I know -- this seems like a ridiculously obvious statement, but hear me out. I think it's very difficult to know exactly what a teen really needs. I think it's even more difficult when that teen is autistic with a history of difficulty communicating his or her wants and needs. To make matters even more complicated, it's easy to be swept up in ...

In this entry from the archives, I spend a great deal of time researching and contemplating the link between autism and schizophrenia, and decide that A.'s teacher is just not a very good person to listen to about these things.   April 23rd, 2004: I wish I could talk. I wish I could stay to say anything. I wish I ...

In April of 2004, my daughter's teacher decided to inform me that she was worried my daughter might be schizophrenic. These unprofessional diagnoses have haunted me throughout my career as a mother of an autistic child, so I wanted to share this experience in case others might be able to relate to it.   April 20th, 2004: You know what ...

I'm not going to lie -- watching A. slowly become a teenager has possibly been one of the hardest things I've ever done in my parenting career. The moodiness, the surliness, the attitude, the drama -- my patience doesn't feel like it has the endurance to get through too much of this. Then, my ego gets involved, and I feel like a horrible person ...

This may sound strange, but in many ways, I think I always saw motherhood as an infinitely spiritual exercise. In many ways, spending time with my daughter, loving her, and delighting in her was my special way of praying. There are several such moments that unfold in the snippets below -- throughout both good times and bad. I am so grateful that I ...

There's a lot of extraneous, personal, non-A.-related information in this entry, but I wanted to keep it as-is because I feel it's a great reflection on my state of mind at the time. I wrote this entry after a horribly negative experience with a local dance studio when I tried to enroll A. in dance classes there. I think the decisions I made and ...

The last few posts in this blog have been extremely positive, haven't they? I guess it's because things have been, in general, going so well for A., and I've been excited about her progress and accomplishments lately. Well, just so you know I'm not 100% Pollyanna all of the time, I figured I would share my struggles with A. from this morning.This ...

Shortly after A. started attending day care, she had an incident where she completely withdrew from everyone. In hindsight, she was probably reacting to the sensory and social overstimulation that would naturally happen in a new environment like that; however, at the time, I didn't even know for sure she was autistic, and I really had no idea what ...

Even before I knew A. had autism, life was often a roller-coaster for us. The following excerpts document the intense highs and extreme lows of just a couple of weeks in August of 2001. I also document A.'s first day at day care here.August 17th:A. said, 'hot' when we got into the car today. She said 'apple, apple!' when she saw all of the ...

When I picked up A. this afternoon, she was in a pretty rotten mood. She was standing in a different part of the outdoor porch, her head hung down. She didn't want to tell me anything was wrong, but I eventually got out of her that she ended up going to the vice principal's office today because she needed a time-away -- she wasn't in trouble, but ...