Every once in a while, parents need a night off, which is perfectly fine. Of course, while your children are young, you can’t leave them alone, so you need to find a babysitter for them. If the first port of call - AKA your family and friends - aren’t available or you feel bad always asking them to watch your child, then you may want to search for a babysitter.
Being an Autism parent is difficult, in every sense of the word. I have good days where I feel like we make forward progress and I'm filled with hope. I also have bad days where it can seem like moving forward is an impossible task and giving up is a reoccurring thought I can't get out of my head. Sometimes I have days that are somewhere in between. Something that I learned early on was the importance of being positive. Being positive doesn't mean that I sugar coat anything or try to see the things in my life through rose colored glasses. While that may put a more positive spin on things, it wouldn't be truthful and therefore unhelpful to anyone, including myself. In my experience, being positive means celebrating…
I'm not doing so well today. You may recall that I suffered a serious back injury when I was working as paramedic. I never had the surgery to fix it but I've been doing pretty good the past few years. It flares up every once in awhile and lasts for a few days before I'm okay again. My back went out a few days ago but I don't remember doing anything that triggered it. I've been walking for the last few days because that's the only thing that has ever helped. It's been recommended that I see a chiropractor to help with my back. Walking has helped the muscle pain from all the compensation they've been doing to take the stress off my spine. That's a positive thing because I…
I wanted to take a few minutes and share what I consider to be a major milestone in how I'm managing my Depression. Depression has been a part of my life since my early teens and will likely be an indefinite part of my life. While Depression is a consistent part of my mental and emotional health, how I choose to manage it can change from time to time. The three most important parts of managing Depression involves therapy, medication (if needed) and exercise. Everyone is different but generally speaking, the three pronged approach tends to be the best fit for most people. I'm not like most people and things like talk therapy, have never really been that effective for me personally. My weapon of choice has been medication and…
One of the things I'm pushing myself to do right now is manage my stress in more natural ways. My life is so full of stress, there's times it hard to find room to breathe. What I'm trying to do is make the room for me to breathe and in doing so, give myself a better chance to cope with the things going in in my life. I always have things to worry about. Gavin's declining and thinking about where that is going to take us, scared the shit out of me. Emmett is dealing with this fever disorder, nightmares and whatever is causing these tummy aches. Elliott is an emotional train wreck right now. Autism, extreme anxiety and puberty are not being kind to him. Lizze is miserable most…
Emmett woke up about 4 AM with a tummy ache. He climbed into bed with us and snuggled me. I don't think he ever fell back asleep. It was pretty clear that he was miserable. There's a stomach bug going around the school but to be completely honest, this could also just be an Emmett thing. At the moment, Emmett is laying down in our bed resting. He's watching Netflix while he's buried in blankets and surrounded by pillows. He's not eating anything and that's another sign that somethings not right. Hopefully, he will feel better as the day moves forward.
I wanted to just push out a quick update in regards to about how our meeting at the school went tonight. The meeting went well. Unfortunately, only five or six sets of parents showed up but whatever. We learned more about the safety steps they are implementing in order to keep our kids safe. We also talked about setting up a PTA type group. The principal and I will be working on some fundraising projects. There are a few other parents who are join us as well and that's really awesome. It was a positive meeting and I'm glad we made the time to go..
I'm one of those people who believes that humanity is inherently good. I think that the majority of people are good souls, regardless of disability, race, ethnicity, religion, gender sexual orientation or gender identity. No one will ever convince me otherwise. Having stated my default outlook on life, I'm not oblivious to all the assholes, of which there are many. One such asshole is continuing to thwart my efforts at helping the Autism and Special Needs Parenting communities by continuing to report the posts I share on my own timeline and page as spam or offensive. They continue to claim that I'm violating community guidelines and Facebook automatically removes every post reported. I can see dozens of these every single day. When I click on the it's not spam link,…