Posts Tagged ‘Autism Awareness’
9 Big Mistakes Parents of Autistic Kids Can Avoid
I often think of my son’s autism as a journey. A journey with many, many steep mountains. And holes and cliffs. And of course it’s slippery. The hills have jagged rocks and most of the time I feel like I am hanging on for dear life. There is no safety harness or map. I typically don’t know if I am even going in the right direction. And perhaps at times I am going backwards. It’s just me against this damn mountain. And it feels like there is more bad weather…
Read MoreAcceptance: A Video Blog
Sharing on a tough topic this morning. I’ve been scared to share this video blog because it’s very real and raw but I know that other parents need to hear these words. It’s OK to be sad. It’s OK to admit that it’s hard. And it’s OK to grieve all the things you won’t do as a special needs parent. You are human. https://www.facebook.com/findingcoopersvoice/videos/792431380899325/
Read MoreI Can Say He’s Severely Autistic. But No One Else Can
Yesterday, we had a meeting with Cooper’s social worker. I am aggressively going for more services or as the state calls it…emergency services. It took me precisely three strongly worded emails and two phone calls (One where I sounded a bit crazy) to get a social worker in my home to evaluate Cooper. Not too bad. There is help out there. I need it. And I am demanding it. As I prepared for the in-home evaluation I typed up a list of Cooper behaviors. Let me note that the county…
Read MoreFirst Steps After Your Autism Diagnosis
After I received Cooper’s diagnosis of Autism I expected things to change overnight. I thought for sure we’d immediately start treatment or medicine or something and we’d begin to fix him. My child was sick. Let’s fix it now. We had an answer. We knew the source. Now we fix it. But that’s not how autism works. It’s not a disease. There is no curing it. There is no solution. There is managing it. There is navigating it. And it is straight up trial and error. If you’ve met one…
Read MoreGetting More Services
Yesterday was a tough day for me. I was dealing with so many effects of Cooper’s disability. I spent over an hour talking to the county. I have decided to move forward with trying to get more services for Cooper. And this means confessing my whole life story to a random social worker that doesn’t know me or Cooper or sometimes anything about Autism. Telling our story is a lot. It makes me feel trapped. Sad. Embarrassed. Like a whiner. Uncomfortable. I feel like I am begging at times. And…
Read MoreA Letter to the Family and Friends of An Autism Parent
Dear friends and family, I am sitting here thinking about our relationship. And about how much I love you. And how I rarely see you. We joke that it’s because life is so busy. We have jobs and babies. Life is crazy. And how some day it will be better. We will have more time. One of these days we will actually get together and do something. I’m not sure if that’s entirely true though…at least not for me. We are different. We are friends. We are family. But we…
Read MorePreparing for an ASD Halloween….
Holidays are an interesting time for a parent of a child with Autism. And each holiday comes with it’s own unique challenges. There is also the fine line of….’how much do we actually participate?’ Cooper doesn’t understand Halloween. Or costumes. Or Trick-Or-Treating. For starters he is the least greedy kid ever….he will get one piece of candy and be great for the rest of the night. He doesn’t like to walk so the idea of walking from house to house is ridiculous. He would need to be carried or put…
Read MoreWhen The Caregiver Gets Depressed
There is a stigma around depression. A really, really ugly one. And I think there is especially a stigma around mother’s who have depression. If you are depressed you are weak. You are broken. You are medicated. You cry a lot. You sleep a lot. This isn’t true. At least not for me. I am not weak. I am freakishly independent. I am not broken…completely. I am not medicated. And I rarely sleep. In saying that…. I just came out of an extremely low few days. Sadness is not an…
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