Posted on October 28th, 2011 by admin
We are attending a Halloween costume party / sensory friendly movie (Monster’s Inc) tonight at a local special needs organization. I have mixed feelings about the sensory friendly movie. We spent a lot of effort getting our daughter to act appropriately at the real movies and the last sensory friendly movie event that we attended was an all out free for all. Kids running around everywhere, the lights left on, and the sound turned down. For my daughter, this means that she will most likely pat attention to anything BUT the movie. On the other hand, it is so much NOT like the regular movie atmosphere, that I don’t know that she will even equate it with going to a movie. It’s more like going to a party where the TV is on in the room.
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Filed under: Autism Fun, Family
Posted on September 26th, 2011 by admin
We went to see The Lion King 3D yesterday and it was an all around great family outing. Going to the movies with a kid with autism is often a crap shoot. Fine more times that not, but the occasional issue (like throwing Shrek action figure ten rows in front of us and scarring a nice family). In any case, this time was great. The movie was about the same as the other 20 or 30 times I’ve seen it, with the fringe benefit of a 3D headache.
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Filed under: Family, Misc, Seizures
Posted on September 20th, 2011 by admin
We’re making a trip to Florida in the near future for a doctor visit and a quick trip to Walt Disney World. We have always traveled with a stroller. It makes getting through airport security MUCH easier. However, she is getting a tad too big for the standard umbrella stroller. I have gotten used to the dirty looks by judgmental people. I am counting on karma paying them a visit at some point. I noticed when searching for a big kid stroller that there is even a blog and a Facebook page where folks can go and practice being judgmental by mocking kids too big to be in strollers. Granted, most of these kids at the WALK blog probably are too big for a stroller. It is impossible to know what their circumstances are just from a picture.
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Filed under: Autism Awareness, Autism at the Airport, Family, Parent Tips, Traveling with Autism
Posted on September 19th, 2011 by admin
As most of you know, leaving your kid with autism alone in another room, often leads to bad things, very bad things. In our case, we have the standard behavior related reasons that supervision is needed plus worry over seizures.
We have been using laptops, iPads, and Skype to monitor our daughter from another part of the house.
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Filed under: Computers, Family, Parent Tips, Safety, Seizures, Software
Posted on September 13th, 2011 by admin
My mom, who lives with us, and who is a huge help with my daughter; had surgery on her foot today. Several re-broken toes and many pins later and she will be out of service for many weeks. She is to put NO weight on her foot for at least two weeks minimum. She will have several very interesting looking pins sticking out of her foot AND be riding around in very fun looking wheel chair. It should be an interesting several weeks to say the least.
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Filed under: Family, Grandparents
Posted on September 9th, 2011 by admin
As an autism parent, worry is never far from one’s thoughts. My wife and I have been attending a Mindfulness group for parents of kids with special needs. It’s part of a research project and they measure our stress levels several times (saliva samples to measure Cortisol levels, blood draw, and periodic questionnaires) over the course of the six week program. The group focuses on learning various techniques related to Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction. There’s a lot of Buddhist influence, but the gist of the training is to get us more focused on living in the NOW, which is where our life actually happens.
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Filed under: Family, Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, Stress
Posted on August 15th, 2011 by admin
Platitudes that make normal people feel better about there problems often just don’t apply to parenting a child with autism. #1 on that list is “This too shall pass.” Um, not really. I guess this is technically true since all things eventually pass. Maybe it should be “This too shall pass, when you’re dead” although that doesn’t exactly give one the warm and fuzzy feeling of the original. Tweet This Post
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Filed under: Depression, Family, Misc, Motivation
Posted on June 29th, 2011 by admin
Oh, joy, I am so looking forward to getting through airport security tomorrow with a 10 year old with autism. Added to this joy will be explaining to the TSA staff about the Vagus Nerve Stimulator (VNS) implant. This will be our first trip with this device. I’ve been told by some to not even try explaining the seizure aspect and just call it a pacemaker.
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Filed under: Autism at the Airport, Family, Parent Tips, Traveling with Autism
Posted on June 6th, 2011 by admin
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Filed under: Family, Misc
Posted on April 11th, 2011 by admin
Autism is on the verge of entering a new degree of difficulty in our world. My daughter is approaching a size/weight where it is more and more difficult for me to pick her up. This means that the risk factor of being in public goes up significantly. Going out in public for us is somewhat of a crap shoot. About 90% of the time, it is not an issue. We can go anywhere. 10% of the time, it is a complete disaster.
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Filed under: Autism Awareness, Autism NOT in the News, Family, Misc
