My Autistic Boy And Other Adventures In Fatherhood

Last night we received two packages in the mail for Demetrius and Maya, and they were itching to get them opened (we told them after dinner). 

As we sat down to eat (and make our tacos – the kids love when they can make their own dinner like this), Demetrius jammed as much of it down his throat as quickly as possibly. He may have actually been done before any of us hand finished making our first ones.

Demetrius: Can I open my package (but he called it his ‘present’) now?

Mommy & Daddy: No Demetrius, you have to wait for the rest of us AND we know that the office is open upstairs, you need to stay down here and talk with us while we eat about your day.

I think what he heard was, “No, you can’t open your present AND you must take iron screws and shove them up under your fingernails while we eat our dinner as slowly as possible.”

But while Maya told us, in detail, about her day, Demetrius got the itch, and just had to go upstairs.

Mommy & Daddy: If you go in the office, you don’t get to open your present. Do you understand?

Demetrius: I’m just going to go to my room.

Of course, we can hear the TV in the office playing a DVD and Demetrius start stemming to it.

We finish our dinner, clean up and Maya gets one of the two packages.  We don’t know which box goes with which child, because they both say on the ‘To’ line: Demetrius and Maya Grasso.

Crapshoot I tell Kim with the boxes, but he’s made his bed and he’ll have to sleep in it.

He hears Maya….

Comes bounding down the stairs….

Demetrius: Lets open the presents!

Daddy (I’m playing bad cop): Demetrius, you did not do what we told you to do, you don’t get to open your package tonight.

Man, talk about a fit.

Demetrius: Mommy….

Mommy: Daddy is right (this is good as good cop was going to get last night)….

Can you hear the screaming?  The intense soundwaves should be bouncing off the moon and traveling back down to Earth at this time…

And as it would be, the box Maya opened had a new backpack with Demetrius’ name on it, for school when it starts mid-August.  Maya takes it over to Demetrius and runs to get the other box, which has her backpack in it.

Demetrius looks at it….

Demetrius (post-cry whiny talk): This is what my present is? A backpack for school?

Mommy and Daddy: Yes, it is, that is very nice, isn’t it?

Demetrius furrows his brow, his crying completely gone and out of his system.

Demetrius: Can I finish watching my movie then?

How can you not smile?

Nonni Cheryl, thank you so much for the nice backpacks.  Maya loved hers and Demetrius…well, he will learn to like it.

Making him write his thank you note will only be about 3/4ths as painful as telling him he couldn’t open his package…..

It seems as if the Michael Savage comments on autism are picking up steam...will this be another Don Imus situation? Who is to say, but now it is getting into the mainstream press and, as you'll see in this piece, protesting is now taking place.

On a completely different note, I saw something a bit inspirational on the way into work this morning - so much so I had to blog about it first thing when I got in.  For those of you 'Atlantans' I drive into work on 141 from Alpharetta into Buckhead, right past Big Peach Running Company.  About two blocks from that store on 141, I saw a man running with a blind woman.  They were going very slowly (more of a fast walk than a jog), she had one of those devices that is out in front of her from her hand feeling (like a cane - but I have no idea what they are called), and she held a rope that this gentleman had tied to him.  They turned off the main drag quickly (because the thought was crossing my mind why were they jogging on a busy road at rush hour?) but I thought good for her...she likes to run and she's doing it hell or high water!  And good for the dude helping her (I assume they found each other and meet at the running store?).

Gives ya hope, ya know?  Especially after hearing Michael Savage.....

I haven't done this in awhile, that being, posting photos from a busy week before, so here are a few:


Kaileen and David Button, Demetrius and Maya building some sort of Blair Witch appartus in our front yard.  Lots of weird noises and lights that night.....


I wrote about how tight Demetrius and David are still, even after two years of living around the world from each other. Here the two of them PSP together.....


Maya reading her story to everyone at her creative writing camp last week....


Buddy was a good sport when Maya dressed up as her 'princess doggy' for a day

Sigh..... And Grrr......

Marla: I saw it too at the grocery store earlier in the week. Happy mother with newborn.

Clearly she sold her story to OK magazine and the publisher/editors, or whoever makes the final decision here, decided that the exclusive pictures and interviews are more important than the moral questions it raises by putting her on the cover (even baby Suri didn't make her photo arrival this quickly!).

I blogged that I didn't want to have to talk to Maya about teen pregnancy when it was being covered on CNN and then she watched Zoey 101 and somehow connected dots. But that's reality (just like teenagers exploring sex - reality) but should have chosen someone from a whacko family as your star of your show - because you are just begging for a PR issue like this.

