Autism and Compartmentalization

It has been far too long since I posted anything on my blog. It has been an even longer time since I have posted anything about my son and dealing with aspects of his autism.  This post will fix both of those items.

My son has always had a way of compartmentalizing certain things.  For example, there are certain games and activities that he will do with me that he won't do with my wife and vice versa.  There will be times that she will try to get him to play one of the word game routines that he does with me and he will quickly change the conversation over to one that he does primarily with her.

Likewise, there are certain activities that he associates with school or the dorm that he refuses to do at home.  Sadly, one of those is using the toilet for his bowel movements.  The school and dorm have been getting him to use the toilet for bowel movements.  There hasn't been any progress on transferring that behavior to the home setting.

Today, we saw another example of how he compartmentalizes certain things.  This time in regards to food.  For the past few days, he has been home on spring break for school.  Originally, he was scheduled to go back to the dorm tomorrow.  Since we have been having an extremely difficult time getting him back to school after breaks, my wife came up with the idea to take him back today after having Easter dinner at her parents' house.

All weekend long, he had been talking about going to Grammy's house to have ham and mac & cheese.  We got to dinner and he refused to eat the ham.  The only thing he would eat was the mac & cheese.  We left my in-laws house and took him back to dorm where we got there in time for him to get dinner.  They had fixed a plate for him consisting of ham, mac & cheese, green beans, meat balls, potato salad and a deviled egg.  After insisting that I remove the egg and potato salad, he then proceeded to eat everything on his plate, including the green beans.

I wasn't surprised to see him eat the ham and meatballs, and of course, mac & cheese is one of his favorite dishes.  I was shocked to see him eat all of the green beans.  If we ever tried to put vegetables on his plate at home he would insist that they be removed from his plate.  Just another example of how he will do certain things at school that he won't do at home.

No Coincidences-Full Circle

My wife and I are regional co-chairs for the Benedictine Foundation.  The Benedictine Foundation runs the school that my son has been attending for the last few years.  Today was the day that we had our regional meeting to talk about the annual Spring Gala that takes place in April.  This year, the theme of the event will be "Roman Holiday."

Since our home does not have a lot of space, my in-laws graciously agreed to host the meeting at their house.  They have been actively involved with the Benedictine Foundation for far longer than my son has been attending the school.  Prior to our son getting in, our nephew, their grandson, was in attendance at the school.  My father in law serves on the Board of Directors and was vital in getting our son into the school.

During the meeting, everybody went around the room to introduce themselves and to tell how they came to be associated with Benedictine.  My wife was first to speak and told how our son was currently attending the Benedictine School and that our nephew was a graduate of the school.  A few other people told theirs stories.

Then it was my father in-laws turn to speak.  He spoke about how both of his grandchildren were students at Benedictine and how much the school had helped them.  Then he spoke about an event that occurred nearly 50 years ago when he was in the United States Air Force and stationed in Taiwan.  He talked about how he and my mother in-law decided to adopt a local child to add to the family.

When they got to the orphanage, the nuns took my mother in-law to one part of the orphanage, and my father in-law to another.  After they each toured the facility, they met up and both had found the daughter to add to their family.  They found out that the girls were twins.  They decided to adopt the sisters to keep them together.  One of them became my wife and the mother of my son.

Now, I had heard the story of how they came to adopt their two daughters.  What I had not heard, and neither had my wife, was the fact that the orphanage was run by nuns from the Benedictine order.  In fact, one of the nuns was from Minnesota.  Years later when my in-laws related the story to Sister Jeanette, who was the driving force in making the school what it is today, that she knew the nun that was in the orphanage.

I am sure that a lot of people will think that this is all one big coincidence.  I prefer to think that it was more like the Hand of Providence.  How else could you explain that my wife and her sister would be in an orphanage run by Benedictine nuns, both would have sons with autism, that would attend a school founded and run by Benedictine nuns.

Spread Some Joy--Say Merry Christmas

The Christmas holiday season can be a time of great stress for some people.  I am not immune from the stress of the holidays.  My son has been home from school for the Christmas break since Friday.  I am already stressed about trying to get him back to school on January 1st.

