Things have been busy at our house. We decorated for fall, started the potty training process, continue 3 days a week of therapy, and work. Gabe is doing pretty good with the potty training. I refuse to go back to diapers. He still has accidents everyday but we just remind him that it's okay to have accidents. He isn't stressed at all and honestly Matt and I aren't either.
The baby is really starting to get strong. I can really feel him moving around now. The other night I swore he was going to jump out of my tummy. I can't believe we are going to be adding another little boy to our family. I am so excited.
Gabe decided that he wanted to be spiderman for halloween. This is the first year that he picked his costume. I wanted him to be a monkey, but it's a no go. He insists on Spiderman. That's okay. As long as he has fun. We are planning on having a small Halloween party for the young kids in our family. I can't wait.
Gabe is starting to talk more. He is starting to form natural conversational speech. Though it is still choppy and he gets very confused with statements that we say back to him. We here a lot of huh? His processing time seems to be slow. Hopefully that catches up.
Everyday is a new day...
backgroud
Monday, September 29, 2008
Friday, September 12, 2008
He is....he isn't....he is....??? Does anyone know?
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! Is there an easy answer to all of this? I am so tired of hearing one therapist say...yes, Gabe is autistic...then hear another one say...no way...then we get a dx from the neuro. But no direction on where to go. Then the school starts their eval and says...no Gabe isn't autistic...but the neuro at the next appt says...yes he is...
So, I do have a request in for an eval with the child psych at hershey...I am calling to see where he is on the list.
In the mean time I started Gabe in OT for some sensory stuff...now the OT doesn't want to work with him...because she says it isn't sensory it is behavior and OCD and ODD and some ADHD...but she see no autism...FINE....don't work with him...but how can I tell if he is acting a certain way because his little senses don't know how to process what is going on....or if it is straight behavior. Some things are no brainer...smart mouth...behavior...other things are not so easy...like running around the grocery store shaking his head back and forth...and spinning in circles....he isn't being bad then...just not really listening that he needs to stay with me...is it behavior or sensory...are the people bothering him? Are the lights and sounds bothering him? How come he wasn't doing acting that way before the store. How come the rest of his day was shot after going to the store? WHY?
She told me she doesn't know how to help him....yet his private ST says OT would be good for him...I just can't stand this....Here I am with this kid who has an autism dx...who can't sit still to play one game of candy land but can sit for hours and watch the TV or play a video game....I don't know who to go to for help....what I should be doing to help him...other then what I am already doing....and if he can't sit to do work now...how the hell is he going to do it in school? I know he is only 3.6 years old and sitting to do work isn't really important yet...but he will sit and do puzzles with me...and play video games...and anything that is Gabe guided...but as soon as I or anyone else for that matter says we are doing this and Gabe doesn't like that idea...all hell breaks loose....
I am tired of all of this...where is my freaking autism manual? And why do some people say Gabe is autistic....and other people say no way...."they" all tell me not to compare my kid to other kids....yet they are doing just that when it comes to autism...
I can't wait to go see the child psych at hershey....so my kid with a pinch of autism, a dab of OCD, a speck of ODD, and a dash of ADHD can be evaluated. Oh, and lets not forget the dx of apraxia of speech and expressive language disorder...If Gabe's dx's were credentials his name would look like this
Gabriel C. ASD,OCD,ADHD,ODD,CAS,SID,ELD
and me...after surviving all of this silliness I want my name to be
Jessie. Phd....
So, I do have a request in for an eval with the child psych at hershey...I am calling to see where he is on the list.
In the mean time I started Gabe in OT for some sensory stuff...now the OT doesn't want to work with him...because she says it isn't sensory it is behavior and OCD and ODD and some ADHD...but she see no autism...FINE....don't work with him...but how can I tell if he is acting a certain way because his little senses don't know how to process what is going on....or if it is straight behavior. Some things are no brainer...smart mouth...behavior...other things are not so easy...like running around the grocery store shaking his head back and forth...and spinning in circles....he isn't being bad then...just not really listening that he needs to stay with me...is it behavior or sensory...are the people bothering him? Are the lights and sounds bothering him? How come he wasn't doing acting that way before the store. How come the rest of his day was shot after going to the store? WHY?
She told me she doesn't know how to help him....yet his private ST says OT would be good for him...I just can't stand this....Here I am with this kid who has an autism dx...who can't sit still to play one game of candy land but can sit for hours and watch the TV or play a video game....I don't know who to go to for help....what I should be doing to help him...other then what I am already doing....and if he can't sit to do work now...how the hell is he going to do it in school? I know he is only 3.6 years old and sitting to do work isn't really important yet...but he will sit and do puzzles with me...and play video games...and anything that is Gabe guided...but as soon as I or anyone else for that matter says we are doing this and Gabe doesn't like that idea...all hell breaks loose....
