Autism and Staying Positive Even though my son is fifteen—the age for LOTS of challenges (autism-related and age-related)—I do believe parents need to try to stay positive as often as possible. Yet, it is challenging for us parents. How do you stay positive? I’ll be honest, it’s not easy when you’re dealing with the attitude of a fifteen-year-old. They can be surly and moody, and they’re different, too. My son has changed more in the last year than I think in all the rest of the years combined. Some of it is great. He does his own laundry … [Read more...]
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Nov 2018
Autism and Managing Money (Part 2) I touched on this briefly not too long ago, but my son is learning about money. What is he learning? He’s learning that our money is not his money. He’s learning that—in reality—he doesn’t have any money. We have money to buy his food and clothes and school things and lots of other things, but there are times when we have to say “no” due to the money not being an endless pit. He’s learning that he’s not going to get everything he wants because we’re simply not going to pay for everything he wants. And, … [Read more...]
19
Nov 2018
Is Autism Different in a Small Town? I’ve lived in the Los Angeles area for twenty-eight years now. Over half my life. I had my child when I was thirty-six. A year and change later, we were taking him to a regional center for evaluation for autism. We received services soon after, and off we went. Again, this is in the Los Angeles area, a huge city that’s quite spread out. I think this area has three or four regional centers to cover it. (In the State of California, Regional Centers provide services to our kids on the autism spectrum. They … [Read more...]
12
Nov 2018
Autism and Navigating Social Circles Solo There’s huge difference between five and fifteen. What do I mean? I’m discussing a rather typical issue for a teenager, learning how to navigate social circles. And, learning how to do it solo, without mom (or dad) around. At age five, I was much more present, first hand, to navigate my son’s social circles. To assist, to teach, and to protect. I was either present or informed by facilitators of how my son navigated social contacts. Then what happened? He grew up. He’s a teenager now, he’s … [Read more...]
14
Oct 2018
When Autism Looks Like OCD This blog post only pertains to my son. I am in no way saying that autism is OCD, or OCD is autism, or even that OCD is a typical characteristic found on the autism spectrum. This post is simply about my own observations. Why am I talking about OCD? Because sometimes my son acts like he has OCD. He doesn’t. He has autism. And, someone with a professional degree may be able to explain why OCD looks like autism, or OCD can be on the spectrum, or whatever. But, here’s what I’ve noticed about my son and what I do … [Read more...]
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Sep 2018
Dissolving Friendships with Kids on the Autism Spectrum We all have friendships. And, somewhere along the way many of us have had to walk away from a friendship or two—for whatever reason. Friendships happen in many ways, with or without our kids. With kids, I’d like to address two situations… One is when parents are friends, and they get their children together. The children may or may not like each other, but the parents like each other. It works out well when the kids do get along, of course. A second situation is what if kids like … [Read more...]
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Sep 2018
The Impacts of Not Curbing Behaviors Related to Autism With autism, comes behaviors. In general, when our kids are little, there are more behaviors. We, as parents, (along with the various facilitators who work with our children), have to deal with these behaviors. In an ideal world, we are all trained to handle most behaviors with our children, whether at home or out in the world. And, we want to work with our kids so they can overcome their challenges and be relatively functional and comfortable in society. As they grow older, we … [Read more...]
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