mental health
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Firsts are hard: Part 1
The last few nights have been rough. My brain has been playing midnight showings of terrible dream sequences like old men with AK-47s shooting at me while I run for my life, me and J running up an AstroTurf cliff for cross country practice only to end up hanging from the top of that AstroTurf cliff for an “ab workout,” or suddenly finding out that I had mixed up my birth control medication with J’s anti-anxiety medication and consequently freaking out because 1) I just gave a bunch of female hormones to a boy going through puberty for two weeks and 2) I might be pregnant. I don’t think I’ve had a full night’s…
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Making life hell on purpose
It takes 11 hours or so to drive from Wichita, Kansas to Fargo, North Dakota. I feel pretty lucky. My kids are great travelers—long car trips are never a problem for us. In fact, J really loves them. He memorizes every exit sign for the entire stretch of 1-29 until we hit Iowa/Nebraska. Then he knows every exit number from Topeka to Wichita. It’s really incredible—I don’t know how he does it. I guess it’s sort of his autism party trick. We had just passed Council Bluffs, Iowa and still had six hours to go so I decided it was time to take the plunge. J and I had a…
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Boys and men
I’ll never forget that 20 week ultrasound (which was really at 18 weeks based on appointment scheduling). The ultrasound tech pointed to the screen, between what I was assuming was J’s legs and said, “See that right there (referring to J’s boy parts). It’s a boy!” Steve was ecstatic. I was terrified. It was overwhelming thinking about raising another human being and I knew nothing about boys. NOTHING. J’s baby shower was all blankets, diapers, onesies, and soothers, blue and sports. The perfect inauguration for a perfectly happy and healthy baby boy. And for a long time, for almost two years, J was exactly the baby boy we both expected him to be.…
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The power of mindfulness
Two years ago, I was in Canada visiting family. I was staying at my Aunt and Uncle’s cottage, and during the downtime I thumbed through a stack of Macleans magazines and came across this article about mindfulness practice in the public school classroom. It wasn’t the first time I had come across mindfulness practice and children. A few months earlier I had seen a call for autistic teens to participate in a mindfulness study at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg. I decided I needed to know more about this mindfulness business since I continued to see more articles on mindfulness associated with the spectrum, so that fall I decided to take a class…
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Big Problems/Little Problems
To say that J has a volatile relationship with numbers would be an understatement. J and numbers have a long and complicated history. Numbers were among the first words J picked up in the early years while we were still struggling with speech. J could pick out numbers patterns and knew most of his single digit subtraction and addition facts pre-K. J had an obsession with numbers. He loved numbers. But at around grade 1 / grade 2, he started to develop strange fears about numbers. He’s been living with number phobias ever since. The ones J deems “tainted” or “threatening” change every few months. Right now, one of those numbers…
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Where’s the Smart Boy’s Guide?
Emotions and middle school are such an awful combination–for parents and kids. W had the bulk of her frustrations at the beginning of this year. Understanding social drama is hard at this age. I looked online for resources for middle school girls and emotions, and not only did books come up for parents, but there were dozens of resources for middle school girls. I ordered three books from the American Girl Smart Girl’s Guide series: A Smart Girl’s Guide to Knowing What to Say, A Smart Girls Guide Drama, Rumors, and Secrets, and A Smart Girls’ Guide Friendship Troubles. I was SO impressed with all of them. “How to compromise with your parents and teachers. What to do…
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Negotiating Space
I have a world map and a map of the US folded and stacked on top of my jeans in my closet. J’s framed Imagine Dragons poster is also in our room, leaned up against the foot of our bed. They’ll be there until Tuesday, fingers crossed, until J earns the right to have them back. Right now when I get dressed or go to bed, I have these visual reminders of how much space J can take up in my life. It’s easy to let J overtake every aspect of my life. Space is something I have to fight for. It doesn’t just happen. I got married young (just shy of 21).…
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Never a Controlled Experiment
I feel like maybe I should write this post in installments—in fact, maybe over the next few weeks I’ll go into a little more about our experiences and thoughts on autism and medication. It’s obviously not an experience, story, or discussion that can be summed up in 1,000 words or less. It’s also a very emotionally charged one—some people feel really strongly for or against medication. At this point in J’s life we feel that medication for his anxiety and ADHD symptoms are necessary. That might change. After all, he’s constantly changing. In fact, we saw Dr. R. a week and a half ago and after the nurse took J’s…
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Evolution of the Choir Concert
I’m holding my breath–ready to pass out–because we’re so close to the finish line but I can’t quite declare that we’re in the clear yet. At noon today, I announced to Steve that we had just passed the twilight zone hour (if J’s going to have a catastrophic meltdown at school it’s almost guaranteed to happen during the 11:00am-12:00 pm) and that we have one more day to go. We just need J to hold it together for one more day and then we can officially declare victory for the semester. I don’t know why, but Christmas time has always been hard for J. Someone at church told me once that she…
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Outwit, Outlast, Outplay: Lessons Learned from this Month
Apparently toughness runs in my blood. My paternal grandmother and her family lived through some tough times in Belarus. Her family had survived World War I (most of them, my great grandmother buried two children on the side of the road as they fled from the Germans) and somehow made it through the Polish Soviet war afterward before emigrating to Canada in 1926. My maternal grandfather grew up on the Saskatchewan prairie—in the middle of nowhere—in a log homestead where in those winter months of -30C the ice would come through the joints in the wall and he’d have to sleep in every article of clothing he owned to keep…
