Good Day and Wear Blue Friday

When school is out it takes me about a week to adjust to the kids being home. I only have 2 days to go and then the week is almost over and they go back.

Today I got much accomplished. It is easy to get a bunch done when my guilty pleasures are being monopolized by the children. Dinner is on and the dishes are done. The house has been cleaned up and vacuumed. Spencer even helped.

As I was doing the dishes Taylor came into the kitchen and says to me "Mom, say high to Ricky." He had the raccoon puppet on his hand. This is a huge break through! He used a complete sentence, he called something by name and he was engaging me in a conversation.

For all the hard work that I have been putting into this diet, it is really starting to pay off.
Taylor has been interacting with the others this week and he has been engaging them in conversation. It has been a very long time since we have had this kind of improvement.

I do not believe that we would have had this improvement had we not done all that we did over the past years. I think that this journey has its stages and that each stage builds on the others. In order to survive this journey you need to take one stage at a time. We could not have done this diet last year. We were not ready and neither were the kids. There is so very much thrown at you when you first start treatment. You feel as if you need to do it all for fear that you will miss the one thing that will bring your child to recovery. This leads to burn out and failure. You are trying so hard to do everything that in the end you are tempted to do nothing. I think that some things need to change when introducing parents to bio med. I think that there should be some set simple things to start, but then add the other things very gradually. To worry about what your child is eating and getting a gazillion supplements down them takes its toll very quickly. This journey is a long one and you need to pace yourself, and I think that this needs to be emphasized to the parents starting out. You are so desperate to find what will help your child that you are out of the gate as if it is the 100 yard dash. We need to come along side these parents just starting out and help them get a good pace and reassure them that if they don't find the "cure" for their child tomorrow all is not lost. It has taken me 2.5 years to learn this.

I used to panic if I thought we weren't doing things right. Maybe if we did things not the way everyone said they needed to be done it wouldn't work. Well, we are not doing this diet exactly the way the book says to. I have added in things that they say are illegal and I have eliminated foods they say are fine. I know my children and we are doing what is best for them. This might not be what is best for someone else. This is what makes Autism unique. Unlike other disease there is no set protocol that help across the board. It is not a cancer that can be treated with chemo. It is a syndrome where each set of parents become their own research scientist to find a "cure" for their children.

April is Autism Awareness Month. This Friday is wear blue for Autism Awareness. Please join me in wearing blue. The report, published by the American Academy of Pediatrics in early October, 2009 indicates that 1 in 91 children has autism, with 1 in 58 boys receiving the diagnosis. This number is markedly higher than previous estimates of 1 in 150 children, and 1 in 94 boys.