I should explain what happened on the Thanksgiving break with our son.  From the time he got home for that break, he refused to leave the house.  Even though he talked about going to my brother's house for Thanksgiving dinner, when it came time to go, he refused.  We ended up having dinner at home.  Thankfully, I had bought a small turkey that my wife planned to cook the day after Thanksgiving so that we would have "leftovers."

When it came time to take our son back to school on the Sunday after Thanksgiving, it was one of the worst experiences in some time for that task.  We fought him for most of the afternoon before giving up for the night.  He hit me so hard in the ear that my ears rang and I had some residual hearing issues for several days after.  My wife finally got him back a day late but it was a monumental task.

So what has me stressed a few days before Christmas?  You can probably guess from the preceding two paragraphs that so far during the break, my son is refusing to go anywhere.  I offered to take him out to lunch for hamburgers, no luck.  Same thing with trying to get him to go for a ride to look at Christmas lights.  So far he is saying he is going to go to my sister's and my in-laws houses for Christmas.  Let's hope he does.

Sunday mornings is one of the days that I usually use to take care of my grocery shopping.  I left the house to go take care of the groceries and it was pouring down rain.  I got in the car, with everything on my mind and headed to the store.  By the time I got to Wegman's, the rain had slowed to a trickle, so at least I wouldn't get drenched going from the parking lot to the store.

My stress did not subside once I got inside the store.  In fact, it started to increase.  One of the first things that I was looking for in the meat department was out of stock.  It was going to be dinner tonight so I quickly came up with a Plan B.  The store was particularly crowded, and the aisles of the store were stacked with merchandise so maneuvering through the aisles was difficult at best.

As I was nearing the end of my shopping trip, I am sure that my face was not the friendliest it could be.  It was then that I pushed my cart pass another father pushing a car with his little daughter in the seat.  She leaned over and with the biggest smile on her face squealed to me, "Merry Christmas!"

My demeanor instantly changed and the frown on my face melted and was replaced with a smile.  I look at her and cheerfully said to her, "Well Merry Christmas to you too!"  She laughed with delight.  So do yourself and someone else a favor and put a smile on your face and tell somebody "Merry Christmas."  You just might make someone's day.

Not so Family Friendly Family Channel

I am not a prude by any stretch of the imagination.  While I consider myself a conservative Christian, I fully appreciate that not everybody in the world shares my views.  As such, I am not easily offended by viewpoints in popular culture that run contrary to those beliefs.  Those that do not share my beliefs are free to express their own beliefs, but I feel it should be done in the proper place.

I bring this up because of something that I saw yesterday while visiting my son at his school.  Most of his dorm mates were off on an outing, but several kids stayed behind.  We gave our son the choice of going out for lunch or having a pizza delivered.  He decided that he wanted to stay in the dorm, so we went ahead and had a pizza delivered for our lunch.

While we waited for the delivery to arrive and while we ate our lunch, the other kids in the dorm recreation room were watching some Disney movies on the ABC Family station.  At one point, I was watching the television and I saw two women engaging in a romantic kiss.  The station was promoting one of their new programs which features a lesbian couple raising a family together.

I was shocked.  Not because there was such a show being produced, but because it was being promoted and shown on a station that proclaimed to be a "family channel."  I was even more shocked because the promo was occurring during kid friendly Disney movies.  Had the advertisement occurred on a station like Lifetime or Bravo, I wouldn't have batted an eye.

It used to be that subject matter of a more controversial or mature nature would only be shown later in the evening when kids would typically be sleeping and not watching television.  Promotions for those shows would never be broadcast during what would be considered kid friendly programming.  I guess those standards no longer apply.

I am not one of those who would call for a boycott of the channel or those that advertise on it. I don't watch the ABC Family channel, nor do I watch anything on ABC.  After seeing the promotion yesterday, I am more inclined not to watch anything on those stations.  It just shows that the entertainment industry is continuously trying to promote their liberal worldview on us, and forcing it on our kids with no regard.

Related articles

• An Open Letter to the Disney Channel (herlifeinspired.com)

Happy Birthday!

