Today is the day we put up our sensory friendly Christmas tree. We use an artificial tree that doesn't have the smell of pine, which I happen to really like,  but the rest of my family doesn't.  We have also moved to plane white lights.  Gone are the flashing, chasing or strobe lights.  Bright, Shiney, and noisy ornaments have gone extinct in our house as well.  Homemade paper ornaments are all you'll find on our Christmas tree. While it may not be as bright and festive as most others, it's also not going to push my kids and wife over the edge and into an overstimulated free fall. As far as decorating around the house, we keep things very simple. In a family with 4 people on the #Autism spectrum,…

I wanted to share the information we received from the Cleveland Clinic's exclusive Pain Rehabilitation Program coordinator yesterday. Lizze got the call yesterday afternoon. Here is what we learned. The soonest Lizze will get in to the program is going to be late January. There is a waiting list and they are requiring Lizze to have her sleep study -for apnea- and her follow up appointment with her sleep neurologist before she enters the program. Her sleep study is this coming week and her follow up appointment is still a couple weeks out. We also got a breakdown of expenses as well. This is the list of known expenses as of this point in time. 1) Cheapest Hotel is $70/night x 15 nights = $1,050.00. 2) Various textbooks will be…

It occurred to me the other day that I almost never use the word #Autism anymore.  On occasion, I use it in the title of a post, mostly for SEO reasons.  However, most of the time when I talk about my kids anymore, I don't use the word #Autism. It got me thinking.  Does that mean something? Is me not using the word #Autism as often anymore have some deeper meaning? The only time that I'm aware of using the words #Autism in regards to my kids anymore is usually when I'm sharing stories about our experience or maybe talking to their therapist. To me, my boys are just my boys.  I've never defined them by their diagnosis and so majority of the time #Autism never crosses my mind. Perhaps,…

I try to have this discussion every year about this time.  I personally enjoy and actually learn quite a bit about how your family handles the Christmas Holiday. Not everyone celebrates Christmas, I realize that.  The question is basically, how do you handle the holiday season? This tends to be a very overstimulating time of year for many kids and adults only the #Autism spectrum. It would be great if we could share some tips or tricks on how you minimize the holiday stress for your child on the sectrum. In the comments below, please share with us, how you handle the Christmas/Holiday season? How do you make it easier for your child with #Autism? How does your child on the spectrum respond to all the bright light, noise and…

It's been awhile since I updated you all on how my personal battle with depression is going. I'm not quite sure how to sum things up because there is so much going on in my life. Having said that, I thinks it's safe to say that I've been better but I've also been worse. I'm still taking my medication every day.  I'm still on 40mg of Paxil/day. I do think it helps and while it doesn't make things perfect it does help me to make it through the day.  Sometimes, making it to the end of the day is a victory in and of itself. I've thought about paying a visit to my doctor but truthfully, I'm not sure there's a whole lot more she can do. I talked with…

As you know, we have recently, like within the last week, begun a new journey with Elliott. This journey is kinda one of those bumps in the road that causes you to veer off course, at least for a little while. For us, that bump in the road was the discovery that Elliott has a tree nut allergy. The allergy is more specifically tied to almonds but he can't have any tree nuts anymore. This was most definitely unexpected but something that we are really trying to take in stride. In truth, we're pretty stressed out about this but we're also doing our best not to let Elliott know just how concerned we are.  I think that most kids would be rightfully upset to loose a huge portion of their…