Coping with Autism

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've been meaning to write this for quite some time. We did well in Disney World and it was due to a few things: 1. For every child with autism, you need at least one parent, grandparent, aunt, etc. to help corral or monitor where each child is and what they are doing. 2. Get a letter from your child's doctor stipulating that he or she has autism. As soon as you enter the park, go to guest services and let them know that you need a Guest Pass for your child. This pass allows your child to go into the express/fast pass line or the disability line for nearly all of the rides. The pass allows for five other guests to ride the ride with the person who has the disability. We had two letters and two passes which allowed us to have as many as twelve people enter the express/fast pass line. The child with the disability has to be with the group entering the fast pass lane. Disney cast members will check for the Guest pass. At first we didn't think we would need the Guest pass beca...