19 years ago today, I found myself in the car at 2:00 AM driving my very pregnant wife to the hospital in a spring rain.  She woke me shortly after 1:00 to tell me that she thought that her water had broke.  Once we got to the emergency room, we discovered that, in fact, her water had broke, but she wasn't quite ready to deliver.  So they took her to a room, and we waited.

After a few hours, they made the decision to induce labor.  It took a while to get the dosage right.  At first, they gave her too much of the drug and her contractions started too strongly and too quickly.  So, they backed off on the IV and my wife was able to get a little rest before all the real fun would begin.  Around 6:00-7:00 PM my wife started pushing in earnest.  Shortly before 9:00 my son entered the world.

It was without a doubt the proudest moment in my life.  The entire time my wife was pregnant, I steadfastly declared that I did not care one way or the other what the sex of our child was going to be.  One he came out and I was told we had a boy, I have to confess that my chest stuck out a little bit further.

Over the years, it has been quite an adventure.  From birth to about 2 years of age, our son appeared to be completely normal.  He was hitting all of his milestone markers on time and in a lot of cases early.  Then all of a sudden around his second birthday things changed.  His progress became delayed. We got him involved in early special education classes where a specialist from the school system came to the house a couple days per week.  By his 3rd birthday he started taking a bus to a school for children with special needs.

In the intervening years, there have been a lot of emotions and struggles.  There was a lot of denials about the  final diagnosis of autism.  I struggled a lot at times.  You see, I have always been considered a smarter than average person.  I was a nearly straight A student, always made the honor roll, and participated in talented and gifted programs.  I thought, "How could my child be mentally delayed?  He has my genes."

A few years ago, we made the difficult decision to try to get him into a residential school program.  It was one of the hardest decisions we ever made.  Several of the struggles and challenges of adjusting to this decision have been chronicled here on this blog.  It has been one of the best things that we ever did for our son.  At one point, I always thought that my son would live with us as long as we could care for him.  Now we look to the day when he will graduate in 2015 and enter a group home.

Today, we drove out to see him to celebrate his 19th birthday.  We decided that we would throw a little pizza party for him, his dorm mates, and the dorm staff.  One year ago, we couldn't get him to touch pizza.  The only thing he would eat was chicken, bacon, potato chips and Cheez-it crackers.  In fact, my wife and I couldn't eat pizza in front of him because he would gag.  Today, he ate six big slices of pizza, more than my wife and I combined.  We even offered him boneless wings and he chose more pizza.

Even with all of the progress he has made, he still has a long way to go.  For example, he still has not gotten to the point where he will have a bowel movement on the toilet.  I never really liked changing his diapers when he was a baby, changing Depends now isn't any fun either. He still has several undesirable behavioral issues.  He will drop to the floor if he doesn't want to do something.  He still hits at people and throws his glasses.  It has been a struggle and will probably always will.  I wouldn't change a thing.

Happy Father's Day!

II would like to take this opportunity to wish all of the dads out there a happy Father's Day.  Today is my 18th Father's Day as a dad.  I have to confess that I am a little depressed this morning since my son is away at school, and I will not have the opportunity to see him.  We could go out for a visit, but since he is coming home in a couple of days, we decided to wait until Thursday.

One of the things that crossed my mind this morning as I was moping around missing my son was the night that he was born.  I remember it well.  The entire time my wife was pregnant, I was going with her to her appointments.  I couldn't wait to be a father.  On April 6th, 1994, my wife received a phone call around 10pm from her OB/GYN.  He was at the hospital delivering another baby and asked my wife if she was ready to have her baby.  She said she felt fine.

I went to sleep shortly after she hung up from that phone call.  A few hours later, around 1am or so, my wife woke me up.  She told me that she thought that her water broke.  We left the house and headed to the hospital.  On route, we encountered a heavy rain storm and I had to have the windshield wipers on high.  We arrived at the hospital around 2am and headed to the emergency room.  An initial examination confirmed that her water had broken but that our son had not dropped into position for delivery.

They took us up to a room on the maternity wing of the hospital and had my wife rest in bed.  We were told that they wanted to have us wait for a while to see if our son would drop into position on his own, otherwise they might have to induce labor.  After a few hours, they determined that they were going to have to induce labor as my son had decided he didn't want to leave the warmth and comfort of the womb to enter the cold cruel world on the outside.

