Living with Autism: A Parent's Perspective

One thing that we have I would almost say instilled in our children from birth is a love of traveling. Both short distances and Long. Both of our older children which includes our Son have travelled by train for a two day trip from Toronto home to NB. Our eldest daughter went by car up there in the first place. We spent the first few years of our married life travelling from one city to another depending on our whims to determine where we would most prefer to spend our life. Our most recent child has not been subject to much more then 4 and 5 hour trips but even she seems to have taken to travelling.

This in and of itself is good because for our son this time is perhaps our most settled times is when he is in the car.  Now there does appear to be some adjustment when we trade in our vehicles but in general in the car he will sit for hours and play on his leapster game system which to me is a great invention if it was done with autistic children in mind. The reason I say this is because it seems to be largely through this toy that we are able to determine just how fast his mind works and what his abilities are.

Driving time because of this is generally quiet and enjoyable whether it be a shopping trip or a trip to an out of town spot for some fun time. We find in general our son eats better in the car then at home, he is significantly less agressive and in general seems to enjoy the travel and usually the destination better then any normal routine things like home or school.

Destinations appear to be of no concern as he even appears to enjoy driving for the sake of driving, which allows even more relaxation time.

One thing we have found though in recent years is as he gets older he is less and less likely to fall asleep in the car. At first this was not the case but at present it is a very rare occasion that will find our son asleep at the end of a trip unless it is an extremely long day and likely quite warm.

One other detail on travel i have found even at our destination I find our son is significantly less likely to strike out then while at home. I don’t have a real explanation for this but it does appear that his striking out is generally reserved for people who he is around a significant amount of the time such as classmates TA’s and family with the majority of it going to his TA’s and us as his parents. We still have yet to see a serious attempt to strike the baby with one minor incident appearing to be the extent of it and that appeared to be accidental.

So in general in our family we have found that it is best to take him on at least short trips as often as possible to give him as much quiet time as possible however while i recommend at least an attempt to see if this helps others i do not swear in every case it will as each autistic child that i have come across i have found to be unique for a large part

In my life i have two big things that involve my time. One is my family and therefore our autistic son and the other is Politics. As a general rule i tend not to involve the two blogs however there is a point that needs to be made not only to those who follow my blog here in Canada but also those who read my blog in the US.

The point is simple. It is your child the government is neglecting both by minimal or no funding for treatment as well as minimal to no funding for research into the causes of autism and its possible cures.

The only way to make this inequity go away or at least reduce is to get involved. Talk to your politicians when they come around looking for your votes, Go seek them out in their offices, listen to what they have to say and see what they follow up on. When after you exhaust all options to the best of your abilities ask yourself this. What have i learned about how much these politicians care about me and my child. Now once you have your answer, and in very few cases will it be anything but they care little or nothing for us beyond my vote, then decide what can i best do to get my child the care and help s/he requires and how do i get the research that we need.

The only answer is GET INVOLVED. Choose a party that most closely represents your views and get involved. Offer as a candidate. If you feel it is the only way you will get properly represented go as far as to create a new party (remember to come up with a full platform not just autism) though this is a lot of work however, or even run as an independent. Remember 1 in 91 children born today will develop autism that will affect a large number of people and if the governments of our day are not willing to do what it takes to advance autism research then we must make the effort to make our voices heard loud and clear.

We are the voices of the parents with autistic children and we are the voices of those children as well. Together we can get involved and together we can make significant changes to the research and treatment of autism. If they will not help us then it is time for us to do it ourselves

As Summer vacation continues we find more and more we are having to make  greater efforts to find things for our son to do. He is as summer continues becoming increasingly bored and harder to please. Early on in the vacation we were caught with the dilemma of the fact that he was basically confiscating either my wife or my computer the moment we moved from the desk so we quickly came to the conclusion that it was necessary to haul my old computer up from the basement for his and his older sister’s use. Didn’t really work of course as now one takes their computer and the other still tries to use ours.

We do find he enjoys time in the vehicle regardless or where he is going as there is few problems when travelling either short stints to the store or long trips out of town. This means that when possible we do try to take him out as much as possible to give him the best possible option of time out and about. We are also finding excursions to various play parks do wonders to chill his mood and so take him there as often as possible as it is helpful to him to be out playing and is still a generally fun outing for the whole family. Water play parks also seem to catch his fancy most of the time.

We are finding that on occasion he is hitting out and there is a bit more frequency to his hitting though as a general rule he seems to avoid hitting his baby sister and the worst seems to be leaning on her high chair (which she extremely vocally tells him she does not like). His older sister does get some degree of his frustration though in many of the cases it is not much different then normal brother/sister disagreements on who is going to get to do what when and instigated by her as much as by him so while we do discourage it we also acknowledge that if he was non-autistic we would still be subject to the majority of the disagreements anyway.

All said I find the summer is progressing along nicely and will (like any normal parent) be quite happy when Sept the 8th rolls around and we are back to a nice quiet and peaceful household for a good part of the day.

On one side note we are finding that as summer progresses he is getting increasingly vocal while still not near what would be considered normal talking for his age range he is definitely not where he was when school ended so we can very much be pleased with the progress made there this summer