I have started a new blog on wordpress called ssjatreptow.wordpress.com. With the title Spectrum mom.

IEP'S

Adrian's next IEP is coming up on June First. He will be moving to First grade next year. Because he has difficulty with transitions he has been meeting with his teachers for next year for the past couple of Fridays. He seems to like his special education teacher who we met last Friday. I am not sure about his first grade teacher because I have not met her yet. This is always the most difficult part of the year for me. I have to meet with about 10 to 15 people who will all tell me how Adrian has done throughout the year. Then I worry about details like how will busing be provided. He has to be strapped in because he tries to move freely while the bus is in motion. Will the new teachers accept the fact that he has accidents. Truth is he is still not completely toilet trained. My husband and I have tried dang near everything we can think of to get him completely toilet and he is not. I bought a book on toilet training children with delays and read most of it. I am hoping to do a lot over the summer. That has been my hope every year for the last five years though. Hopefully this year is a success.

adventures Outside

Today my son decided that since his sister was at a friends house he would go over too. This has happened a total of three times since we moved in our home almost six years ago. My son has a terrible fear of being outside. I am not sure exactly what triggers this fear, but I can see it almost every time he decides to try going outside. As I've said before he has several sensory issues as many children with an autism spectrum disorder do. I can only imagine how difficult it is for a child who is sensitive to sight, sound, smell, taste and touch to go outside. Lights bother him, noise bothers him. Trying to understand how he makes this work when he is outside is puzzling to say the least. It is nothing short of a miracle when he actually feels comfortable enough to venture out. I have problems getting him to go out to pick his sister up from the bus. It's a three minute walk and I have got him to make the trip three times out of the entire school year. Because of this difficulty my husband who works third shift and never seems to make it to bed before 10 am must get up and pick up our daughter from the bus stop almost everyday at 3:40 pm this means he gets roughly 4 1/2 hours of sleep a day! The amazing part is that he manages to do so and still work an 8 hour day six days a week without injuring himself!!! The Man is plainly amazing!!! He has now taken on the job of bringing Jade back and forth to soccer practice twice a week :) They both enjoy it because of their love of sports!! Adrian went to Jades first practice and did well but has not wanted to go again so far. I am hoping he does well through Jade's six soccer games. I do not want to miss those!!! I don't drive so Steve could not stay home with Adrian even if he wanted to. I am hoping that Adrian will be able to handle the situation because I know his sister will want him there. That's all I really can do is hope. Maybe Adrian will adjust to being outside more often and maybe he won't only time will tell. For right now we will just see how the first game goes and take it from there.

writing from a college course

Probably the single most important transition in one's life is the transition to parenthood. Before children you can sleep in as late as you want on weekends, enjoy late nights with your spouse, spend time with your friends, and enjoy peace. After children Life is more wonderful than before. Every thing is chaotic and beautiful at the same time. Here you are responsible for another life and helping your child become a good person with morals and a sense of responsibility and a personality all their own. Teaching them manners as well as building their confidence in themselves. Helping them find their individualism and encouraging them to be individuals and not to follow the crowd. The worst transition a kid can make is the transition into terrible two's. A whole new parenting style is learned for this phase. In my case I let my child have melt downs. I could not do enough to stop tantrums and my children did not want to be coddled so I just let them do what they needed to. I have learned that with every phase of a child's life a phase of a parent's life is made. When my kids learned to walk, I learned to baby proof the house, when my kids learned fluent vocabulary, I learned it is not important to correct it is only important to encourage,when my oldest went to pre-school I learned it is important to let go a little so they have room to grow and be independent. I never imagined how much I would learn as my children grew, but I have learned a lot with them and I have many years of learning to go. That is the marvelous thing about parenting, you are supposed to teach your kids and yet they end up teaching you more than you ever thought you could learn.

Autism Awareness Month

This should have been posted Saturday but with two children in the house I am barely ever at the computer anymore. The kids enjoy taking turns or fighting over it now. I have discovered an app on my iPod that will allow me to post from my iPod which means In can post more often. Now about Autism Awareness this is important because as any parent of child with Autism can tell you the level of awareness of people around you can make a huge difference. I am forever trying to tell people about my son's Autism. Sometimes I find people who listen and sometimes all I find is ignorance. I still have to try the more people know the more they accept. My son was diagnosed at the age of six with PDD (NOS). That was almost a year ago. May 28, 2010 to be exact. Since then I have never stopped reading on the subject of Autism. Looking at research data and reading up on all new Autism documents. I have read hundreds of things on Autism, and though I understand more about Autism I still am never quite sure what to tell people about why Autism happens and what we can do about it. We do therapy and our son is enrolled in a special program. This summer in addition to therapy he will take a social play class too. We enroll him in therapy and now play group hoping he can learn the skills he needs to be accepted. That is what I want most for him!! I do not want him to feel left out or odd or alone ever!! I want him to be able to relate to others and share common interests and know that he is accepted. He has HUGE potential as all children do but if he is only ever seen as the Autistic kid what are the chances of him reaching his potential? My husband and I recently had a t-shirt and sweatshirt saying Autism help unlock a piece of the puzzle for our son Adrian made. I wear mine to raise awareness and I have not had anyone ask me about Autism or Adrian yet. I am shocked however because before the t-shirt I would have complete strangers in line ahead of me talking about how bad my son is and how I should beat him. Yeah how about I beat them. I have been known to spank, but spanking does not work on my son unless he knows what he did. I would never spank him for acting up in a store when his sensory issues are so bad that lights physically cause him pain!!! To those people I say mind your own damn business or scream he has Autism now shut up. This usually works. Trying to spread awareness to people who think my son should be beat for every little thing he does and that will help don't need my message what they need is a message on human decency and how to behave like you have a kind bone in your body!!! Sorry if i'm rambling but it just angers so much!!!!!!! I think I'm done for today thanks for listening :)