I am tired of all of this...where is my freaking autism manual? And why do some people say Gabe is autistic....and other people say no way...."they" all tell me not to compare my kid to other kids....yet they are doing just that when it comes to autism...
I can't wait to go see the child psych at hershey....so my kid with a pinch of autism, a dab of OCD, a speck of ODD, and a dash of ADHD can be evaluated. Oh, and lets not forget the dx of apraxia of speech and expressive language disorder...If Gabe's dx's were credentials his name would look like this
Gabriel C. ASD,OCD,ADHD,ODD,CAS,SID,ELD
and me...after surviving all of this silliness I want my name to be
Jessie. Phd....
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
It's a boy!
Well, we found out what's cooking in my tummy. We are adding a new little boy to the family. Gabe still insists it's a girl and now tells me he has a girl in his tummy!! I am so excited to be having another baby. To be honest I had my heart set on a girl but I have had a change of heart. It will be great for Gabe to have a little brother. And I think I am more cut out for boys. Girls are just too dramatic for me. I can't wait to get out all the baby stuff. Still a little early yet...
Monday, August 11, 2008
My son is a yo-yo
Just last week I was so excited that Gabe was making better eye contact and acting more NT then he has in a long time. Well, that's all gone after this weekend. What a stinker. Tantrums out the waazoo over the silliest stuff. It didn't matter what I did to help him I just wasn't doing it the right way. And the poor cat was tourtured consitantly. Not to mention he ran away from me while we were outside and went right for the road. Luckily the neighbor can run fast and got him. Gabe smacked him in the face when he picked him up. Gabe also smacked me in the face this weekend. He has never hit me or any other adult before. I sure hope this isn't the start of something. He even refused to go to bed on Sat and was up well past midnight! No matter what I did he just would not go to sleep. I sure hope this week ends better!
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
Looking at mommy
Gabe doesn't have very good eye contact. He says hello and goodbye to me without even looking at me but the past week or so his eye contact has improved. He actually stares into my eyes sometimes. I love looking at those big blue eyes. There is even an added sparkle that I just haven't seen for some time!! I feel like Gabe is coming out of his little world and really for once joining ours. Even my family has noticed the difference. It's exciting.
We called Hershey medical center yesterday to set up an evaluation with the child psych. there. I am so excited to have some solid evals done on Gabe. The school district evals way back in November were a joke. There were huge red flags for autism then and not one person opened their mouth about those concerns. It didn't matter that Gabe didn't talk to them, ignored most of their requests, didn't copy anything they did, and pretty much looked like classic autism at that point! Well, since finding a great neurologist we have finally got some answers. Whew...now we can go to Hershey and find out just where Gabe is as far as autism is concerned. I just feel like it is high functioning or even pdd-nos. Regardless of their findings I just want Gabe to have every oppurtunity as a NT kid has. We are so on our way to that.
Looks like we are going to finally get some OT as well. We have our name on the waiting list at the local rehab hospital. Hope we get a call soon! We have our name in there as well for speech. And I am thinking about adding some ABA for Gabe. We are seeing some behavior issues as he gets older as well as he has an extreemly hard time reading body language and facial expressions unless they are happy or crying. He doesn't understand limits as far as personal space goes and can't understand when people are angry and want him to stop. Hopefully OT or ABA can help with some of that.
We called Hershey medical center yesterday to set up an evaluation with the child psych. there. I am so excited to have some solid evals done on Gabe. The school district evals way back in November were a joke. There were huge red flags for autism then and not one person opened their mouth about those concerns. It didn't matter that Gabe didn't talk to them, ignored most of their requests, didn't copy anything they did, and pretty much looked like classic autism at that point! Well, since finding a great neurologist we have finally got some answers. Whew...now we can go to Hershey and find out just where Gabe is as far as autism is concerned. I just feel like it is high functioning or even pdd-nos. Regardless of their findings I just want Gabe to have every oppurtunity as a NT kid has. We are so on our way to that.
Looks like we are going to finally get some OT as well. We have our name on the waiting list at the local rehab hospital. Hope we get a call soon! We have our name in there as well for speech. And I am thinking about adding some ABA for Gabe. We are seeing some behavior issues as he gets older as well as he has an extreemly hard time reading body language and facial expressions unless they are happy or crying. He doesn't understand limits as far as personal space goes and can't understand when people are angry and want him to stop. Hopefully OT or ABA can help with some of that.