As they set everything up for the pitocin IV, they asked my wife if she wanted to have an epidural.  She replied in the affirmative.  Shortly after the IV began, she started to have some contractions.  However, they must have set the initial drip too high as she started to have contractions that were much too quick and much too hard.  They slowed the drip down to a more manageable level.  My wife was even able to get a few hours sleep, but I was too keyed up to get any rest.

As evening rolled around, it was time to get serious about the delivery.  Finally, my wife was suitably dilated and was ready to enter the pushing stage.  I did my best to try to be a supportive helper during the delivery.  Like Bill Cosby, I was the cheerleader, "Push him out, shove him out, way out!"  In spite of our requests to not have anybody come up to the hospital since we did not know how long we would be, my entire family was in the waiting room.  Finally, around 9pm, our son came into the world.

The entire time that my wife was pregnant, we did not want to know the sex of our baby.  Every sonogram, they asked if we wanted to know, each time we said no.  I honestly did not care if we had a boy or a girl at the time.  We had names picked out for either event.  Our baby's bedroom was painted light green with teddy bears to be gender neutral.  However, I confess, that when the doctor told us we had a baby boy, my chest stuck out a little further than I anticipated.

After he was cleaned up and my wife was able to rest a bit, my family came in to see us.  My son was the first grandchild of my parents.  After they left, I visited a bit with my wife and son until she was ready to go to sleep.  I headed home and stopped by Grace's Fortune in Bowie to pick up an order of Kung Pao Chicken. Exhausted, I hit the bed and slept.  I have been exhausted ever since, but it has been worth it.

Related articles

• Happy Father's Day! Top 10: Greatest movie dads [SLIDESHOW] (dailycaller.com)
• Father's Day Songs: A Spotify Playlist About Fatherhood For Dad (huffingtonpost.com)
• Father's Day: The 10 Most Kick-Ass Movie Dads (screenrant.com)

Swimming Pool Memories

Image via WikipediaDuring these hot summer months, I sure do miss having access to a swimming pool.  There is nothing better during a hot day than splashing around in a pool.  Unless of course it is sipping on an ice cold gin and tonic after you get out of the pool and you are sitting in the sun drying off.

It has been several years since I have had regular access to a swimming pool.  I think the last pool that I went to on a regular basis was 20 years ago when I was rooming with my younger brother and his townhouse complex had a pool.

Belonging to a community or public pool has its benefits, but it also has its issues.  The great thing about a public pool is that you don't have to deal with all of the maintenance that goes with having your own pool.  Unfortunately, you also don't have the privacy that you would have if you had your own pool.

I have had a few friends who had their own private pools.  We had a lot of fun whenever we would all get together for a pool party.  We could do whatever we wanted to, within the bounds of common sense, and not have to worry about sharing the pool with others.  If we wanted to play a little pool volleyball, we didn't have to worry about getting in anybody's way.

If I ever had the opportunity to do so, I would choose to have my own swimming pool.  Not only do you have the freedom to do what you want in your own pool, you aren't tied to the schedule of the public pools of Memorial Day to Labor Day.  You can swim as early or as late in the season as you want.  With your own pool, it would be necessary to find a source of supplies such as chemicals and winter pool covers when it is finally too cold to swim.

Three Games

It was an extremely busy weekend for our family.  Our Bowie Baysox were in town for a three game homestand.  Since my son is a huge Baysox fan, we decided to attend all three games.  We usually would not have gone to all three games, but with my son being away at school and so few games scheduled during his breaks we just had to do it this time.

It was a beautiful weekend weather wise for attending baseball games.  The temperatures were in the mid-80's with low humidity.  Friday night's game was a birthday celebration for the Baysox loveable mascot Louie.  In celebration of his birthday, several of Louie's mascot friends were in attendance to play games with Louie between innings.  Since it was his birthday, Louie naturally won all of the contests, even though the Maryland Terrapin mascot got the loudest applause during the air guitar contest.  After the game, there was a great fireworks show.

