Autism Archives - Page 39 of 715

I’m trying to make my son’s 2nd birthday while on #COVID lockdown a happy one

As you may or may not know, today is Elliott's 15th birthday. Today also marks the second birthday in row that he's celebrated on COVID lockdown. While Lizze and I are trying to make arrangements for the boys to go over, it's not a quick process. There's a lot of planning that goes into visits when you are in the middle of a pandemic and have high risk people in both households. Elliott is bummed because he wasn't going to be able to see his mom on his birthday. As bad as this is going to sound, I was excited to to hear that he was feeling this way. The reason for that is not because I'm a dick but rather it shows me that he is indeed healing and…

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March 4, 2021

Not Sleeping by Alan Winnikoff

Guest Blog Post for The Autism Dad By Alan Winnikoff Author of the novel “Not Sleeping” I’ve often heard autism parents quote a particular statistic– 70% of special needs couples break up. I’ve never been able to verify this – it might be more urban legend than reality. After all, on the flip side, I know plenty of special needs couples who are hanging together, finding a way to make their relationship work, keeping their connection going, in spite of the pressures. Still, it’s no secret that raising an autistic child puts tremendous strain on a marriage. if this 70% number did turn out to be accurate, would it really be all that surprising? We are genetically programmed – it’s in our DNA – to push ourselves to exhaustion during…

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March 4, 2021

My thoughts

It can be hard to not drown in all the negativity

I've been feeling a little overwhelmed this week. Elliott is having sleep problems and he's in full on stubborn teenage mode. That means I can't get a great deal of cooperation from him in regards to getting his sleep cycle reset. He's stressed out and probably a bit depressed. I think that's completely understandable but we need to right this ship because it interferes with school and it's simply not healthy. That was the focus of therapy tonight. Hopefully, we can begin getting him back on track. I've opted to skip this week's podcast release because I have to much work that needs to get done and production is very time consuming. I could cramm everything in but that would increase my stress levels and I'm trying to be kind…

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March 2, 2021

My thoughts

Let’s get caught up

The boys and I have had a pretty good couple of days. We had some frustrating moments and Gavin is struggling a bit, especially in the problem solving department. It's getting to be frustrating for me because the need to address these struggles he's having is becoming more and more important. With Gavin wanting to move out, we need work on these things so he can better interact with whomever he's living with. As frustrating as those moments have been, they haven't defined out week. The back half of the week was a bit more eventful than we had planned for. We had a surprise immunology appointment for Gavin. His doctor wanted to do a televisit before refilling some of his meds. It was very last minute but I was…

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February 28, 2021

My thoughts

I’ve been feeling overwhelmed today

I'm finding myself feeling a bit overwhelmed today. I'm relieved that Gavin is less vulnerable to COVID because that's been a big worry for a long time. I'm relieved that the boys are doing better in school because remote learning has been a challenge. I'm also relieved that I won the power struggle with the stupid dog over going potty outside. Work has been incredibly slow this month, meaning March is going to be a leaner month and will likely present some challenges. That could literally change at any time though because I pick up new client all the time, some big and some small. I'm working on a few longer term projects at the moment and invoicing is still a couple weeks out. I've spent the last few days…

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February 23, 2021

My thoughts

How I’m doing after increasing my antidepressant

I mentioned last week that I would be speaking to my doctor about bumping up my antidepressant. After discussing things, we decided to double my current dose. I've been on 20mg/day of Prozac and I'm now on 40mg/day. I think I'm on day four or five of the new dose and there really isn't any news to report. It's likely to be a few weeks before I see any changes, if I'm going to see any changes. It may be a little faster because I've already been on Prozac for a couple of years. Either way, I feel good about the change. Outside of that, I need to lower my triglycerides a bit and continue losing weight. I'm in good health and I will rerun my labs in six months…

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February 22, 2021

My thoughts / Reviews

These stuffies are helping kids accept themselves just the way they are

I wanted to share the newest addition to my pare ts resource page. I'll get them added this week but I wanted to introduce you to MiMo Toys. MiMo Toys is helping kids feel loved and accepted for exactly who they are. MiMo offers 9 adorable plushies, each with a unique personality. Each character comes as a set including an oversized toy and a smaller sized version that makes for a great travel companion. The idea behind these characters is that they each have a strength, but also a challenge, just like me, just like you and just like all of our kids! What I really like about this is that each of these unique plushies are helping kids feel loved and accepted for exactly who they are and that’s…

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February 21, 2021

COVID19 / Gavin / My thoughts / Vaccines

Gavin’s in rough shape after his 2nd dose of the #COVID #vaccine

It's been a challenging weekend and I haven't been keeping up with the blog as a result. This will be a super quick update and I'll do more when I can. I wanted to let you guys know how Gavin is doing after his second dose of the Pfizer COVID vaccine. He recieved it at 3:30 pm on Friday. He was fine until late last night. When he finally woke me up at 6:30 am, he was in rough shape. So far his symptoms are massive headache, body aches, chills, and a whole lot of exhaustion. He also says that 2/3 of his spine aches, whatever the hell that means. There's no nausea or anything like that. I'm grateful for that because vomiting would have only made a bad situation…

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February 20, 2021