autism is a journey: The Struggle of Late

Sunday, September 30, 2007

The Struggle of Late

We're celebrating that Jackson is more actively choosing to play in the toy room. Cal is mourning. Here is a glimpse:

Cal playing shake up race cars and having them crash into mini dinosaurs.
Jax playing dinosaurs decides to pick up a mini dinosaur.
Cal screams
Jax screams
Both go back to separate playing.
Then Jax picks up a shake up car.
Cal yells NO
Jax screams.

How can I get my four year old to understand how HUGE it is for Jackson to be initiating this play? I'll keep working at it; I'm learning as I go. Believe me, I'm making my share of mistakes!

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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....