Coping with Autism

Our youngest, Nathan, was diagnosed very early and has grown by leaps and bounds. If you had asked me over a decade ago which was the worse of the two boys, I would have said that it was Nathan. He was pokey from day one and wasn't interested in a lot things other children were into. He cried at nearly everything, didn't like being held by strangers, didn't like men (including his own father) and did not transition well (at all) and was that way nearly from birth. My poor husband kept saying it was because he hated him or didn't like his skin color (my husband has brown skin). I told him Nathan was too young to know what hate was and there was no reason for him to dislike his father's skin color any more than he could hate someone when he was only a year old. His diagnosis came shortly after his brother's but he was diagnosed early (19 months) and was placed into therapy almost immediately. Nathan has come a long way. Next year, he enters high school and w

And we're back... I moved everything over to WordPress but then our desktop had severe issues, Peter broke a brand new laptop (insert crying, tears, and lamentations here) and I couldn't really update anything for almost a year. In the process, I somehow lost my rights to the copingwithautism.com URL and now if I want it, I'll have to pay a ridiculous amount of money for it. No, thank you. I'm back to Blogger. A number of things have happened in the last year. Last year, our daughter graduated from high school and we have discovered since that she really should be looked at again by a professional. There are suggestions that she may have mild Asperger's (which I have always suspected but didn't think was necessary to diagnose). It has been an issue since graduation (and her attempt at college last semester) and just "adulting" in general. The boys are doing well. Peter is now in high school and Nathan is set to finish this year mainstreamed and en

I've finally gotten around to moving the copingwithautism blog over to WordPress. Unlike my politics blog, this is currently a WordPress.com blog. At some point I hope to purchase a web address for it and have it set up for independent hosting but at this point WordPress.com is a start. The new address is copingwithautism.wordpress.com .

I apologize for being far more inconsistent than I thought! The last post here was in February(!) and so much has happened since. Nathan improves daily and we have seen an explosion in speech, pretend play and social skills. We suspect that he will always have some autistic characteristics but he is doing very well. Peter is improving too! While his speech abilities are still on the level of a maybe a 2-year old, he is using pronouns correctly about 75 percent of the time and he is beginning to use adjectives in describing things such as, "I want water, cold water. I want cold water." (This was a request just from this week.) We also went to Disney World again this year and I will post more on this later today or tomorrow. Nathan's birthday is Monday and I want to write more about how excited he is about this as well as his requests for toys and such for his birthday presents.

I'm hoping that over the next few weeks I will be able to convert this blog to a WordPress Blog also. I did that with my politics blog and love what I am able to do in WordPress. If I am able to do the update, this blog with stay up for at least a year to redirect everyone to the new site.

The spinning top I bought for Peter was a huge hit but it couldn't hold up to his abuse and was destroyed inside of a week. He kept it around as long as he could but when it fell apart, it was basically shaped sheet metal so there were sharp edges that prevented us from keeping it past a certain point of destruction. But Peter did love it. Nathan, of course, loved just about everything he received. The light saber/swords I bought broke within the first week also but the boys continued to play with them anyway. Nathan loved a put-it-together-yourself Handy Manny toy and still carries it around from time to time. Nathan's newest obsession is R2-D2. I bought them the LEGO Star Wars game for the Wii for Christmas and Nathan is head over tails for R2-D2. Now he wants R2-D2 this and R2-D2 that. He even wants to build one a life-size working robot (uh, no, not happening--too expensive).