Like the Autism Books Say

So we're over two years into diagnosis and our lives are beginning to look like all the books described.

In the early days, I recall reading about weeks full of therapies, dragging your family from one spot to the next, hours spent with therapists in your home, a family life revolving around autism and I thought, no way, not us. I will not succumb to turning my children into lab rats for the sake of trying everything possible to the point of exhaustion.

Of course there's another side of me who hears the years up to age seven are when the brain is most pliable and there's this urgency for early intervention, and this is as true as the sky is blue. If there is a hint - a shadow of a thought - that something is not well with your child, help should be sought out immediately. Autism will not correct itself. It is not a childhood disorder that kids outgrow.  It will not go away without intervention and even that - the bittersweet thought of recovery - is up for debate.

So here we are.  The part about how our life is turning into what the books said it would.

Tuesday and Thursday an ABA therapist comes to our home for an hour and a half.  Wednesday is one hour OT sessions.  As you can imagine my time is spent entertaining our youngest little man.  Not to mention things like library day and Lego Robotics.  And when school starts, Speech and ABA twice a week, OT weekly, and PT quarterly.  Times two.

Ok, so it's not that extreme. And I still refuse to be the mom hopping in and out of therapy sessions moving from one cure all claimer to the next, but our schedule is full.

Just like the books promised. 

When we were first diagnosed, a friend said "don't let it consume you" and I thought - absurd! I have two out of three children on the spectrum. I wondered how we would ever live "normal" lives. The answer is, we won't. We will reinvent the word normal.  "Normal" families are not running all over town for therapy.  "Normal" families are not signing their typical kid up for Karate because he thinks all this therapy is fun that he's being excluded from.  "Normal" families don't spend hours a week reading food labels and books specific to a particular condition.  But what's normal anyway?

No matter what it is, I'm sure we don't hit the cutoff for that, and that's okay.  Between the running and the crazy diet and overthinking every situation we enter, we are seeing progress.  And that's worth not fitting the mold.