Thankful
To the Friend Who Persisted Through my Son’s Autism Diagnosis
“Let me know if you need anything. I know what it’s like. When my son was two years old, he also had to have surgery.” Those are words very few people can say to someone whose baby is recovering from a major surgery and their entire world has just been flipped upside down. My friend spoke those words to me when my son had brain surgery. Brain surgery. Words I cannot even believe I can type so nonchalantly, because in retrospect, that wasn’t even the hardest part of our journey. The hardest…
Read MoreI’m Thankful for My Niece
My husband and I are parents to an amazing, energetic, mischievous, almost three year old boy, Logan. We started to notice speech regression around 20 months, and I brought it up to his pediatrician at our next routine visit. I remember her saying that speech regression is related to autism, but she didn’t really see any other “red flags” that alarmed her. She referred us to Early Steps to see if he would qualify for speech therapy, and then we would see if he started to make any progress and…
Read MoreMy Husband, Thank You for your Sacrifice
I am thankful for my husband Steve. We’ve had an amazing journey thus far. November 27th will be our families Autism anniversary. The day one of our twin boys, Maverick, was diagnosed. At the time of Maverick’s diagnosis, we were living in central Washington. A peaceful, rural area, filled with apple orchards and wineries. A beautiful place to raise a family, just maybe not our family. Acquiring services in an underserved area is difficult. Maverick was receiving early intervention services through a local organization. It consisted of two speech therapy…
Read MoreI’m Thankful for the Ultimate Grammie
I am honoring my mother, the ultimate autism Grammie, Hughena Gear. I am thankful for her for so many reasons. If you look at the definition of thinking outside the box, she defines it. There is not one thing she will not do for her grandchildren. Our eldest son Emmett was diagnosed with autism almost three years ago, he is now six. Mum has been there every step of the way. They relate, she sees things how he does sometimes, stuff that we may not able to see right away.…
Read MoreI’m Thankful for our Local Fire Departments
I am so very thankful for the Mentor Ohio Fire Department, especially firefighter Jerry Craddock, and the Willoughby Ohio Fire Department, especially firefighters Ricky Stuart and Mark Leisure. We are so thankful for them because with their help we have started a special needs safety program that meets one time per month at both the Mentor and Willoughby locations to help teach kids of all ages with special needs about fire and other safety issues! We started with firefighter Jerry at the Mentor location. He has been so great with…
Read MoreYou are More Than Just Teachers; You are Family
When I was 18 weeks pregnant with my oldest child I started researching daycare centers. I visited a few and while they were all beautiful, in new buildings with state of the art facilities and big corporate names attached, I always felt like I was being sold something, and not like they genuinely cared about being with my child for so many hours each week. Then I visited Little Hands Academy (LHA), which didn’t even come up on my GPS as I was trying to visit it for the first…
Read MoreThank You to the Teacher who Loves My Son
Any parent who has sent their child off to school knows how emotional that first day can be. So many thoughts run through your head leading up to that big day. Will they find their way to their classroom okay? Will they know where to go to the bathroom? Will they make friends to play with at recess? What if they miss the bus to come home? When you have a child with autism, those thought turns in to fears, and they seem to quadruple in quantity. You have likely…
Read MoreThank You to the Friend Who Helped
I am a 56 year old mother in Florida with twin boys – one with autism and one without. They are now 19 years old. I knew my son had autism before he turned 2 – when I look back on it – I think he had it from birth. They were born at 28 weeks and had to spend 2 months in NICU. He always hated the bright lights and noise in there – would try to pull out his IV’s – had to have music to calm him…
Read More