By putting her on the cover, are you telling the world that it is okay to be a mom at 17? And even though I haven't read the pub/story, OK magazine doesn't have a leg to stand on if they say, "It is news, and on page 37 we talk about how we don't support or endorse teen pregnancy, and here is a Web site kids can go to....." that's not the point, the point is by putting Jamie Lynn Spears on the cover you are tacitly saying that teen pregancy is not a big deal and life wrecking (because we all aren't rich Hollywood types), and having you buy the magazine for the exclusives is more important than anything else.

I get that this is a news event, so it should probably be covered by the celebrity/gossip pages (just like Brad/Angelina's kids), but a smiling picture of her looking wholesome holding her baby in her arms gently......well, I think a line was crossed myself.

What are we telling impressionable, young teenage girls when we laude praise on movies like Juno and portray Jamie Lynn Spears so 'All American' as we do in this picture? Maybe I'm sensitive with Maya, but this year teen pregnancy has crossed over into movie genre like women showing their breasts did 20 years ago, and movies about drug use did 10-15 years ago (Drugstore Cowboy, Requiem For A Dream...those movies didn't end well or happily in any sort of way).

That said, Anne Hathaway had to show her ta-tas to move out of the Ella Enchanted mindset she was known for, to some extent I think Mylie Cyrus is doing the same thing (Vanity Fair shoot) as these girls either make mistakes and become more than pre-teen stars (Jaime Lynn) or do so in a pre-meditated way (see above).

Hollywood is whacky, and those that cover it are just as weird.

Okay, off the soapbox.

Want to take an autism quiz?  Click here.

Hmmmm - is this in your family?  Might be in mine....

Nice piece about Scott Jackson and his son (Scott plays for the Houston Texans).

Any of ya'll listen to Michael Savage? I don't. I don't like bombastic right-wing shows anyway.  Won't be anytime soon either after reading this. 

This is an interesting read. But how would you know a false positive? Only more testing...while getting the therapy. At issue in this piece, to me, is that in many cases you are diagnosing a child with behaviorial and physical delays - and the messaging is 'don't wait'.  Would be an interesting point to hear argued.

Well, you all know how we feel about Buddy. We think he's magic.

Our friends from Singapore, the Buttons, are in the States and hung out with us yesterday.  They are doing a US tour, and are moving on from the tip of Malaysia to New Zealand, which is where they want to be.  We couldn’t be happier for them.  Unfortunately the dad, Andrew, is moving the family’s belongings, so we weren’t able to catch up with him.  But it is always great seeing Amanda and the kids.

That said it is always interesting to see the kids after a couple of years (at this age, we certainly change less than they do...outside of a few more lbs.!).  Their son, David, is just a taller version of the same kid.  Building stuff, negotiating for ice cream (he’s a future lawyer, no doubt) and smiling the big toothy smile he’s always had (even when he’s missing teeth).  He and Demetrius were in school together, and the boys, and the families just bonded.  We miss them.  Though, with Skype – we can talk much more often (and for free!).

Kaileen, she’s moving from an 8-year-old to 10-year-old.  Big changes there.  Actually acting older, more reserved… as I think is appropriate.  It isn’t so much of a ‘physical change’ as a ‘mental one’.  When I went to give her a hug, it was more ‘proper’ than typically with the kids. Why?  Becoming a little lady.  I needed to make note of this, as I’m very informal, and frankly, I need to approach kids at different ages differently….and she hasn’t seen me in a few years. She should be reserved!  

She didn’t really make too much eye contact, and it took her a few hours to get comfortable. But she did finally warm up and we did chat a bit about schooling and what’s next for her (different countries, different systems, different evaluations of skill sets…and we think we have it bad!).

We talked about when we’ll get to New Zealand to come see them (jet fuel prices might just make that even more prohibitive then I would have initially thought!).

When I went to bed (the kids were having a sleepover) Demetrius and David were still up, looking at a SpongeBob book together.  David had his arm around D’s shoulder and David was doing the reading out loud. I gave them a lights out, and gave Super D a kiss on his forehead.
 
There are just some friends you pick up with where you left off with.  I think it gets harder as you get older.  Some of us just don’t have SpongeBob to bond over.

We have some friends in town and the tourist-y event for the day was for the wives and kids to head down to the CNN Center for the tour. If you are in Atlanta, it is something you should do. Anyway, when Kim called me I asked how it went.

Kim: Fine, it was neat...but you know what the kids really liked best?

