My Family's Experience with Autism: Experiment Is Over

Tuesday, September 10, 2013

Experiment Is Over

All right ... after I've been away from writing for a while, I'm really trying to get back into it all. And when I was writing yesterday's post, I realized something. It is TOTALLY unnatural for me to anonymize my children here.

So, I am going to stop. Bye Bye "Ballerina" and "Music Man" (but I'm keeping "Big Brother" -- he likes that title). Hello "Rachel" and "Simon".

That is, when I post here. When I post on more public forums, I will continue to anonymize my children. But on my own personal blog, in my own little world, I'm not going to worry about keeping their names out of the stories. I chose those names because I like them. And I want to just be able to tell my stories.

So, they're back folks!!!!!!

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A Little Bit About Me and My Family

Every once in a while, something happens to a family that seems to change everything, whether that change is positive, negative, or in an uncertain direction. One such thing happened to us in March 2009, when we were informed our 26 month old twins (girl/boy) were BOTH on the autism spectrum. Their older brother (nearly 4 at the time) had always been ahead of the curve for most developmental milestones, so we had never really considered that some of the delays the twins were having had anything to do with autism. Well, we were wrong. Since then we have been learning about learning techniques and doing everything we can to make sure they get any and all help they need so that they can live normal lives. This blog chronicles that journey.

The Autism Pizza

I don't know where this came from originally, but I found it on a post on Circle of Moms. It's a good explanation of how things line up on the spectrum.

1. The Crust: Lack of Social Interaction (poor eye contact, not sharing interests with you, no pointing/gesturing)

2. The Sauce: Impaired Communication (possibly no speech, poor conversation skills, repetitive language, echolalia, no make-believe play)

3. The Cheese: Stereotypical Activities & Interests (extreme routine, strong interest in certain things, stimming [flapping, atypical play, etc.] -- like spinning wheels, lining toys up, stacking, etc.)

If you have all of those things: crust, sauce, cheese, you made an Autism pizza. It might have different toppings, but you can look at it and know it's still a pizza. If your pizza doesn't have sauce, that's Aspergers's. If your pizza is missing more than that but still kind of looks like a pizza, that's PDD-NOS (Pervasive Developmental Disorder, Not Otherwise Specified)