 

It was Star Wars night for Saturday night's game.  I heard that R2D2 was in attendance roaming around the concourse, but I wasn't able to see him.  Between innings, there were Jedi knights dueling with light sabers.  After the game was over, there was a battle between the Jedi's and a disturbance in the force.  It looked like the dark side had won when all of a sudden Louie charged out with his own light saber to save the day.  The storm troopers were in attendance, and there was another post game fireworks show.

 

Today's game was the biggest game of the weekend.  My wife and I are members of the Baysox Boosters.  The Boosters do special things for the players like provide them with blankets and pillows for their road trips.  Our participation usually consists of my wife providing chocolate chip players for the dinner the Boosters provide to the players after every Sunday home game.Since we are up at the stadium so often, we have become friends with some of the team front office. 

There are two young ladies that are very friendly with our son, and he is very fond of them.  One of them made arrangements to allow our son to throw out a ceremonial first pitch.  He had been very excited about the prospect of throwing out the pitch.  Unfortunately, he started to get a little nervous before the game and thought about backing out.  Then one of the ladies, who he has known the longest and dances with him a lot, waved for him to go down on the field with her.  That was all it took.  Here he is with his souvenir ball from the event.

I think the smile on his face after throwing the pitch says it all.

It was a great day at the ballpark overall for our entire family.  First my son getting to throw out the ceremonial first pitch.  Then my nephew went on the dugout to participate in the Green Turtle Shell Shuffle where they show a video of a shell game on the video screen.  He guessed the correct shell so everyone in our section won a coupon for free wings at The Green Turtle restaurant.  Then my wife caught a frisbee to win a coupon for a free Dippin' Dots ice cream at the stadium.  Oh, and today's game was the only one that the Baysox won, so all in all it was a great day and weekend.

Happy Father's Day

I would like to take this time to wish a Happy Father's Day to all of the fathers out there.  Special Father's Day wishes go out to my dad, my two brothers, my brother in law (my sister's husband) and my other brother in law (my wife's brother) who is as much a father to our nephew as any biological father and also like a brother to me.

Sometimes I stop and think about the differences between Mother's Day and Father's Day, at least in terms of how they are celebrated in different organizations that I have been a part of.  My company does a lot of things for their employees.  There are a lot of activities throughout the year to try to make things fun for the employees.  They also have a lot of raffles and things.

Each year for both Mother's Day and Father's Day, they hold a raffle.  It doesn't cost anything to enter, and the value of the prizes are equal, usually a $100 gift card.  The difference lies in where those gift cards are from.  This year, for Mother's Day, they gave away a $100 gift card to a spa.  For Father's Day it was a gift card to Home Depot.  So, mom gets pampered, but dad gets to buy things to do chores around the house.

I am going off of my increasingly failing memory, but I believe that last year the prize for Mother's Day was a $100 American Express gift card and Father's Day was once again Home Depot.  I know there are a lot of dads out there that would enjoy the Home Depot card, and a lot of moms would to.  It just seems that a generic gift card like the AmEx card would be more appropriate.  Sometimes us dads like to be pampered to.

It also reminds me of how they used to celebrate these holidays in a church I used to belong to.  For Mother's Day, they would have a nice sit down mother/daughter banquet.  For Father's Day, a cookout.  I'm not saying that the dads got the short end of the stick, but you be the judge.  There is definitely a difference between the views of mothers versus fathers, but I don't think us dads would have it any other way.

End of the School Year

On Father's Day, we will be picking our son up from school, thus completing his first school year away from home.  Unlike most school kids, my son will only be home a couple weeks.  With his special education needs, he has always had extended school years.  He gets a couple weeks off in June, goes back in July, and gets another couple weeks off in June.

Deciding to send our son away to school was one of the toughest things that we have ever had to do.  As much as we miss having him around the house we know he is in a good place, and he is at the school that we want him to be at.  Below is a letter from the National Association of Special Education Teachers that was awarded to his school.  His school is one of only 52 in the entire United States that has been designated a school of excellence.  It pretty much sums up why we are glad he is there.  

