A La Aspie

Ethan, while having an AS dx, also exhibits possible, by undx, attention deficit problems. Not undx for lack of looking, mind you (he’s been through two psych evals in his short life), but not the paramount issue. I’ve tried a few things that positively affected the AS symptoms but had very little effect on the attention deficit symptoms.

(And just for the record - I did sit in on his class one day during a ’shadow the student’ day - and OMG, tedious and monotonous. I really don’t fault young kids for not being able to sit still through that. It was HORRIBLE! In fact, I question the sanity of a young child who CAN sit still through that and have a brain left that is anything but numb. Maybe I could start a movement to treat overly attentive children.)

While in a client session one day, the client told me that…

Crossposted to Trusera.com

In September, my husband was physically violent to me. I experienced the typical shock that goes with an incident like that. It’s taken me 4 hard months to get to the point where I feel like I’m about halfway back to normal. On one hand, I’m lucky that I have healing skills and self knowledge that make my survivability better. But on the other hand, I was also more deeply traumatized by the incident because of my disability.

It’s no big secret that people with autism have a hard time coping with change. Now, 4 months later, I’m starting to be able to pick apart the elements of the incident. What was trauma and shock, what was logic, what was survival - and now, what was my disability.

The actual incident it’s self was traumatizing, obviously. Someone you trust attacks you. ANYONE attacks you physically… it’s all traumatizing. But…

Crossposted to Trusera

This past week, I experienced a personal crisis. It required that I go to the hospital and interact with medical staff. It required that I talk to police officers, detectives, attorneys and a judge. My son had to talk to CPS. I had to fill out lots of forms, and have lots of information at the ready. I subsequently have had to work with several government agencies and this will continue over the coming weeks. There were several things that I found unique about those situations and Asperger’s Syndrome.

Eye Contact : I don’t make eye contact very much with people I don’t know and I rock when I’m in a difficult situation. Add shock and trauma to the list and those symptoms go through the roof. Police are trained to watch eye contact for truthfulness and doctors are trained to watch eye contact for neurological symptoms. I…

cross posted to Trusera

Sometimes I look back at my blog and I’m so glad that I had the presence of mind to write some stuff down. When I look back over my past entries … before the AS dx, I’m again, glad that I wrote it down as I went because otherwise, it might be too easy to wash away all the ‘not knowing’ in the glow of the ‘knowing’.

For the first part of my life, I was just a badly behaving child. The intricacies of what it is like as a kid on that side of things - and what it’s like struggling to parent an AS kid, i’ll save for another post. However, there was some point during my life when I started to notice that i was different and started to willfully struggle against it. Not just different in that I listened to different music or wore…

I haven’t updated very much lately on my depression. I think I’ve been so neck deep in other stuff that it’s escaped my mind. That could be taken as a good sign.

When I quit the petri dish, I halved my anti-depressant dose successfully. I went from 20mg to 10mg a day with no issues. I’m back up by a few mg as of two days ago because there was too much ‘crash’ if I forgot my meds for over 10 hours, which, because of the whole absent-minded-professor part of me, I do fairly frequently.

For a while, I was considering the possibility of being off meds completely. It’s been a year since I’ve been on them. I was kinda excited about the possibility, but scared too. I don’t like where I was when I had to start taking them. And that ’self’ comes raging out when I ‘crash’ after…

My Horoscope Today (from stariq) :

Transiting Mars Conjunct Natal Pluto

THE POWER WITHIN
There is a deep force rumbling inside of you. It could be passion, it could be rage, it could be fear. The key is to face the danger within yourself, to gather your powers and apply them in the most vital areas of your life. You can, in fact, gain ground by cutting out what you no longer need. It’s nice to be polite, but not if it costs you the chance to be all you can be. You’re ready for change from the bottom up. Cleaning up, cleaning out and clearing your plate are great for opening the way. Focus your intensity on the issues that really count, rather than repressing anger or spending your energy on inconsequential matters.

Wow… how appropriate for me on this very day.

Magick happens again. Here I am all bewildered with this whole I.E.P…

AS folks have a tendancy to be casien and gluten intollerant. With me and Emma having AS and Ethan being somewhere in the PDRyan range, we have cut MOST casien out of our diets - excepting cheeses, which doesn’t seem to have as much affect. Gluten was a little more difficult. Gluten = wheat. It’s quite daunting to remove gluten from one’s diet. Every-fucking-thing has gluten in it.

So a while back, a friend of mine who has a gluten allergy came to stay with us - so while she was here, I had her show me some of the GOOD gluten free stuff. Although it isn’t troves of info, it’s a start. God love that woman! :) And so, here’s what I know (for a full gfcf diet run down, see this page):

Life with a full time job and kids and a home and a marriage makes one pressed for time. Make the kids special needs kids and you have quite the handful. It can make one nuts, even. My kids are 6 and 7. One is dx AS and the other is undx by probably on the PDD scale somewhere. My husband and I work full time jobs. These are some little things we do to smooth the road.

Tips For Mothering Spectrum Kids

Consistency - This can be used even for small children. Everything has a place and it should always go there. There are things we do and don’t do and those never change. Everything has consequences and they don’t change. We have a schedule for the week and we stick to it. When something comes up outside of that, the kids see it as an exception and understand that… rather than…

When I see something in a store that I want, I immediately start shuffling my budget around in my head. If I saved a little here or a little more there, then maybe I could wing it next month. Or if I skimp on this other thing, maybe I could afford it now. There is a financial give and take for any item that I want to buy. Money is limited. It doesn’t just grow on trees, if you hadn’t heard yet. I have a set amount of cash to do a list of things with. I choose where I spend that cash and how and I make concious decisions about it’s use.

Yet somehow, when it comes down to my personal resources - my energy, my time, my emotional capactiy or my spiritual cohesiveness, it is not natural for me to do the same budgeting. I’m beginning to do…

Ethan has not been dx with anything. If I had to guess, I’d put him on the PDD scale with maybe ADHD to boot. He is a fairly normal kid function-wise but has rough spots when it comes to maintaining mood and energy at a steady level and to social stuff. Rough spots being on a scale from 1-10, their roughness is about a 6 with bad days being about an 8 and good days being about a 4. The social issues are not to the extreme that mine are although I could see them worsening a bit as he gets older - similar to me.

Aside from putting together a consistent routine at home, I have made his diet consistent as well. In the two weeks that I implemented these items, I have seen a complete turn around in his behavior at school.

The folowing are things that both…