autism is a journey: Cabin Fever

Sunday, August 5, 2007

Cabin Fever

Jackson is really having trouble with the 'no predictable schedule' situation that the end of summer school has created. He wanders a lot, has difficulty concentrating and is generally mischievous.

Having said that, we're noting some cool 'progress':

after completing an Elmo in Space puzzle earlier in the day he later put his misfit toys under a clear plastic tote and started the litany: "Spotted elephant is an astronaut, Snowman is an astronaut, Hermie is an astronaut"
while playing the game boy and observing his brother on starfall.com: "It's Jackson's turn now", and "Can I have a turn Cal?"
while at Magic Wand [we rode bikes to get ice cream as a family] "let's go to the park"

So, I guess he's still 'in there', but he's struggling...I think.....

1 comment:

Maddy said...: Well done. I think that 'holidays' and the change in routine that they bring, can be pretty tough on some days.
Best wishes; August 5, 2007 at 8:56 PM

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from "Metaphor-the puzzle piece symbol"

Ever had one of those "ah-ha" moments? I'm driving down the road today, pondering Jackson's recent successes--boyscout camp and football camp. It occurred to me that each experience gave me back a piece of Jackson. [I'm not doing a very good job explaining this...] When we learned about Jackson's diagnosis, so many dreams were snuffed out. We no longer thought about our son becoming an athlete, a scholar, or even a friend. We thought in much smaller terms:"how many words does he have?""did he learn a new sign""is he reaching out to us?""that's playing pretend, isn't it?"Our perspective as parents permanently changed. It's like we had this complete picture of our child and autism fractured it--into a 1,000 piece jigsaw puzzle.Each day little by little, we get pieces of the puzzle back. It'll never be complete, never the same as we expected, but there will be parts that will come together.Like when he participated in the school music program, enjoyed boyscout camp, rode the roller coaster and attended football camp. Bit by bit, we get pieces of what we expected back.Of course, the flip side of this is all the joys we gain from Jackson that we never expected in spite of the autism, but that's another post my friends....