Some people don't understand much about living with Autism, while others have seen a lot. But living with it daily & in our case in double amounts, there are every day things you may not realize.
Things that most all of us take for granted and may not realize the struggle it poses at our house. Obviously Autism is different for every person & each caregiver handles it different ways. This is just some of the stuff that goes on here at our house & how we handle it.
1. My kids don't blow their noses. You can try to explain the process over & over, and son#1 tries, but no dice. It'd sure help them tremendously if they could. The amount of sneezes they produce & the ferocity with which they sneeze...you'd be amazed. No one goes to college not knowing how to tie their shoes, but I really hope we can blow our nose by then.
2. Son #2 is not potty trained & after dinner is his "business" time. He sometimes even plays in it like a toddler. (Carrie didn't you have a story to tell me about this?) That's never fun to clean up on an 8 year old or the things around him. And we're in the biggest pull-ups they make. But it's very hard to reason and explain the digestive process to someone that doesn't speak and shows no interest. When son#1 potty trained, he watched the commercial for pull-ups & just wanted to be "a big kid now. Just like talking, late to the game, but when he did it, he just did it.
3. It took EIGHT years into our marriage before we got to sleep through the night on a regular basis. I guess it wasn't that terrible when you're right out of college and you're used to no sleep. But once I hit 30, I started to notice. We were so thankful that son#3 slept through the night from the get go. We felt we earned that one.
4. Son#2 loves food. He likes to watch me cook it, and eating is his favorite sport. This poses a problem after dinner. We barely get set down to eat ourselves, and he's almost done eating. As soon as dinner is over, we have to clean up--IMMEDIATELY. Any food left in pots/pans or on plates, all have to be cleaned up immediately or son#2 plays in it, strings it around the house or eats it. No pans soaking in our sinks or he plays in the water. At the end of the day after making dinner, the last thing I want to do is jump up & clean the entire kitchen. But we pay for it if we don't.
5. Our kids don't swallow medicine. They WILL throw up. So we have been fortunate enough to find a doctor that calls in almost anything to the compounding pharamcy so that we can have it topical form. It comes in a syringe without a needle, and is like lotion. In fact, son #1 still calls it "lotion medicine". We have Tylenol, Ibuprofen, and Phenegren for throwing up. If they just made one for the runs, we'd be set!
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