Last night, for the first time in a few months, I managed to make it to my dads’ support group over at the ARC.
I happen to like going to the group – while it is open to fathers of children with many different kinds of disabilities, the vast majority of our children are on the spectrum. The group is still somewhat stable on a month-to-month basis at about eight or so, though apparently there’ve been a few dropping in and out like I’ve been doing of late. Continue reading
When we had the initial IEP meeting a little over nine months ago, one of the biggest changes was the removal of the Monster’s physical therapy.
According to the reports, he didn’t need any further physical therapy – the schools are primarily concerned with his ability to walk normally, ascend and descend stairs, and handle himself with his class at a ‘reasonable pace’. The fact that he’s still clearly delayed, because he doesn’t ascend or descend stairs with alternating motion, doesn’t seem to factor in to the decision, and despite our best efforts to keep it in the plan, the schools put their collective foot down. Continue reading
It’s been a very long time since we’ve taken a real vacation.
We’ve been away a few times, certainly – we travel to visit my family a few states away, and we’ve been once to Florida to go visit family a few years ago, before the Monster had his diagnosis. But we haven’t tried to take a real vacation, the kind that normal families take when they’re trying to escape the daily grind. Continue reading
I’ve probably written about this once before, but it really bears repeating. There’s just times where we don’t know what the Monster does or doesn’t feel, when it comes to his health. Continue reading
So I missed out a lot this weekend, because of my bonspiel (curling tournament). It’s one of the rare times where I take “me time” in such huge quantities, and wasn’t conducive to my being either on Twitter or here.
But, after the bonspiel was over, I headed back to hook up with the family again and to head out to dinner with my wife and the kids. Continue reading
To date, since we realized that the Monster has Autism, our vacations have been more of the “stay-cation” variety, with us doing relative day-trips to cope with the behaviors we know are going to come out when we’re gone from the usual schedule for too long. (The one dreadful trip to New Jersey comes to mind, where I didn’t sleep for most of the weekend because neither child wanted to sleep…) Continue reading
Of all the things that could have caused a disruption in discipline in our house, the winter vacation was perhaps the worst thing in a while to happen to us.
Before his holiday break, the Monster was doing really well in terms of discipline – he has his moments, of course, where he is willful, where he refuses to obey or decides to be a pain on the posterior for the sake of being such… but that’s being a four year old. Continue reading
To us, the major goal of the Monster’s IEP isn’t necessarily to fully catch him up this year with his peers. It’s to get him ready for life in the real world without all of the supports he needs at the moment. This means socialization, expressive language… and toilet training. Continue reading
The wife and I were talking last night about potty training, verbal outbursts and how things could always be worse.
(No, don’t worry, it’s not that kind of toileting entry for once.) Continue reading
I know that all parents of children with Autism go through this from time to time – knowing that you’re going to be taking your child into a scenario where a meltdown is all but guaranteed. Continue reading