Happy Mother's Day

Most Sundays I like to take it pretty easy.  Since I work Monday through Saturday, Sunday is the day that I try to get any errands that I have to do done as early in the day as possible.  Then I spend the rest of the day parked on the couch and relaxing.  After all, even the Good Lord took a day for rest at the end of a long week.

Today, however, is Mother's Day.  It is the first Mother's Day that has occurred since our son went away to his school.  As much as I would have liked to have spent the day vegging on the couch, I could not let the day pass without my wife seeing our son on Mother's Day.  After all he will always be her baby boy.  So, we left the house early this morning for the hour and a half drive to spend some time with him.

We walked into his dorm area and there was nobody around.  We headed out towards the main building to see if we could find them.  He was coming out from breakfast when we first saw him.  As soon as we saw him his eyes lit up and a big smile crossed his face.  He proceeded to tell us what he ate for breakfast and that 7pm tonight there was going to be a dance.

 

He did not want to go anywhere, so we spent a couple hours hanging out and walking around the facilities.  Personally, I can understand why he didn't want to hang out anywhere.  Personally, if I had a big screen television on the wall

 

and a pool table in the recreation area then I wouldn't want to go anywhere either.

It was a beautiful day today, sunny with temperatures in the 70's so we decided to take a walk around the grounds to get a little exercise.  While we were walking, we found the building where he does his jobs.

After we took our walk around the grounds, we headed back to the dorm area.  He once again demonstrated some of his new found independence by walking up to a cooler, grabbing a styrofoam cup, and poured himself a cup of water to drink.  At home, it would be drinking from the tap.  He has also started eating a few more foods, so long as it has BBQ sauce on it.

All in all, it was a very good Mother's Day, though we were out longer than I usually like on a Sunday, but it was well worth it.  So to my mother, my wife, her mother, and all of the mothers out there, I wish you all a very Happy Mother's Day.

A Letter From School

Image via WikipediaMost days, I don't particularly care to go to the mailbox.  Usually all we get in the mail is junk mail and bills.  However, yesterday, my wife brought the mail in after she ran a couple of errands.  She had something that brought a mile to my face and made me feel good.  A short note from our son.

1/27/11

Dear Mom and dad,

This week at school I had a good time.

I have been looking up and talking a lot about Maya and Miguel.  The song we are family.

I am looking forward to the next break when I can come and spend some time with you.  I love you.

Love,

It was a very pleasant surprise.  It was the first mail that we had received from him.  For those that do not know, Maya and Miguel is a cartoon on PBS Kids.  They have released a couple of CDs of kids singing pop tunes.  My son has all three of their CDs, and one of his favorite songs on it is the old Sister Sledge song "We Are Family."

It is no surprise to me that when my son would have some free internet time during the classroom that he would do searches for Maya & Miguel.  He loves that show and the theme song.  He also really enjoys listening to the music. 

I am also looking forward to the next break so we can spend some time together.  I miss having his smiling face around.

A Bittersweet Day

If you know me personally, or if you have read any of the posts regarding my 16 year old son, then you know he means everything to me.  You also know that he is autistic and has had his share of issues. 

One of his issues has been a severe lack of attendance at school.  Whenever my wife or I try to get him to go to school, he would drop to the ground, hit, kick, and refuse to budge.  He is about 5'10" and I would say weights between 170-180 pounds.  I have to estimate because he refuses to get on a scale.  So you can see, we physically can not get him off the ground and to the car to go to school. 

For the past two years, this has been an ongoing issue.  For most of that time, we had been able to get him to go to school 2-3 days per week.  Since August, we have not been able to get him to school.  There have been a couple occasions when my wife was able to get him in the car, and he unlocked the car, opened the door, and got out of the car while it was moving.  Fortunately, he never got injured.

For several months now, we have been trying to get the school system to allow our son to go to a residential school on the Eastern Shore of Maryland.  We our familiar with this particular school because our nephew, who is also autistic, just graduated from there.  They did amazing things with him there.  It is astonishing how similar the two boys are.

Unfortunately, as much as we tried to convince the school system that the best place for our son would be the residential school, they refused to consider placing them there.  In the past few months, with the assistance of our in-laws, we have stepped up the efforts to get him the placement we felt he needed.  Several meetings and home visits later, they finally decided to recommend his placement in this school.

