Read more about the article A real life example of why #Autism Parenting is so challenging
Autism Parenting Insight / Inspirational Posts / My thoughts

A real life example of why #Autism Parenting is so challenging

Throughout the school year, we've had some concerns with certain teachers. It's not that they're doing something that was clearly wrong but rather we disagreed with their approach to dealing with kids on the Autism Spectrum. Recently, Elliott has been emotionally distraught over things he said were happening in the classroom. These things ranged from being singled out in front of the class, being questioned about his medications and being shamed over his struggles with homework. Whenever we've approached the teachers about this, Elliott says he would be confronted the next day by his teachers and he was terrified. When this came to our attention last week (Thursday), my initial reaction is one of being pissed off and wanting blood. He's one of my babies and I'm a papa bear.…

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April 11, 2018
Read more about the article How U-Laces help my family and can probably help yours as well
Autism Parenting Insight / My thoughts

How U-Laces help my family and can probably help yours as well

I love connecting people with the technology that can improve their lives. When you're a special needs parent, sometimes the simplest life hack can make all the difference in the world. One example of this in my house, is U-Lace. I've worked with, written about and did a detailed review of U-Lace before. You can check out the YouTube video, as well as the gallery from that review below. https://youtu.be/vfbX5UnGvSw Click the image to view the gallery [foogallery id="67595"] Seeing as it's Autism Awareness month, I wanted to circle back and share how U-Lace has benefited my Autism family because they may just benefit yours as well. ☺ Let's start off by explaining what U-Laces are and how they can benefit a child with Autism. If you check out their…

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April 8, 2018
Read more about the article Confessions of an #Autism Dad: I’m emotionally struggling tonight
Autism Parenting Insight / Confessions / My thoughts

Confessions of an #Autism Dad: I’m emotionally struggling tonight

I've been trying to write all day and I just can string my thoughts together in a way that makes sense outside of my own head. In the spirit of Autism Awareness month and in an attempt to help you better understand what at least this Autism Dad is struggling with, here's what I'm feeling tonight. I'm exhausted. I'm overwhelmed. I'm beyond stressed out. I'm totally emotionally drained. I'm completely physically drained. I'm finding myself in a dark place tonight. I'm feeling seriously demoralized and beaten down. I'm broken hearted for reasons that are too many to explain. I'm conflicted because I know tomorrow's a new day but it seems far away. I'm doing the best I can but I can't fix the many things in our lives that need…

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April 8, 2018
Read more about the article Doing right by Gavin for his 18th birthday isn’t as easy as it sounds
Autism Parenting Insight / Gavin / My thoughts

Doing right by Gavin for his 18th birthday isn’t as easy as it sounds

Gavin will turn eighteen in a few days. To be honest, that's a pretty big deal for a number of reasons. The most obvious is that he's physically made it to eighteen and I say that because of his fragile health. He's had some close calls over the years and there were times we weren't sure we would ever see this day. Instinctively, we want to make a huge deal out of this day. We want Gavin to have the best birthday of his life thus far. There are so many things that Gavin will never be able to celebrate. Things like high school graduation, getting his driver's license, going to college and truly living on his own. As much as we want to through a huge party for him…

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January 14, 2018
Read more about the article It’s so easy to forget he struggles to express himself
Autism Parenting Insight / Emmett John / My thoughts

It’s so easy to forget he struggles to express himself

There's something that is often overlooked when it comes to Emmett. He's incredibly intelligent and I mean scary smart. Academically he's way ahead of where he should be and just keeps going. This is something we feel blessed to be able to witness but there is a downside. Emmett is so smart and so articulate that it's incredibly easy to forget that he has a very, very difficult time with expressive language. Majority of the time, he's unable to tell us anything about how he's feeling or what's upsetting him. Tonight is a perfect example of this. Lizze and I are catching up on some shows we recorded and out of nowhere, Emmett appears. We can see he's in distress but the only thing he can say is I don't…

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January 13, 2018
Read more about the article Why family therapy is important, especially for special needs families
Autism Parenting Insight / Family Therapy / Gavin / My thoughts

Why family therapy is important, especially for special needs families

One of the reasons we have maintained family therapy for all this time is because it's so easy to overlook things when it comes to the emotional health of our special needs kids. Last night is a great example of when we learned things that we hadn't known prior. This newfound knowledge helps us to address things that are upsetting one of more of the kids. We spent Tuesday night focused on Gavin. Dr. Pattie needed brought up to speed because Gavin's had several appointments since the last time she saw him and it's important that everyone be on the same page. Gavin had mentioned that he needed to talk about one of his recent missions. These missions are the result of schizoohrenic hallucinations and while they are very real…

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January 10, 2018
Read more about the article Please don’t take even the little things for granted
Autism Parenting Insight / Inspirational Posts / My thoughts

Please don’t take even the little things for granted

I've been feeling optimistic lately and I still am, but at the same time I'm feeling overwhelmed. For some reason, life is feeling heavy and difficult to carry. Nothing has happened that would shake up my snow globe, so to speak. The boys have been a handful and then some, all day long. Emmett can't decide on anything and Elliott is becoming more and more difficult to feed because why wouldn't he. It's all sensory related stuff and very difficult, if not impossible to work through. We are basically buying food in an attempt to get the two youngest to eat and they won't. Sometimes they'll try it but there always end up being something wrong with the taste or smell and they won't eat it. We spend more money…

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January 7, 2018
Read more about the article It’s so import to connect with your kids
Autism Parenting Insight / Emmett John / My thoughts

It’s so import to connect with your kids

I spent the early part of the morning working on some writing gigs. The second and most fun part of the morning was spent playing Connect Four with my tiniest little minion Emmett. We must have played twenty games. Some were won and many others lost because Emmett is freakishly good with anything related to patterns. He's legitimately hard to beat when it comes to anything like this. Win or lose, we had so much fun playing together. It's really important to me that I go out of my way to connect with my kids. Sometimes it's harder to connect with kids on the Autism Spectrum and that's one of the reasons it's so important to meet them wherever they are. For me today, that meant playing endless games of…

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January 3, 2018