Last month after much deliberating between my husband and I we decided to purchase Adrian an ipod touch. We could not have made a better decision. That little piece of electronic has been my sons greatest tool since the day we purchased it. He reads books on it, watches videos, uses netflix and kindle and other programs. We thought it might be a bad choice because he is prone to violence and has a tendency to throw things. We purchased an additional warranty for drops and spills just in case. He has dropped it on the floor a couple of times without harm. I purchased a screen protector, a silicone back and a hard back. He chewed the silicone back and would not leave the hard back on. Still It works just fine. Today I was looking through Autism Apps on a review page http://www.autismepicenter.com/autism-blog/blog2.php/2010/10/23/autism-apps-that-will-help-you that rates apps. I was originally going to purchase proliquo2go and decided to hold off. I found an app on the review sheet that looked interesting and went to itunes to read more. After reading the app sounds like exactly what my son can use to help him. He is obsessed with lists and first we than we and this app is all about that. We paid $9.99 today to download First Than Visual Schedule by Good Karma Applications and I started looking through the app. I can download pictures of my son's personal items like snow pants boots and such into the program. He is a vary visual and specific child. Everything needs to look just like it does in real life for him so this program will be a tremendous help. I will post more as we use the program more. For now I have hope that this will help to avoid are usual morning transition meltdowns.

My son is six, his name is Adrian and he was diagnosed with PDD-NOS in May 2010.
Adrian just went crazy because Comcast On demand got an error message when he tried to watch Team Umi Zoomi. I set it up oh the kids tv and he fought me for fifteen minutes, tried to break our Wii and the tv in our living room because he could not watch it in the living room. Normally he would be at school today but he has the day off. This creates tons of chaos in our home. any break from normal activity sends him into a violent panic. Right now I am debating on whether to buy an ipod touch and a program called proloquo2go. For more information visit: http://www.proloquo2go.com . My husband is sure that our son in a fit of rage would break an ipod touch and I can not say I blame him. He brings for example the numerous keyboard and mouse combos we have had to replace, speakers of every kind, and the fact that he has either knocked down or tried to knock down several items in our house ie. computer monitors, towers and tv's. My fact is that we see a lot less rage episodes than we used to and I think this is light weight and small enough that he may not try to do anything to it at all. We can also buy a heavy duty warranty that will cover many things including drops and spills. I think the program would make it easier for him to communicate his needs. His is verbal, but has a very hard time expressing himself and this is what causes most of  his episodes. I would like opinions from other parents who have had to deal with this type of issue. Thanks in advance for listening.

Well another Christmas has come to pass. The kids seemed to like all of their presents. Most everything went well except for the fact that my husband is sick and wants to do nothing but be in bed which never happens during holidays. A present we bought for our daughter also did not seem to work out so far. I may take it to a pro and see of they can handle it. Adrian did pretty well over the holiday. We went to my In-laws house and Adrian expected everyone to rush through dinner to open presents. He waited about 45 minutes for everyone to completely eat while telling everybody to hurry. I was honestly surprised that he did not rip open presents. Jade lost a tooth over the weekend. She was so excited. We do not do the tooth Fairy anymore though. Adrian is almost Seven and has not lost a tooth yet, I am not sure if that is normal for a child with his condition or not. Something to discuss with the dentist I guess. Jade has been having a lot more ear sensitivity lately. I thought we were going to hear back from Generation Care about therapy for her. I will have to contact them after I finish solving our health insurance problem. I am waiting on paperwork because the company my husbands employer provides health insurance through is refusing to pay for a list of visits to various providers because our coverage lapsed for six months while my husband was laid off and the company thinks they have a right to deny coverage because of some preexisting condition in the medical contract. Except for the fact that these medical conditions are new to this year and we have had complete coverage all year. They said they sent us an entire packet to fill out and I have know idea what they are talking about because we never received it. In fact I just spoke to someone from the insurance company on Monday the 20th and they said they were sending paperwork  out that day. Even with the holiday they are only in Grand Rapids so we should have received it. The claim is for a couple thousand dollars. We have already paid a $5,000 co-pay for the year on top of $160 a month for premiums so they should cover the $2,000 Hopefully they will. Sorry to talk about that but that's what happens when you have children with health problems, you rack up large medical bills!!!!! It's scary to think they may not cover every trip our son has to make to his Neurologist twice ever six months because they think it's a preexisting condition. Jade also sees the same neurologist once every six months, but her condition occurred before the lapse so they have to pay for hers. That is what's going on in our world right now. Bye!!!