Autism is always 100%

Having a child with autism is hard sometimes. It's straining emotionally and mentally, it taxes you physically, it takes a toll on the family, as well as people who come in contact with us on a daily basis. When Logan does something it's always 100%. It doesn't matter if its sleeping, playing, eating, watching a movie or playing with his iPad.... It's always 100%. 

Logan watches movies differently than anyone I know. With everyone else it's a passive experience, you sit and watch, take in the story, become emotionally involved with the characters but that's about it. Logan watches a movie very differently. He will act out the parts, try to say the lines, emotionally act out scary or heartfelt scenes. Chase scenes in any movie is full action, he will run around the house, jumping, flying, rolling and sliding... It's always a blast. With emotionally charged dialogue scenes he will try to say the lines, but he will also have the same postures as the actors, even making the same movements and facial expressions. Fight scenes are the worst, because he will try to fight it out with someone or something and most times it's the person closest to him, mom, me, his brother, the dog....anyone. Watching a movie to Logan is anything but passive, it's all about total immersion. 

When it's time to eat, it's time to eat and he will get something to eat if you don't have something made for him. It's rare for him to eat with us mostly because he's already had his dinner, or he's still eating what he decided was his dinner. We're lucky in that many times he wants yogurt, or bananas for dinner, but sometimes he wants corn dogs or pizza. I can't complain to much because at least he wants healthy stuff more often than not. 

Going to the park is all or nothing. We have a pretty sizable park close to us that's pretty kid friendly and it's pretty large. Because he will wander, going to the park for us is not sitting on a bench and watching him play like other parents , it's constantly go go go. I'm usually about three steps behind him at any given moment. Climbing up and down, around in circles, helping him climb up a rope ladder or going to the swings, going across the bridge or sliding down slides, yup at my age I still have to go down slides. I have to go down the slides right behind him, it takes to long to go around and I might loose him. At the same time I am steering him away from things we don't want him near, like the road, the skate park area, or the closed down community pool. There is a caboose on train rails in the park and its pretty old and worn out. The city has finally locked it up so children can't go inside anymore. That's great for me as any parent of an autistic child will tell you they are fascinated with trains and everything to do with them. I never knew what we would find inside the caboose. Before the city boarded it up most of my time spent with him at the park was spent trying to steer him away from the caboose, or trying make sure he didn't hurt himself inside. Now he knows I don't have the power to open it and let him play in it anymore so the park is much more fun for me, and it doesn't seem to bother him as much. 

When it's time for bed.... That's a bit of trouble sometimes. There are nights he will go into his room and watch tv or play with his iPad for a while, then he poops out crashes, usually with the tv or iPad on. Then there are nights he just will not stop. He will come out of his room five times, ask for something to eat or drink or want a different movie put in. He has come out on a few occasions and said a whole paragraph of things to us that make no sense because it's in his form of words, then he turns around and goes right back in his room. Let me tell you, he has told some funny stories... At least...they're funny to us. Some nights nothing will get him to sleep, I have had to stay up until 12 or 1 in the morning because he's still up. It's not like he's drank a six pack of soda, or had five cups of coffee, he's just not tired. Eventually I will have to go in and lay him in his bed, tell him it's time to sleep, and wait till he's dropping off to leave. Sometimes that's just how it has to be. The strangest thing is there have been a number of days when we have noticed he isn't running around reeking havoc acting out a movie or raiding the fridge for yogurt, and we go into his room and find him out cold, upside down and backwards in his bed.... Those days are cute. 

My son may be different, but he is never boring. He is always going, always doing, always at the maximum of anything he knows he can do. He's always 100% into anything. I wonder if we were more like that what life would be like. 

Autism is freedom

Most people think of a child with autism as retarded. Lets take a look at that word for a minute. The Merriam-Webster online dictionary defines the word retarded as "slow or limited in intellectual or emotional development or academic progress". If you ask any person on the street what retarded means they'll all mostly say it means dumb.

I will concede that my son takes longer to learn how to write his name and longer to understand about feelings, but I know from experience he is far from dumb. In fact, I think he's smarter than most "normal" people.

He decides something and does it, not matter what the outcome. I can tell you there are times it makes me uneasy, but other times I wonder at him. He has done things that hurt him, like running on the couch, and promptly falling off of it into the coffee table. Which starts a 20 minute cry fest as his mom and I trying to find out what happened. He is also able to pay with the most mundane of items, like a string, or a piece of ribbon, or a rock. I can only imagine what he's thinking about when he's playing with those things. 

We are all held back by fear, social norms, peer pressure, society or any number of things. He has freedom. He is free to choose to do, and he does. All of our choices are decided for us by what others will think and feel, not his. We have people expecting us to preform a certain way in any situation, he doesn't. We make a decision and hold ourselves to that decision, he doesn't, if he changes his mind about something, it doesn't bother him. 

He will pee in the front yard, because he has to go. To the best of my ability I explain to him that he's not supposed to do that, but what can you do? If he decides its time to wake up, and he's awake at 3:30 in the morning, then it doesn't matter if we're all still asleep or not. If he thinks we all need to eat pancakes for dinner, guess what? Yup, pancake time. 

He has a freedom many of us will never know. He is free to choose whatever path he wants. He chooses not to like someone at the first meeting, and will let them know, and doesn't usually change his mind about someone. 

He may be slow to learn about things. His emotional development may be limited or slow, and it does take him longer to learn anything academically than other people. People will also call him dumb, but I think he's far from dumb. I think he's smarter than the people who would call him dumb. I think he has control over something so many people in this world work their whole lives to grasp and never truly find, and that's freedom. 

Dads and Autism.

I don't mean to gripe, but the other day I saw a Facebook page post 80+ pictures to an album celebrating moms. I have no problems with that, I think mothers dealing with autistic children are awesome, but what about dads? Are we not present? Do we have no voice? Do people honestly think we have no feelings or thoughts about this? 

I see more and more information on the web about mothers and autism. Blogs, websites, Facebook groups... It seems endless. It also seems like everyone forget about dads. 

I say this not because I can't find anything about dads and autism, I have found some things about dads and autism, but nothing like mothers and autism.

I know almost everyone will say the same thing, guys don't talk about their feelings. Though this may be true, I'm still feeling it's not that simple with autism. 

I really think it has more to do with the fact that women are more social about things than guys. Women dominate Pinterest and women are much more active on Facebook than guys, well geek guys are real active one Facebook, but us geek guys don't really count. It's not only that, even when couples go on a tv show to talk about autism the mom does most or all of the talking, the guy is really just a set piece. 

This makes me a bit sad, but more mad. I cannot believe men don't care about their son or daughter with autism. I cannot believe autism is a women's only club. I don't want to think that men do not care, they must care, they can't be heartless can they? 

I would love to see more men say something about autism. Something about how they feel, what they think, how they deal with a meltdown or communication issues. I would love to see some dads talk about how awesome their autistic child is. I would like to see dads tell people how they express ideas with their son or daughter. 

I guess I feel like autism is a mothers world, and men just don't belong. I think we have so much to contribute, maybe all people have to do is just ask.