Work in progress

 

Caring for someone with autism can be challenging during the pandemic. Schools and therapy centers are closed. Parents have to take care of their kids in their homes. In the past months, I have been teaching my son practical things like folding clothes, washing plates, counting money and using the calculator. I have always wanted to teach my son these life skills so I am using this time to teach him something he can use in his everyday life.

This pandemic have left us time to ponder about what are the most important things in life. Our health, our family. We have also acquired new skills and for me it was baking. One time, I instructed my son to help me in cracking some eggs to be put in a bowl. Unfortunately, he broke it too hard and ended up on the floor. Maybe next time he can do better. I want him to realize that it's okay to make mistakes and he can try again until he can do it right.

My son have made milestones since last year. He was able to complete the 16 hour flight to New York from Manila last July 2019. We were able to go to museums like the American Museum of Natural History and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Met. He waited patiently on the benches of the Met while his father and I looked around the paintings of Van Gogh and Renoir, my favorite Impressionist painter . He was also behaved in the New York Public library.

A major milestone for him this year was I was able to bring him to the dentist to get his teeth cleaned. I was so nervous but I prepared him beforehand telling him that he has to open his mouth wide so the dentist can clean it so he won't have a toothache.  Fortunately, he complied but of course, there was some hesitation and a lot of prodding too.

Yesterday, he was able to try some online learning with his new SPED teacher.  I was nervous that he won't sit long but he did finish his lesson. So I hope this goes well too until they go back to regular school.

There are still other challenges that I still would like to address like him sleeping by himself in his own room. I think this goes hand in hand with his fear of thunder because when it starts raining he would cover his ears and get a little scared. This maybe the reason why he does not want to sleep alone so I still have to address this sensory thing.

Reminding myself of his milestones makes living in the new normal a little bearable. But I should not stop there. I would like to take advantage of this time to teach him new skills and overcome long standing fears so he can be more independent. He is still a work in progress like all of us are. 

Keep safe, everyone.

Writing again

My last post was last year. So much has happened and my son had a lot of breakthroughs this year. He is going to a bigger school and now preparing a trip to New York after a successful one from Vancouver last year. It is successful because we were able to pull it through on a 12 hour trip and now  he'll be having his longest one this summer, a 15 to 16 hour ride. It will be quite an achievement for him and for me since I have been preparing him for this with by going through numerous domestic flights and few international flights. I am quite happy autism did not deter us from having him on trips abroad.

I am happy with his development now but there are still new challenges that await us like getting him to the dentist and facing changes brought about by puberty but I know with God's help and guidance we will be able to surmount it successfully.

Right now, I'm preparing for our trip while doing unending errands. It is quite a challenge and hope that I can still continue to write because it is something important to me. I hope my words can inspire mothers with special needs like autism. I want to make them feel that they are not alone and this journey will make us stronger because having children like them opens our hearts with so much love we don't think possible.

Rant

 

Let me just vent. I am now writing this standing up. My back is acting up again. I need to get a check-up once again. Yes, this on top of everything else. Preparing for a long trip, taking care of the house and taking care of my son. I need an assistant.

Last week, I was so excited to watch Ocean’s Eight but what do you know it was R13. I wanted so much to unwind but alas it was not meant to be. Deep inside I felt like screaming, dammit why can’t my son be 13 already so I could have watched this movie in the big screen with a bag of sour cream flavored popcorn and sour cream flavored fries with Coke! I mean I am so tired dragging along a 12 year old son with autism in the mall always tugging at me and I can’t have a break. Dammit!

And what do you know, the universe gave me a chance to watch another movie. Adrift. It was a good survival movie based on a true story, it’s just that the heroine’s bra less scenes on the boat can be distracting and unnecessary. I mean yes, you’re on a yacht but for pete’s sake get a bra just for the movie. There are minors watching because it is rated PG  and what do I explain to my son,” Well, it’s normal son, no bra on a sunny day don’t mind the taut nipples sticking out.”

 

Anyway, just when you just like to be distracted with a funny movie, you have to seat through a serious one because you know you just want to munch on popcorn and watch tragedy. But it was a good movie, very inspiring, I mean to survive 41 days at sea is a feat, my salute to her.

However, Lord, I get it, it’s about survival, just like what I’m doing now, just surviving even if my lower back hurts, my legs aching due to sciatic pain and I’m worried about our trip abroad to relatives I haven’t seen in 15 years and I can’t watch a nice, funny movie. Why?!

Plus our toilet bidet is leaking and my favorite rubber shoe got a small hole in front because my big toe kept jamming on it, why?! Just give me a break, God… and now my husband wants to have guests over with the dishes overflowing and the house unkempt, I mean I’m so not busy right?..Thank you hubby! and when I told him, let’s have the visitors another day, we got into a fight and he sulked because it was his sister and her foreign boyfriend coming over wanting to see our house like a museum they have to visit. Whaaat the f**%k! 
 
So here I am writing about it because that’s the only thing I can do, rant about it, scream my lungs out inside my head and say all the curses on my mind because you know I can’t do it for real lest I sound like a rabid dog foaming at the mouth in mindless anger. You just take it and write about it and move on. Just like what my favorite writer, Kerima Polotan said, " Life scars a writer but he is not without weapons of vengeance". So here’s to you, mothe&4%ker!!!

Grit to Prevail

 

Time flies is such a cliché and it's been almost three years since I posted. So much things has happened and my son will be 12 years old in June. This is a scary part for me because he'll be hitting puberty soon. I don't know if he has the right school, if he has the right intervention. I don't know. Me, I just want to rest for awhile and just breathe.

