I feel like I’m failing but am I really?

It was another difficult night and a very challenging morning. Elliott didn't want to go to school again because when he's there, he can't stop thinking about him mom leaving and our ferret dying. He's worried about what the teachers might say when he becomes upset. He's an anxious kid to begin with and he's miserable because of all this. He ultimately went and I'm so proud of him for doing that. I know he's going to have a rough day but if he can stick it out, they will eventually get better. Emmett on the other hand, refused to go to school. This is coming from a kid who's favorite place in the world is often school. There are a number of reasons for him not wanting to go…

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I’m heartbroken because my kids are hurting

I'm going to try to go to bed as soon as the kids do. I'm absolutely exhausted. The boys had therapy tonight and we spent a large part of that time brain storming ideas on how to help them make it through the school day. The kids are struggling and they tend to struggle a great deal more when they're at school. I can't fix what's causing them pain and I can't answer the questions they want answers to. All I can do is help them to learn the skills needed to better cope with all of this and make sure they have a safe environment where they can speak freely with their therapist. I'm overwhelmed by their struggles, so I can't imagine how they feel. When we got home,…

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A turbulent and emotional roller-coaster

We had a pretty rough night here in The Autism Dad household. It was all things that were emotional in nature and outside of anyone's control. It sorta came to a head at therapy last night. It was a turbulent emotional roller-coaster in the sense that the boys talked about things they didn't want to talk about. When we came home, everyone was emotionally spent and in need of decompression. Elliott was so stressed out about things he was supposed to do today and I finally decided to pull the plug on some of it, simply to provide him some relief. These things are important but so is his sanity and emotional wellbeing. It was a judgment call and I made it. Poor Emmett was so stressed out that he…

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I found a great way to disconnect and spend time as a family

I want to end the day on a positive note, by sharing something cool that the boys and I did as a family. A large part of this was Emmett and myself. Frankly, Emmett was the muscle behind this puzzle. ☺ Emmett is huge into things like board games and puzzles. He really enjoys doing these things as a family but unfortunately, not everyone else does. Recently, Emmett has become fascinated with puzzles, especially those with hundreds of pieces and complicated pictures. I ordered him one off of Amazon and it was delivered on Sunday. 4.5 out of 5 stars  60ReviewsBuffalo Games - Cats Collection - Sweet Shop Kittens - 750 Piece Jigsaw Puzzle We worked on it for a little while Sunday night and it even attracted the attention of…

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I’m trying to keep everyone’s head above water and I’m failing

Mr. Emmett is not in school today for a number of reasons but the main reason is that his mouth is full of sores. I've been worried that all this new stress in his life was going to cause an increase in fever flares and that appears to be the case. Hopefully, this is going to pass quickly but he's got multiple sores and it's been a little while since that's happened. Weve doubled up on the anti-virals per his doctor's instructions and hopefully things will improve sooner than later. This is an older picture of the sores are very silimar. He's in too much pain to get a picture. I only grab pictures to document the sores so we can show his doctor. They've evolved over the years and…

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How would you react if this was said to your child at school? **UPDATED**

There's so much to update you all on but I'm falling behind on a lot of that. I mentioned earlier that we weren't having a good day and I wanted to elaborate on that as I had promised I would. The boys are really struggling with school right now and as much as I hate to say this, some of the teachers aren't helping. In fact, they're making things worse. Before I dip into this, I want to be clear that while I'm pissed off and frustrated, I don't believe there's any malicious intent behind the things I'm going to share. That doesn't mean it's okay, because it isn't but I know they mean well. The boys didn't have school last Friday due to a teacher in service day. We…

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Celebrating forward progress

This is not proving to be a good day and we have a tremendous amount that still needs done. I'll talk about that a bit later. Right now I want to focus on Mr. Gavin for a minute. First of all, he's having a really good morning and that's always a good thing. Second, he's putting on a bit of desperately needed weight. That's incredibly positive. ☺ Gavin has always struggled with situational awareness. He's always struggled with being aware of his surroundings. It's definitely a problem and it frequently leads to him hurting himself or breaking something. Since Gavin got his phone, he pretty much always had his headphones on, which is fine. The problem arises when he's walking from place to place, whether inside the house or away…

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The most stressful and amazing weekend ever

I haven't written much this weekend. If you follow me on Twitter, you are probably more up to date. Twitter is the best place to keep up with our adventures, especially when I don't have the time or energy to write here. You don't wanna be left out do you? No? Great!! Maybe you should click the link above and then click the follow button. Joking aside, it's been an incredibly stressful weekend but ultimately a very positive one. The main focus was dealing with the car situation or rather the lack of car situation. I do not like car shopping. In fact, it's quite literally one of my absolute least favorite things to do, but sometimes one doesn't have a choice. Emmett and I went car shopping on Saturday.…

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