Cook Forest Archives - The Autism Dad

We took a much needed #mentalhealth day

Yesterday was amazing. It was also exhausting because I drove for over 5 hours but it was amazing nonetheless. As I mentioned in my last post, the boys had a very rough Tuesday night therapy session. While I'm not going to dive into the specifics of that, all that matters for context is that it was extremely emotional for them. I had decided to give all of us a mental health day and so I drove them out to Cook Forest State Park, near Clarion PA. It's about a 2.5 hour drive from our house but my parents were there and we wanted to visit them for a little while. The drive wasn't that bad and it was actually the first road trip we've taken in the new car. I…

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May 13, 2021

Day Trips / Family Fun / My thoughts

It’s been emotionally overwhelming day for my kids

Today has been really upsetting and emotionally overwhelming for the boys. As a an adult, I found myself overwhelmed also, so I can only imagine how the boys feel. I was texting with a friend this evening and that helped me quite a bit actually because it was a pleasant distraction from everything that was going on. I realized the boys both needed and deserved a distraction of their own. I wanted to be able to help the boys to decompress and move forward so we had an impromptu bonfire tonight. We just cooked hotdogs but they were surprised and really excited to do that. I also decided to move some meetings around and give all of us a much needed a mental health day. I'm taking the kids to…

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May 12, 2021

My thoughts / New Beginnings

Trying desperately to not let their summer be defined by the collapse of my marriage

As the summer winds to a close, it was very important to me that the last major experience the kids had before school starting, wasn't their lives being turned upside down when their Mom left. Emmett has been really stressed out in particular because he's convinced that he will have to write twelve sentences about his summer and he didn't want to have to talk about what happened. While I seriously doubt anyone would make him talk about what happened in front of his class, I understood where he was coming from and so did my parents. Lizze and I had been planning to take them to the Great Lakes Science Center before school started and that was still the plan, only less one person. My Mom and Dad decided…

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August 18, 2019

My thoughts / New Beginnings

I’m hoping this short trip helps us get our footing

We're on our way to Cook Forest State Park. We'll probably arrive around 11 AM and the boys are really excited. I'm not feeling so well this morning. It's not that I'm sick, I'm just heartbroken. The truth at its most fundamental level is that I miss my wife. This is really hard for me because I have to be strong for the kids but at the same time, I've also lost my best friend. I don't really know what to do anymore. Every part of me is grieving and it's sometime hard to hold it together. In a way, I feel like it's good for the kids to see me grieving at times because it's a reminder that they aren't alone. This is devastating for all four of us.…

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August 17, 2019