There's nothing quite like spending time with my kids. I'm lucky enough to be in their lives on the daily and I'm always looking for ways to engage with them that doesn't require a screen. Our latest foray in this unplugged lifestyle, has found us working in puzzles. There's nothing quite like spending a rainy Sunday afternoon working on a 1000 piece puzzle with my youngest, Emmett.
I didn't do anything incredibly productive last night and I'm okay with that. I hardly get any time to myself and when I do, a large part of me wants to do absolutely nothing. I'm exhausted and overwhelmed but these little breaks are pretty awesome. They're a necessity, even if I don't do anything. Last night, I did manage to record a podcast. I felt inspired to talk about something that is consuming my life at the moment and that topic is divorce. It's a shorter episode, less than 20 minutes but I wanted to talk about navigating divorce when Autistic kids are involved. It's a delicate issue to speak about, but an important one. The plan is to release it next Friday but I'm not entirely sure. I'm coordinating…
I barely got the kids to school today because Elliott and Emmett are struggling so much. This is so much worse this time around. I'm so frustrated because every single day is a nightmare now and the struggle is unbelievable. When I had the boys to Akron Children's Behavioral Health this week, we talked about how to help them manage. He explained that the boys had been traumatized in 2014 when their mom left and retraumatized when she left again in August. Unfortunately, there isn't any medication that is going to fix this. The only thing that will eventually help is time and lots of therapy. The problem at this point is that this trauma is so new and they still refuse to talk about it. This is impacting every…
It's been an got very little accomplished kinda day. Emmett came home from school about 10 AM because he was in too much pain. He went and tried to stick it out but it was too much. The antivirals don't seem to be helping much right now and that sucks cause it means this could go on for a while. Elliott made it through the day. He wasn't feeling well and struggled emotionally but he made it. I'm really proud of him. We only have one school day left and I'm praying it goes well because I have to have the car to the shop in the morning. The software in the car is getting a free upgrade to Android Auto and I'm pretty excited about that. Assuming the kids…
It's no secret that life is tough for my family right now. Sometimes it's the little things that can change the course of our day. When we arrived home from the school this afternoon, we were greeted by a few surprises on our front porch. My new friends at Buick were thinking about us and decided to send us some sweet Buick swag. The kids are so excited and I'll be honest, I feel pretty good about it as well. ☺ Buick was kind enough to send each of us a custom Buick Yeti Rambler. The look sweet and will look really good next to the black leather interior of our new Buick Regal Premium II. Buick, you made our day and I really, truly appreciate it. My kids are…
It was another difficult night and a very challenging morning. Elliott didn't want to go to school again because when he's there, he can't stop thinking about him mom leaving and our ferret dying. He's worried about what the teachers might say when he becomes upset. He's an anxious kid to begin with and he's miserable because of all this. He ultimately went and I'm so proud of him for doing that. I know he's going to have a rough day but if he can stick it out, they will eventually get better. Emmett on the other hand, refused to go to school. This is coming from a kid who's favorite place in the world is often school. There are a number of reasons for him not wanting to go…
I'm going to try to go to bed as soon as the kids do. I'm absolutely exhausted. The boys had therapy tonight and we spent a large part of that time brain storming ideas on how to help them make it through the school day. The kids are struggling and they tend to struggle a great deal more when they're at school. I can't fix what's causing them pain and I can't answer the questions they want answers to. All I can do is help them to learn the skills needed to better cope with all of this and make sure they have a safe environment where they can speak freely with their therapist. I'm overwhelmed by their struggles, so I can't imagine how they feel. When we got home,…
We had a pretty rough night here in The Autism Dad household. It was all things that were emotional in nature and outside of anyone's control. It sorta came to a head at therapy last night. It was a turbulent emotional roller-coaster in the sense that the boys talked about things they didn't want to talk about. When we came home, everyone was emotionally spent and in need of decompression. Elliott was so stressed out about things he was supposed to do today and I finally decided to pull the plug on some of it, simply to provide him some relief. These things are important but so is his sanity and emotional wellbeing. It was a judgment call and I made it. Poor Emmett was so stressed out that he…