(I was figuring something about snacks, or something like that...)

Kim: The Cartoon Network Gift Shop. They wouldn't leave the gift shop.

I'm wondering what we overpaid for at the gift shop! I am afraid to ask....

Again, go figure.

The screaming child picture is back.....and he alive and well at our house!

This has nothing to do with Autism, but with kids in general….grandparents detox.

Remember my posting about not getting mad at the grandparents and family members last week?  There is another angle to that though…and because they want to please the kids and the wee-ones generally get what they want…when they get  home and have to do chores and do something other than what they want…they get a bit angry, fussy, whiney.

It’s been better for Maya, as she has camp all week (so she’s occupied) but Demetrius doesn’t…his next camp begins next week. So when we ask him (really, lets be honest, tell him) to clean up his room. We get big push back…

I HATE READING BOOKS
I HATE CLEANING MY ROOM
I DON’T LIKE WALKING BUDDY
I DON’T WANT TO GO TO THAT POOL
I DON’T WANT TO EAT THAT FOOD

Conversely he has told us this week:

I WANT TO READ MY COMIC BOOKS
MY TOYS ARE GOOD
I WANT TO GO TO THE BIG POOL WITH THE SLIDE (at the health club)
I WANT TO EAT YOUR ICE CREAM TOO, MOMMY (along with his scoop for dessert)

Certainly he is getting his point across, and he is actually yelling…yes, this laid back kid who pretty much minds his own beeswax, is yelling at Kim and me about what he is not going to do.

He threw a fit and told Kim he hated her, and then just started screaming at her when she told him to clean his room. So he got a few swats on his butt and had to sit in the corner.

While in the corner, he told me he is going to the beach to live with Nanny, Pop, Nonni and Grandpa.

And Maya can come.

But Kim and I have to stay home and clean the house. We aren’t his friends anymore.

Wonder if the grandparents are up to it?

Who are we kidding!?! In Demetrius’ mind this would be C-to-the-third-power: cartoons, comic books, computer all day, everyday…..

Any different with your kids grandparents?

Yea, that’s what I thought…..

So this blog 'cutting off' image has me befuddled. I just did a redesign about a month ago and now - whammo! - all of a sudden everyone on a PC is having issues.   Mac users - no issues.  What to do? I'll play around in the next day or two a little bit with it.  Overall, most everyone is seeing the blog text cut off, which is what I'll aim to repair. I doubt I'll do a major reinvention again any time soon.  I'm gathering most of you can still read it, and want to read it...but if you guys demand a major change, I'll do it.  I am, of course, here to serve.

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I left corporate America on February 1st, and have been on my own since then. It has been a nice change (beset with a new group of worries, but refreshing none-the-less) and we've been doing okay.  That said, it has been interesting with our insurance provider.  Now, we've been making COBRA payments on time, since they've become due - funny though, almost every single therapy session has been kicked back to us. In fact, in mid-June, we started receiving denial/non-payment paperwork all the way back to mid-February. Very interesting....Kim is our in-house guru on dealing with insurance companies - I'm sure we'll get it all worked out, but I find it funny that as soon as I'm not on the corporate payrolls - well, you follow my drift.

Oh, and Demetrius now is turned down for therapies. They aren't essential anymore.  Again, funny how this works this way. Never been 'non-essential' previously...but I wasn't COBRA payment-ing previously, was I?  We'll see on this too.....we can argue for it (luckily, we've taken Demetrius out for the summer, he's in alot of camps and vacationed at the beach, etc...) but we probably won't do that until we get ready for school to begin in mid August.

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I did some grocery shopping before Kim and the kids got back and I picked up the 'wrong' type of ice cream, a low-fat/no sugar version of chocolate, made with Splenda.  Anyone have any issues with their wee-ones and Splenda ice cream? Any wiggin out by your auties/aspies?  About 1/2 an hour after he had some Demetrius got real whiney, then he wanted to wrestle for some sensory integration, then he went into a giggle mode like I've never seen, all tied into some weird behavior (he kept taking his head and putting it under the bathroom faucet and squealing and laughing...right after his shower).  We were a bit dumb-founded and Kim thought it might be the Splenda. True.  So I'm asking ya'll. Also, it could be that he was up past 12:30am on Saturday night after getting back from Kansas on his flight, so he might be way tired too...and it manifested itself this way.

Anyone got any ideas?

I remembered that I added a new feature to my sidebar and then right after everyone began pinging me about the text cutting off. Please let me know if removing the live ticker helped out and fixed the issue.