Whoo-hoo! I was out of town on a girls’ weekend where I could FINALLY relax and not think about autism.
The second night, I called my husband, Greg, to see how things were going. He sounded a little down, but that was to be expected since he was in charge of chasing our three young kids for a few days. “Ha!” I selfishly thought, “He is getting a taste of what my life is like every day, all day long.”
Greg showed great self-control that night on the phone not telling me what had happened earlier that day with Lizzie. He knew it would have ruined my ability to enjoy myself on a rare weekend away. I found out later that he had had the scare of his life.
He had taken the kids to the nature preserve to play at the park. Seems simple enough, right? Run around the park, swing a little, and maybe go down a few slides. That would surely kill an hour or two.
Only it wasn’t simple. The park was super busy that Saturday. Our youngest, Noah, had to be carried or in a stroller, our oldest, Andrew was an extremely active 6-year old, and then there was 4-year old Lizzie, a wanderer with autism, who had no understanding of danger or the consequences her actions could bring.

This is a common thing among children of all ages and many parents are told this is normal. We cannot expect children to appreciate a 5-course meal, but we can expect them to eat more than those 5-10 foods. I like to call it the “Mc Nugget Diet”, it sounds funny but it’s true. We wonder why our kids will only eat nuggets, fries, chips, pasta, and bread. Many times I see children that are “picky eaters” and they come in with other symptoms too that may include poor sleep, excessive gas, bloating, constipation, food allergies, eczema and behavior problems. How is this linked?

Since I have been “doing autism” for almost 10 years, sometimes I feel like I have heard it all. I go through periods of time when I really want to dig deep, research and tackle the issues that Lizzie is facing. Other times, I am overloaded with information, and I am really just trying to keep my head above water as I run the daily activities of my family.
Recently, I was asked by a friend to go to a seminar on autism. I wasn’t excited because lately I have been in that “overloaded with life” frame of mind. But, I went anyway, and I was glad I did!
I heard Dr. Sandy Gluckman speak on the how we can impact our child’s body chemistry just by controlling our words and stress level. Wow! Did this hit home!
I run my kids from therapy to activity to more therapy. We are so hurried and stressed for time that it never even occurred to me that I could be undoing all that therapy with our stressful schedule! It never occurred to me that I could actually positively affect the chemistry in Lizzie’s brain just by choosing to slow down and say the right words to her!
Rather than try and recap what I learned, I thought I would have Dr. Gluckman share with you some important information that was news to me…even after 10 years of autism.

Many children with autism have low cholesterol and this has been brought to the forefront for some time now. A researcher at Johns Hopkins found that some of the behaviors that children with autism exhibit are in fact due to a genetic disorder called Smith-Lemli-Opitz syndrome (SLOS) and can be fixed with supplementation of cholesterol.

On Monday, March 25, I was part of “Voices in the Family” a public radio show with host Dan Gottlieb. Eustacia Cutler also lent her voice to the discussion. Eustacia is the mother of Temple Grandin, a well-known adult with autism, an author and speaker. Dan has been living with quadriplegia for 33 years, and I have a 33 year old adult son with autism.

With so many books on autism on the market, it can be a challenge to figure out what’s worth purchasing and reading. There are books by celebrities, books by doctors, books by teachers, books by therapists, books by parents and so much more. I can’t tell you how many books I have on my shelf that I thought were going to be great but ended up being not so great. Way too many! We thought we would share our top 12 favorite books and why we love them so much. These books are great for everyone involved in the treatment of your child like parents, grandparents, teachers and therapists.

As I sit in an airport in Austin, the words from a Garth Brooks song ring vividly in my head,
Stuck in an airport in Austin,
and all of the flights are delayed.
As the rains keep fallin’
The memories keep callin’
me back to another time and place
For the first time in a long time, I am alone in an airport, traveling by myself. No whiny children sitting on my lap demanding food, no tantrums from a little girl who doesn’t understand why she has to wait so long, and no Dora DVD playing in the background. I don’t have to keep my eyes darting from child to child to child to make sure one of them doesn’t disappear. I am free.
Yet, I still have an uneasiness that stems from the feeling that I should be doing something more. What I am forgetting? Oh yeah, nothing. So I give myself permission to relax and do what I have always loved to do in airports…People Watch.

As I might have mentioned once or twice (or possibly ten thousand times), autism takes its toll on the mind and body. The lack of sleep alone can kill any desire to do anything fun and leaves us feeling as if we have nothing left to give. As parents, we just want to get through another day, so that we can lie on the couch and watch a TV show that will take our minds off our troubles – even if it is only for an hour.
When Lizzie was almost 3-years old, life was really hard. We were in the middle of a 30 hour-a-week behavioral home program. I had a very active and challenging 4 1/2 year old who was bored at home, and we were trying to sell our house so that we could move to a better school district for Lizzie. Oh yeah…did I mention I was 8 months pregnant?
I literally ate my way through that pregnancy. If there were a contest in stress eating, I would definitely have won! Anxious from decisions with Lizzie and the stress of having a child with so many problems weighed heavy on my mind all day long. I went to bed with the same knot in my stomach that I woke up with, and my sleep was restless at best. Chocolate was my medication, but unfortunately, I had a bit of a tendency to over-medicate! Fudge and brownies were a normal breakfast for me during that time, and so as you can imagine, 8 months into the pregnancy, right around the time my 31st birthday was a approaching, I had already gained 50 pounds (all baby, of course!).

The therapy every day, the tutoring, the doctors’ office visits, the living and eating in your car, the hours spent preparing special diet food, the hundreds of hours spent researching on the Internet, the time spent dispensing and taking pills, the hostile stares from other people, the whispers behind your back, the old friends that have stopped calling, and new friends that don’t quite get it….
Couple all of that with holidays, and sometimes it is just too much! Sometimes we may want to throw our hands up in the air and scream, “Forget it! Life is too short!!!!”
Unfortunately, autism doesn’t go away when we get overwhelmed, but there are some ways to reduce the stress and make it a little more fun. Here a few suggestions on how to throw caution to the wind and totally rock autism:

It always startles me to see children being overly prescribed antibiotics this time of year. When you have a child with autism or some other special need sometimes it is hard to tell if they even have an infection because they do not tell you or cannot tell you. Their doctors choose to give a medication “just in case there is an infection” but nobody stops to think what this is doing to their body long-term. Many children, whether diagnosed on the spectrum or not have horrible immune systems.