autismdadinthe603

There are always things to write. Sometimes I find myself putting something together and letting it rest. The problem is that for the last two months I’ve been fighting to stay locked in. That’s what 5 kids, a tumor to a beloved figure, 19 students wrapping up a school year, a senior pug who keeps having accidents on the living room floor and a wife working on advancing her career will do. It’s called life. You either fight through the hard or crumble.

Like Sawyer, I haven’t crumbled but each day has had more twists and turns than our toddlers coming to an agreement on sharing a cardboard box. Once again, it’s life. The moment you feel like you have it hard, just look to those around you. Nobody has it easy. Everyone has a story. I just happen to share a lot of mine.

The now is hard. Sawyer has developed two stims the last few months. One is a cough, which he has hyper focused on allergies on it being the cause. He doesn’t have allergies. The second is burping. The burping is followed by questions like “do you burp a lot, Dad?” Come to think of it, the 3rd stim might be using “Mom and Dad” after every single question to my wife and I. It’s exhausting but endearing at the same time.

Navigating through these new behaviors have been additional layers of exhaustion. With Autism, it’s like an escalator; you know you are going up or down but you best must not fight it because you will lose out on the adventure.

For Sawyer, we had to come to a few difficult decisions as we wrapped up the school year. We declined the extending school year as we felt like he needs a break. Not the popular choice but our gut tells us that Sawyer needs it. The next big decision was to schedule a neuropsych evaluation. We really need to have some updated testing to ensure we aren’t missing anything he needs to be successful. Just thinking about this makes my head spin.

However, the moral of today is continue to take on the hard. It isn’t easy to face reality but it’s better than refusing to learn from it.

With love,

Autismdadinthe603