Autism... um.. yeah..I knew what it was. I didn't want to believe that it was now connected to my Little Miss. At the time, I was looking at this almost 3 year old little girl in front of me, who was banging two blocks together, speaking in her gibberish tongue. I was thinking to myself.. how did this happen and what did I do for this to happen. The Momma Guilt. Yup. It was how did I mess my child up. I had it.That is a feeling that I think every parent has when they see their child struggling or needs extra help. So with that diagnosis, what were we supposed to do with it. How are we as parents going to try and help this child grow, move forward and prosper? We had entered into world we didn't understand or know about. Its like moving to a place where you don't understand the customs or language. You might have just put me in the middle of China. With terminology like ABA, High and Low functioning, SPD, we walked out of the Doctor's office confused and befuddled. So where was the first place I went? The internet! And then when I got even more confused, I vented.. on the now unpopular Myspace. Let me tell you this.. the Beatles were right about one thing.. Having a little help from Friends, ROCKS! There were people within my friend circle that were dealing with same thing I was. Or they had already gone through it. Being Military, you rely heavily on your friends to get you through the day to day sometimes. So that is why we when we make friends, we choose wisely but we make life long friends. Anyways, I can't tell you how many questions I asked, where I thought I was sounding stupid. But as my mother always said, "A, There is no such thing as a stupid question.." I had one friend, that listened to my rants, answered my questions and supported me in my quest to understand my daughter. She got me. Why? Because she has a son who was going through the same thing as my daughter. And even though she was far away, she was still there. So Friends Rock...
Back to the Autism.. so being assessed by the Military Medical in Hawaii( that is where we were stationed at the time), was a challenge. As there wasn't support out there. Trying to get services the Doctors wanted for Little Miss was like asking a 3 year old to share a toy. It was a fight. We finally got ABA services for her and she started preschool. There we fought again with the Hawaiian school system for speech and OT. There is a recurring theme here.. We had to fight for services and programs for this child. And no one would work with us. School didn't want to deal with ABA,Doctors didn't want to deal with the school... no one wanted to be on the same page in regards to this child's education and development.So on top all of that, We are still dealing with all the "wonderful" quirks Autism presents. The meltdowns, the over stimulation, the flapping. We didn't know what triggered those things. We found out that the kid hated loud noises and crowed places. So no Air shows for us. Which sucked because at the time we lived pretty much next door to Hickam AFB. So the daily jet exercises would start the almost two hour long meltdowns on a daily. It wasn't until we got here to Maryland, when things settled. We still get Flappy when we are happy. We still need to have pepperoni with everything and we still need to bring our earphones to movies. We have had to accept Autism as our way of life. So when my youngest, Little Man was diagnosised, it was a shock, but I had the understanding of what needed to be done.. And Little man is.. well he is my little ping pong ball.. and a new blog post...
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