Friday, July 25, 2008
How Gabe sees it...
We see a screen door. Gabe is more amazed at how it feels. Running his fingers across the screen feels so neat. We see a TV that's turned off. Gabe see's a wonderful opertunity to paint it with his tongue. We see a match box car. Gabe see's every tiny detail right down to the little number 3 on the door or the flames on the hood. Water coming out of a sprinkler looks awesome if you bend down to just the right level. A cupcake should never be cut in half. And spinning in a circle on Grandma's office chair is amazing as the different colors zoom by.
What's so wrong with running your fingers across the screen door? Or spinning around in a chair for 20min at a time? I don't know. But some people find that weird. Me, I am amazed by how much Gabe see's that we don't. Every feather on a bird, the detail in a painting, the perfect shadown on the wall, the way you can line up toy cars in just the right way to make a square.
Gabe is one neat kid. I am so proud to call him my son. He has been so great the past two days. I almost forgot he was autistic until tonight. We went to my dad's for dinner and there were more people there then I knew were coming. If there are going to be a lot of people I usually tell Gabe. Today I didn't know. He burried his head so far into my leg I thought we were going to need the jaws of life to get him out. He refused to stay on the deck with these strange people. He spent most of the evening on the grass. Finally he came up on the deck with us but he spent a lot of his time in his little world. My dad would talk to him but there was no responce. He just sat and blew the pinwheel my step mom gave him. Of course there were fleeting moments of coherent Gabe but they were quickly lost. I could see the look on my dad's neighbors face when she tried to give Gabe sunglasses. He turned completly away from her with a blank look on his face. And in that split second I read her mind and it said, "wonder what's wrong with him?". And my heart broke.
Autism isn't like cerbral palsy. No one can see it. Gabe is the little boy that doesn't talk well, is bad, doesn't listen, can't sit still, and even worse dumb. The sad thing is he can talk in his head. He knows what he wants to say. But he can't say it. He does listen but he doesn't always hear everything that we are saying. Sitting still isn't easy when the world if full of exciting and wonderful things. And he is definatly not a dumb child. Sometimes I feel like yelling to the world...please be patient...Gabe has autism...but would the world really listen?....
This is a long road...but Gabe is going to do great things...I just know it...
What's so wrong with running your fingers across the screen door? Or spinning around in a chair for 20min at a time? I don't know. But some people find that weird. Me, I am amazed by how much Gabe see's that we don't. Every feather on a bird, the detail in a painting, the perfect shadown on the wall, the way you can line up toy cars in just the right way to make a square.
Gabe is one neat kid. I am so proud to call him my son. He has been so great the past two days. I almost forgot he was autistic until tonight. We went to my dad's for dinner and there were more people there then I knew were coming. If there are going to be a lot of people I usually tell Gabe. Today I didn't know. He burried his head so far into my leg I thought we were going to need the jaws of life to get him out. He refused to stay on the deck with these strange people. He spent most of the evening on the grass. Finally he came up on the deck with us but he spent a lot of his time in his little world. My dad would talk to him but there was no responce. He just sat and blew the pinwheel my step mom gave him. Of course there were fleeting moments of coherent Gabe but they were quickly lost. I could see the look on my dad's neighbors face when she tried to give Gabe sunglasses. He turned completly away from her with a blank look on his face. And in that split second I read her mind and it said, "wonder what's wrong with him?". And my heart broke.
Autism isn't like cerbral palsy. No one can see it. Gabe is the little boy that doesn't talk well, is bad, doesn't listen, can't sit still, and even worse dumb. The sad thing is he can talk in his head. He knows what he wants to say. But he can't say it. He does listen but he doesn't always hear everything that we are saying. Sitting still isn't easy when the world if full of exciting and wonderful things. And he is definatly not a dumb child. Sometimes I feel like yelling to the world...please be patient...Gabe has autism...but would the world really listen?....
This is a long road...but Gabe is going to do great things...I just know it...
Thursday, July 24, 2008
Going to the beach
Gabe watches Noggin all the time. And all summer long it has been a beach theme. So, this weekend we are taking Gabe to the beach. Just a one day thing nothing big. I can't wait to see what he does when he gets in the sand! Oh those senses will love that. Mr. Sensory Seeker should be so happy. The last time he was at the beach he was about 18 months old and he didn't really care for the sand or the ocean. Wonder how he will do this time?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)