autism is a journey: Round 2

Saturday, August 9, 2008

Round 2

We went to Fun Spot Park today with P2 (Paige & Parker). Of course we had a fabulous time, as we always do, it's a terrific little day trip. A couple of highlights:

Jackson actually requested to ride the "blue" roller coaster.

Let me try that again:

Jackson actually requested to ride the roller coaster!

I was quite surprised by it. He wanted to "ride the yellow, then ride the blue". I'm not sure exactly what to make of it, but it was a wonderful feeling riding that coaster with him!

It's always so nice to go to this park, autism isn't really a part of the picture. Jackson can just be Jack and enjoy being there. On one of the rides, the operator as especially patient and kind towards Jax. It's beyond words what that means to me!

1 comment:

tylerbritney said...: WTG Jackson!!! Next thing you know, he will be begging you to ride Space Mountain at Magic Kingdom! :); August 10, 2008 at 4:24 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....