This is the very first Friday that the boys no longer have school. I'm not sure...scratch that....I KNOW we aren't ready for this. We struggle during the school year when they are gone for most of the day. I love my boys but they are very challenging and with Lizze down for the count most of the time, it's going to be a VERY long summer. In my little "fantasy world" I would like to take the boys camping, to Cook Forest State Park, in Clarion PA. This is my ABSOLUTE favorite place in the world, at least that I have actually been to.  The reality of a trip like this would most likely be a disaster. Lizze doesn't do well with bugs and we would be in the middle…

In an effort to stabilize the financial side of our lives we have been working on something that we will be launching shortly. We are hoping that this will help to better provide for our children's needs. The Vault (tentative name) is a medical record binder. Here is a summary of what this is and how it came to be. Lizze wrote this to explain better what this is all about. As the mother of three Autistic boys, I remember daydreaming with each pregnancy about their childhood. How their pediatrician would keep the medical records and I would only bring them in for appointments once a year, unless they were sick. Then my boys were born and things were obviously bound to be different. My oldest has numerous specialists mostly revolving around…

So this morning Gavin was getting ready to go to OT....oh yeah Gavin has started OT again (I'll post about that later). Anyway, Elliott came down stairs and told me that "Gavin needs to learn how to use mouthwash the right way". I told Elliott Gavin doesn't use mouth wash. Elliott said, "yes he is daddy and he spit it all over the sink".  Let's pause for just a minute to bring everyone up to speed. Gavin has struggled with PICA for many years. One of his most favorite things to ingest was mouthwash. We discovered this about 2 years ago. He had ingested a bottle of kids mouthwash. After a call to poison control and a trip to the ER we have removed this stuff from the house and…

I have wanted to provide a place for special needs parents to go and seek advice or connect with other special needs parents for awhile now.. I know there aren't many places you can go and be honest about your experiences. So I created  Lost and Tired Autism Support. I tested this out  previously but it was basically a  plugin and didn't work out very well. This is a MUCH nicer setup and performs exceptionally well. This is open to anyone, even if you just want to learn more about Autism. As I said earlier, I want to provide a safe place to connect with other parents, seek advice or simply vent. You will have to register (this prevents spam) but that takes only a minute and you will have immediate access. I…

On Monday, I had beakfast with Gavin at his school. Gavin was really excited about this. We had pancakes and juice. Good times were had by all. It was nice to spend some 1 on 1 time with Gavin, as that doesn't happen very often. The only problem was that we had to eat them with sporks. That was a challange to say the least. I was really nice of the school to put this together for everyone.  

We had the boys to the pediatrician this afternoon. We made had several appointments in a row so we had to bring everyone. Needless to say it was a long day, especially for the boys. Emmett NEVER leaves to go any where without his "Android4Autism" device. So while we waited he practiced drawing shapes, created his own story and played memory. However, the most entertaining moments were when he decided to start taking pictures of everyone in the room. He totally did this on his own and took dozens of pictures and some video. He would say, "Elliott smile", "Gavin smile" and "mommy smile" as he took their pictures. I shot some video of this cause it was really cute and I was actually impressed that he has figured all this out…

With everything going on right now I forgot to bring this up. Last week Emmett's therapists told us that she thinks Emmett may be a savant. While significantly language and speech delayed, Emmett is simply absorbing everything else. He is learning very rapidly and remembering almost everything. I'm not quite sure what to think about this. Although, I will say that aside from speech and language, it's like Emmett just "woke up", if that makes sense. It will be interesting to see where he is when we go back to see the developmental neurologist for a follow up. Emotionally, Emmett is still behind but his intelligence is simply amazing (as we keep hearing from the people evaluating him). Anyway, I just thought I would share that with you all. Does anyone…

So this was brought up in an earlier post. Should Autism and Aspergers be separate disorders? There is a growing movement to make Aspergers Syndrome a separate disorder from Autism. I believe that at some point it will most likely happen. The logic behind it is that Autism and Aspergers may share similar traits they are profoundly different. I think it causes a lot of confusion and misunderstanding within the community. As a father to 3 boys across the spectrum I can honestly say that there is a HUGE difference between Autism and Aspergers. Parenting a child with Autism is so profoundly different from parenting a child with Aspergers. So we're clear, I'm NOT saying that raising a child with Aspergers is in any way easy....because it's NOT. I think that the…