Here is where the bittersweet comes in.  Other than one or two nights spent at his grandparent's house, my son has never been away from both his parents.  Once he is at the new school, we will not be able to see him for five weeks so that he can adjust to his new situation.

The thought of being separated from him breaks my heart.  In my mind, I know that this is the best place for him to get the education and help he needs.  I have seen first hand the love and caring that the people at the school have for the students.  I have also seen how much they can help these kids.

Autistic Boy's Father Talks About Olive Garden Attack

I saw this posted on iowntheworld.com and had to comment about it here.

As I have mentioned numerous times, I am the father of an autistic 16 year old boy.  Most people have no clue as to what parents of an autistic child goes through.  It is not that our kids misbehave, it is that they often do not have the filter that a lot of "normal" kids have.

Earlier this week, my wife had an extremely difficult occurrence with our son.  She needed to go to the local Target store for some reason.  While there, my son had one of his meltdowns.  For him, his meltdowns often include dropping to the floor and refusing to move.  Often, these occurrences are accompanied by hitting or kicking anybody that comes near him.  Such was the case with our son on this day.

In no way do we condone these sorts of actions on the part of our son.  On most trips out and about he is able to go to stores like Target without an incident.  We have no way of knowing when these outbursts will occur or what can set him off.  Sadly, most folks do not have the understanding or patience in helping a parent through these occasions.    

On this particular occasion, the police were called.  Fortunately, after some time, my wife was able to get our son up and out of the store without police intervention.  As well, it is fortunate that we did not have to deal with a physical attack upon my wife or son like the asshole that these folks had to deal with at Olive Garden.  Parents of autistic children need support of the community, not calls to the police or physical attacks.

If you are unable to view the video below on this website, I believe you can click on a link in the video to watch it on YouTube.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Elmer Smith: Dad has spent 6 years pushing for after-school programs for autistic children (philly.com)
• The Benefits of Animal Therapy for Autistic Children (brighthub.com)
• Dr. O. Ivar Lovaas, A True Friend of Autistic Children, Has Died (autisminnb.blogspot.com)
• Autistic man who died in hot van was mother's 'sweet little boy' (philly.com)
• Mother Murders Her Two Children (dickstersrandomthoughts.com)

A Question For Parents

Throughout our lifetimes, we take on a variety of roles. There is no role that I take more seriously or is more important to me as my role as a father. Since my son has special needs, it may cause me to look at things differently than most parents. I hope not. I saw something while driving home the other night that kind of bothered me. Maybe the other parents out there can let me know if I am off base.

As I said, I was driving home from work the other night. Up ahead, I saw a car pulled off on the side of the road. A young boy, probably about 8-10 years old, was walking away from the car towards the woods. At first, I thought he just had to take a leak. Soon, I saw him start to vomit. Poor guy. I felt sorry for him. Especially since he was out there all by himself.

As I got closer and passed the car, I could see the mother casually waiting in the car and pouring the remains of a can of soda out the window. My initial reaction was one of dismay. For the life of me, I could not understand why she was not out there with her kid to lend support or comfort. Am I wrong to feel that way?

Jon & Kate Plus 8

Let me preface this post with a bit of disclaimer. I mean no ill towards Jon & Kate Gosselin or their kids. I wish them nothing but the best.

My question is, other than to generally wish good will towards all, why should we care about Jon & Kate Gosselin?

Like a lot of couples, Jon and Kate Gosselin have had to resort to fertility treatments in order to have a family. Her first pregnancy resulted in twins. When they decided to expand their family, the next pregnancy resulted in sextuplets. Their lives have since become the subject of a reality television series, Jon and Kate Plus 8.

This is where my problem with Jon & Kate begins. When did we as a nation get to the point where the lives of our fellow citizens has become entertainment? I do not understand where the fascination is in watching the daily struggles of a large family. To me, entertainment is supposed to be an escape from my everyday world.

I do not want to get into all of the tabloid sensationalism surrounding the family these days. To me that is just part of the problem. My only hope is that these folks can work out whatever problems they have and go back to being a "normal" family outside of the spot light.