Early detection is always the best scenario...right?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050506/ap_on_he_me/autism_study

It makes sense that the earlier a child is diagnosed the better his/her chances are for benefitting from therapy. Just like with anything else, if you can shape the mind before it's influenced by negative factors then you have a better chance of getting it to do what you want. Take for instance patterns of behavior. If you get a child used to positive behavior before he/she is subjected to negative behavior at school or play then he/she will already know what's right and what's wrong so that he/she will be better equipped to make the right decisions. That's it for now. I'm too tired and my brain won't allow me to get too deep in to this subject.

So far so good

Well, it's been a few days since I posted anything. That's a good thing. For the most part, Mikey's been a good kid. The other day he had his mom up in the middle of the night pitching a fit for no obvious reason. I told her she should post what happened but I guess she hasn't gotten around to it.

His aunt Diana babysat for us Saturday night. She said he was going through the house opening and closing doors. We've never known him to do that before. Wifey figured he was probably just trying to find her since she's always the one to put him to bed. If I remember right, that was the night he had her up at 1 or 2 in the morning.

Other than that he's just been swinging outside, walking through the house on his tippy toes or hanging out in his room playing with his music making computers...which he makes play the same tune over and over until we're ready to pound our heads against a hard surface just to hear a different noise. But that's Mikey. I know we'd miss hearing those annoying songs if he wasn't there to play them. So we just holler his name and he stops...and plays the next tune over and over until we scream his name again. Then he plays tune #3 until our eyes are crossed and our tongues are hanging out of our mouth with drool collecting on our laps. And so on and so on in the life of Mikey. We love him like crazy. He makes sure of that!

Who defines autism for me?

My stepson Mikey. He's 12 soon to be 13. I've been with him since he was about 5 or 6. He's changed a lot like any kid would only not in the normal ways. Yeah, he's gotten tall. Yeah, he's getting hair on his upper lip. But I still can't play basketball or baseball with him. And he may throw the football in the backyard some but it's next to impossible to teach him how to throw it properly.

The idea of teaching him how to swim makes our head spin. How do you teach someone something when they don't seem to understand what you're saying? And they can't tell you what they think you're saying because their vocabulary is limited to the most basic of words. We can't talk to Mikey in sentences. We can't have full blown conversations with him. We're lucky to be able to ask him questions like 'What do you want to drink?'. Even then we usually have to show him the choices because every time we ask him something he usually just repeats the last couple of words of the question. Example...'Mikey, do you want milk or juice?' Mikey: 'Juice pweez' 'Are you sure? Do you want juice or milk?' Mikey: 'Milk pweez' So we have to show him the two and he'll say 'WASO!' to one or the other. Waso in 'Mikey' means no. And we go through this with everything from pancakes or waffles to ice cream or donuts to McDonald's or Sonic.

You see, autism is a developmental disorder. Those that are afflicted by it have a hard time with development that children without autism learn naturally or more easily, and that's if they can learn it at all. Which a lot of times they can't.

But we love him like crazy. He's a great kid. He loves to swing. I love to see him swing because I built the swing for him. To see him enjoying it almost makes me cry. When he's happy he's got the biggest smile and the brightest eyes. And looks? Don't get me started. He's about the most handsome 13 year old boy you'd ever see. If he didn't have autism he'd probably be modeling right now. And remember, he's my stepson so I'm not biased. He's got his momma's Italian genes and it shows.

On the other hand, he can become quite unruly when upset. His mother and I have a saying, "Sometimes you just wanna eat him up, other times you just want to eat him." When he's in a foul mood everyone gets to share in his ire. Luckily we learned that he can usually be calmed down with bear hugs, usually administered by myself. Sometimes at the cost of a certain amount of physical pain inflicted by him. But that's ok. He's a boy and I'm a man and that means I do whatever it takes to make him feel better when he gets in a mood. He's bit me, choked me, smacked me and other little things but I'm still happy I'm in his life. You learn something from a child with special needs that you don't get to learn from other children. You learn just how unimportant your needs are compared to his.

Intro

I'm the stepfather of a 12 year old autistic boy. This is my forum for informing the world of how bad this disorder sucks. I'm going to try and post regularly in an attempt to present uninformed people of the obstacles and negative as well as positive factors involved with living with an autistic child. More later.