I know I can't predict the future but what I will do now for him will prepare him for the future in a world that looks at him different, like a misfit in a society that can be cruel and unaccepting. I cannot shelter him from it but I can prepare him for it.

 

 

How can you teach him grit and not be so sheltered so he can cope with his life when he gets older? How can you make him experience the world himself and learn about fortitude? I wish I can make a program for him, something I would deem fit so he can be self-sufficient and independent. Isn't that something we all want for our children, to learn to fend for themselves in the future?

 

 

If you follow the "ideal" program to aid in your battle with autism, the usual therapies are occupational therapies, speech therapies, ABA and others. I know they all helped my son but somehow I want him to learn more self-help skills. Because sometimes, two hours a week of therapy is not enough. Or maybe I just want to take a break. Maybe I need a respite from all the driving especially in traffic, from waiting in schools and therapy centers, from paying the bills and worrying about finances, worrying about my health, my husband's, my son's health, my parents' health and many other things. It just can be so overwhelming, I just want to lie down sometimes, close the lights and just sleep to blank my mind.

 

 

It is a struggle, a constant challenge but autism have made me stronger. It may have nicked me at times but I feel confident that I will rise above it like all special parents like me would. It is a purpose that is given to us and by showing the world that we can not only handle it but become a better person because of it then we have prevailed.

 

 

Like what they say, God gives the hardest battles to His strongest soldiers and one of my favorites, if life pushes you back, you push back harder. So cheers to us special parents and fight on :)

 

Taking inspiration from Tauriel and Kili

Sometimes, I just wish it would stop, his crying, his whining, his nudging me on my head with his own while we are lying in bed and his incessant screams in fear of the rain and in anticipation of thunder. I also wish that the damn traffic would disappear so I won’t have to endure his mindless shrieking, screaming of help while the cars stall in front of me during an early morning ride to school.

Traffic and Thunder

Autism never ceases to present its own challenges. I am fighting the same monsters again like Azog and Bolg in the Hobbit. Strong, formidable and I’m just the She-Elf, Tauriel deftly getting out of their blows. I have no Legolas or Kili to help me, just me, just sheer will and grit of riding it out. Sometimes, I feel like being hurled on the wall, helpless, injured because I feel incapable of finding a solution to finally subdue my son’s two intense sensory disorders, Traffic and Thunder. 

Is it me, am I being soft with him but I have raised my voice a couple of times, threatening to get out of the car, sometimes furtively pinching him so he would associate his scream with a little pain but still to no avail. Maybe my last resort would be to follow up on my threats of leaving the car, or asking him to get out to the streets while of course within my sights.

I am just desperate and often when he resorts to his screaming fits, I imagine I’m with my favorite Kili hanging out in the car, me just marveling his breathtaking presence and his wide smile and forgetting the war zone I am in. It takes the grating parts off those moments. It makes it more bearable.

Right now, I need a miracle to remedy these “problems”. Maybe I need to load up on my prayers, maybe that would help, maybe I could make social stories, make a documentary or Powerpoint presentation like the ABA seminar I attended in to prepare him in these kinds of situations. Maybe that would help so that I could finally subdue these "monsters". I know I would trimph. I know I will even if it takes a while. Meanwhile, I will need to watch more Kili and Tauriel scenes to keep me going J

Rising up again

My last post had been in September 2013. Wow, that had been a long time. My son will turn 9 years old this year. Yes, it is still is a struggle. He still hates traffic and he's bigger and stronger now. He now has a gap on his front tooth which he got from his Dad and I'm still here hanging on.

What's different now is I've been studying, I'm taking up Special Education units and I will try to get my license as a teacher this year. I have bonded with some mommies and have a special group of friends to talk to about our special kids. I have been sidelined from writing for a while and now I'm coming back to what I really love doing.

I'm also training for a marathon. Something to test my mental power after climbing a perilous mountain last year. I'm doing it for my son, for myself, to test my limits so I can be better accompanying him on this journey.

I have changed because of him. I want to be better because of him. I'm not perfect though, I slip up but I will rise again. I will because of him.

My Writing and Autism

It's been awhile since I wrote on this blog. I maintain three other blogs aside from this, a food blog, a blog about books and movies and a blog featuring my short stories. Though, I don't post everyday, I try to update it every month.

Writing for these blogs can be a challenge. It would be easy to plow along and write without any care just so I can update my blog but I can't. I put my heart and parts of my soul into it as cliche as it may sound but it's true. 

And so that's why I don't often post on this blog, one that pertains about my journey with autism. Because it is the blog that guts me when I write about it. It's the one that is the most personal and heart rending because it is about my son and our journey together with this disability.

I'm not perfect, I know I should be doing something more for him, maybe more therapies or spend more time with him but right now, it is unscrambling my thoughts here that I can cope better and become a mother that has more patience and more understanding.

I read an enlightening book by John Maxwell called :"Beyond Talent". He talked about focus and spending time on talents you feel you are good at or one that interests you the most. I feel that way about writing and I plan to cultivate this talent as much as I can. I plan therefore to write more often though I know I've mentioned it already because I feel that if you love something or someone, you don't run away. You come near it and get to know it better. I have ran away from it long enough and I realize I love putting down my thoughts on paper. It is the one thing that I am passionate about even when I was still in high school, journaling and creating short stories on small notebooks.

And I want to combine this craft with my journey with my son, to come to grips with this puzzling phenomenon that has also entered the lives of many families. Maybe writing more on this blog can also help other parents feel that they're not alone on this journey.

I hope to write here often and maybe share some tips on how to handle some social situations that I have encountered myself.  Thanks for reading :)