Well I have a few other blogs around, but I felt the need to start one chronicling the life of my son and I. Mark is autistic, and this is a hard concept for me to grasp.
I don’t know much about it, but the more I know the more I can share about what it means to be the parent of an autistic child.
I consider myself very lucky; he functions quite well and is quite social. So to that I am very grateful.
He takes his time to hit milestones that children his age have mastered. When he gets them, he is amazing at it. He seems to be about 6 to 9 months behind others his age. His first steps, his first words, and the first time he looked at me and called me Mama; all were late, but he did it!
Currently he is 3 years old, and is attending half day school right now. The socialization is wonderful; he loves his classmates and his teachers.
At first his teachers were thinking that he is ADHD (just like his mommy), but now they are confident that he is in the autistic spectrum.
You can tell when he is overwhelmed; he will throw himself to the floor and shake his head in a violent way as to cause injury to him and whoever is around him at the time. His tantrums are much worse than any other children's that I have ever seen; he does little tasks often and will repeat them until he passes out. He cannot communicate to us without a lot of interpretation on my part. Despite that fact that he is spoken to all the time, he refuses to use words as we know them. He has only just now began to use 'down' and 'more please'. He has passing obsessions. He used to LOVE this TV show called "Dinosaur Train”, which is all that he would watch or care about. Now it scares his to the point where he will grab the TV remote and give it to me to change the channel. Currently his big thing is "Thomas the Tank Engine"; I hope this one lasts longer.
He absolutely loves technology, he figured out at 1 year old, how to open my iphone and play a game (that I no longer have sadly) now he loves to open the phone and call my boyfriend. :) (Daddy, daddy) He loves my computer and loves to watch me play video games (he prefers Mirror's Edge right now), he finds me playing WOW fascinating, he will stay quiet and stares intensely as I run through mobs or fly around. He has even figured out how to get my character to move around when I am not at the computer.
I love him with all my heart. He is an amazing child. When he looks me in the eye and says "Hi Mama" everything is alright.
About me, Amanda. Well I am 25 and currently unemployed. In June I was fired from my job at a local financial institution for not meeting sales goals (I am not a seller, especially pushing to little old ladies but that are another story for another time). Currently I am on state assistance but cannot wait until I get a job and can get off of it. It all goes to him and anything left over goes to me, I would rather starve then see him uncomfortable. Luckily he does not need to see the doctor except for the checkups that is required of all children and their parents (and shots as well. until I can see proof that vaccines are giving children autism or anything, he will get them, they do so much more good than any harm at all). I on the other hand have severe allergies and PCOS that has gotten horrible (I have ovarian cysts that are just horrible to deal with and cause me great pain when I have my period). I don’t want to use the doctor too much until I have my own job.
I have a boyfriend (J) who I lovely and loves my son. He is not my son's father but wishes to take the role on when we get married. I don’t want to take advantage of him, so I do what I can to not ask him for help with anything. He does help by paying for my phone bill and occasionally giving me gas money if I am desperate for it. We are about an hour away from each other but still try to get together every Monday for date nights. Today is actually our 2 year anniversary, yay!!! He is always there for me, and I love him for it.
Mark and I live with my parents on a small piece of land in a small home that mom and dad built. I am very lucky to have them in my life, they allow us to stay for little to nothing, I am so grateful. I do what I can to help out, cleaning, cooking, buying them food and giving them what money I have for rent. They watch Mark during the day when I am out looking for a job. They are great people!
Well this was just an overview of mark and my life just to let you know what this blog will be about. I am grateful he is not full on autistic but he is within the spectrum and he and I will have to learn how to cope.
Thank you for reading this if you got this far.
Have a beautiful day!!!
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