autism

Maryland Steps Up

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I’ve posted several times before about how the insurance coverage I have through work (a company based in California) in theory covers treatments such as ABA, and yet there are no providers in my state (Maryland) that are on the insurance plan.  The reason for this is simple – here, ABA is not defined as “appropriate and medically necessary”, so insurance providers are not required to cover this proven treatment.

To be fair – our current insurer has told the wife that if we can find a provider here who is covered for other services, they would be amenable to discussing payment.  I have no idea if the new provider in January will feel similarly, but I can fight that battle when we get there. Continue reading →

Falling From Trees, Indeed

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I listen to a lot of National Public Radio.  I only have a 15 minute commute between my home and office, and it’s often that or listen to the drivel that passes for morning radio on my way in.  This also means, often, that the radio’s already on my local station when I’m off to evening activities, which means now and again, I catch fascinating articles on All Things Considered.

So, on Thursday, on my way to my evening out, I caught an interview with the author of Far From the Tree, a book by Andrew Solomon.  Mr. Solomon’s work is mostly an assessment of children and parents, and how children are, sometimes, very different than their parents.  Continue reading →

The Difference A Few Months Makes

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I know that I said via Twitter (you can follow me at @dadenoughblog) that I likely wouldn’t post today.  I felt I had to – even though we just piled out of the car.

First – one huge damn success: The Monster was dry the entire trip back from visiting my family.  We’re talking 5 hours in the car including two stops – one to get me coffee, and one to get dinner.  And then, upon getting home, agreed that he needed to use the bathroom before bed and peed in the potty.  (We had two accidents today, one on waking up and one en-route – that’s it.) Continue reading →

Talk It Out

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Another thing we’re working on with the Monster is expressive verbal skills.

The Monster is very good with descriptions of his environment – he’ll tell you, happily, what any of a number of objects are, answer simple qualitative and quantitative questions about the items, etc.  Narrative language, he’s not so good at – he’s not very good at coming up with a description (even prompted) of what happened before, and what will happen in a short while.  Ongoing actions, he’s not so bad at telling you about.  (IE, we’re in the car on the way to the wife’s parents’, and he’ll happily tell you that we’re “going to gramma and grampa’s house”, present-tense continuing to near-future.) Continue reading →

The Write Way

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The program that the Monster is in – Together We Grow – is geared largely to provide the standard public pre-K experience in a classroom environment that’s also built to help children with Autism start to develop skills they’ll need in a real classroom.  As such, he gets the same assignments any pre-K child in Maryland gets, including all of the homework. Continue reading →

More Hit Than Miss

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For the last two whole days, the Monster has been living in a single set of underwear.

As I write this, he’s finally had to be changed – we finally had a miss after going more than forty-eight hours without a single accident.  This has been through going out of the house to various places, to school and back, and even through the overnight hours. Continue reading →

All On His Own

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Every year, we have the king of all barbecues at a friend’s place.  It used to be held on the weekend of the Ohio State-Michigan football game for the sake of having an excuse to set it up, but more recently, we’ve simply moved it to a convenient weekend where everyone was available.  It’s always been at said friend’s pad – whether he’s lived locally in a tiny apartment, a nicer place up in a high-rise or now in his townhouse with his wife.

So the Monster’s been going to this annual event with us since he was a baby – everyone’s watched him grow up, and all of the regulars have been aware, year after year, of his diagnoses, moving from ‘delayed’ to ‘maybe on-spectrum’ to ‘Autistic’.  So there really are no surprises – everyone knows to watch out for what he’s doing, where he’s going, and how to help cajole him back to where he’s supposed to be. Continue reading →