepers to our children. As though they are our possessions, and everything that happens with them, or everything they are is a reflection on us. 

This is a tool that has been used to beat women for centuries. It is a tool that women use to beat other women. It is a tool that women use to beat themselves.

Early in the history of ASD as a disorder it was believed to be caused by mothers who were too cold to their children. Not surprisingly this was during much of the early 2nd wave Feminism when women were beginning to discover identities outside of only being mothers. 

You want to have a career, or a life outside of the home? You’ll cause your child to be irreparably damaged. Now take off those shoes, get back in the kitchen, and do your duty to your family, or else your children will suffer, and it will be your fault.

Much has evolved since then, and we have come to learn more, but so much of that knowledge is a chaos of continued blame sourcing that seems to end nowhere other than hocus pocus faux scientific “medical” quackery.

What do we know? There seems to be a genetic link for Autism. It runs in families. 

We know that the numbers of those with ASD have likely been underreported for decades. So many people lay in the wings of Autism Spectrum and were so “lightly” affected that they simply were never reported. They were considered late talkers. Exceptionally picky eaters. Late bloomers. Shy. “Weird.” Etc. Parents simply never understood what they were seeing and never reported it if they did suspect. Perhaps fear of the stigma of a diagnosis that would follow their child around for life gave them caution. More likely that they just truly did not know what they were seeing. “Uncle so-and-so was a late talker, and then he went on to be successful,” went family legend and the friendly advice of neighbors. And so they put their suspicions on hold. 

Lord knows the backlash that I incurred when I put my son in Early Intervention at age 2 was bad enough. I can not imagine how bad it would have been if I had not had the wherewithal of my own knowledge and the courage to listen to my own inner voice AND the luxury of time that comes with being decidedly upper middle class to back me up. If I had been fighting the daily grind of a 9-5 (or a 3-11 for that matter), and trying to put food on the table, keep the gas turned on and water running, and the kids in clothes? Would I have fought so hard? 

It’s pretty hard to say.

I’m pretty insulted by this whole essay and it’s tone. I’m being frenetic and chaotic in my refutation of it.

What I have to say?

ASD isn’t the end of your child if your child has it. Not all ASD looks alike (my son could not be more sweet, more open, more funny, more loving, or more empathetic toward others). Mothers aren’t “causing” Autism.

Continuing to feed any of the three beasts I have named right there? Not. Very. Awesome.




 

Service Dogs Help in More WaysThan We Realize

Every night, I go into my children's room and kiss their soundly sleeping heads. Every morning, I roll my eyes as they start to fight and yell at each other (our typical wake-up routine), but during all that, I'm usually blown away by a new word or four. Their pronunciation and diction are clearer, they're neurotypically developing, they're perfect.

But what if they couldn't sleep at night? What if they couldn't speak much? What if sensory or other issues kept them from developing like they do each day?

They'd still be perfect.

They'd be absolutely perfect children made even stronger by the struggles they'd have to face starting from such a young age.

Maybe they'd be a little like Ky, a perfect little girl with a big heart who simply needs a little help.

At two and a half, Kyra is struggling through Autism, Seizure disorder, and Marcus Gunn Jaw Wink. She laughs and loves and lives just like all other kids, but she has trouble with sensations, fears, sleep, vocalization.

If Ky could get a little boost, her life would be so markedly improved that her mother has started a donation site to help Kyra attain a service dog.

You might think...service dog? For Autism? No thanks.

But don't let your pre-conceived notions close your heart.

A service dog helps children going through what Kyra goes through daily by providing safety and distraction to them. Her mother feels a service dog would help disrupt the pattern of destructive behavior by distraction. Petting and loving it would stand in for self-harming and other ways children cope with out-of-control emotions.

She also thinks it will help with Kyra's speech, training her to receive information through words and reply in kind.

The dog will act as a barrier between Kyra and others, making her less fearful to go out, and making interactions less stressful to her. Right now, Ky is scared to leave the house, and melts down when taken on the simplest errands.

Ky's mom also thinks the dog will be a huge benefit in the night hours. Right now, Kyra is unable to sleep. She has a weighted blanket and bear, and is even on medication to help, but the girl cannot sleep. A service dog would be with her during that time, lulling her, keeping her safe. Perhaps then, Ky could drift off. I cannot imagine having to exist with such limited sleep as this poor child gets.

So, service dogs are not just for certain types of disabilities. They can help in ways we never even think of. So many children have so much to offer the world and need just a little help to start on their journey.

If you're interested in helping Kyra start on hers, please take a look at her mother's site, which goes into greater detail than I could here.

Children are perfect. They deserve our help and love.