The OCD part of it....

Brandon also has Obsessive Compulsive Disorder that really hampers him. He has totally bitten off one fingernail, which really grosses me out and he says it hurts. I guess it does but he can't stop. He is on medication for this, I think we need to go back to the doctor. I don't pick up on half the stuff I am sure he is ruled by. The stuff that he is ruled by makes it hard for him to function. We try to help in any way we can to work through what is going on but it is frustrating sometimes. I hope we can get him back in line before school starts. The worst thing about Brandon's OCD is that he gets so mad when we do not let him go through with whatever he is needing to do or go. As a Mom you wish you could take some of the anxiety away and help him conquer this but I guess this is one that we can help with medication but like autism he will have to deal with for the rest of his life... I guess that's what Mom's are for just to help to try to make it better. Try being the operative word here.

The persistent Arguing......

Like a dog with a bone that he can't let go...There are times I just want to scream. I know in my mind that it is his disorder. I know logically that he is arguing because something in his world is not right but emotionally if he argues one more time..... Well, I'll suck it up and remember that this to shall pass. This is the hard part of Autism that people look at you like you are a bad mom because you're letting some snot nose kid argue with you, or that you are coming down hard on a child who just asked why one time that they heard(they missed the other 5,365 times that day). I wish there was an out on this one or some kind or button to push to let them know that what they are doing is not OK, I wish there was a button to push to give me a muscle relaxer when this is coming on for him. No such luck. Tonight it was the banana. He wanted a banana. I told him we had already had dinner and dessert and we were not going to have a banana. (Now this might seem like a small request but I have to draw the line of when we eat and don't eat as to give order and not end up being a fry cook all day) What he was really mad about was were had to go to the store at an odd hour, right before bath time. This is unusual since I usually go after work and before we go home when I pick them up from SACC. This started the arguing and grabbing at everything in the store until I finally swatted his hand. That really made him mad but he stopped grabbing everything. The mouth kept going though. Finally he let it go and had his bath. When drying him off his tummy growled, I got him the banana. Now you might say you caved or bad mom he was really hungry, but had I given in while he was arguing I would have lost and been subject to more of these tirades day and night. You have to stand firm. This way it was due to real hunger and not because of the fit he was having. (He had already had a full dinner one hour before). Well with no button of muscle relaxers to push and the fit over he went to his next topic, I don't want to go----- fill in the blank. Like I say in my opener, don't argue just listen and learn....

The Creative side...

The most interesting thing is looking at his drawings... I love to figure out all the stuff he puts in his pictures. Like the one he drew of Robert and the X-box. He drew the X-box and Dad and all the cords, the table and the TV. The boxes and pictures on the boxes. Most kids would miss that but not him. It amazes me. I have one on him and his hampster cage and the fish tank behind it. He doesn't miss much. I figure I should get him in a drawing or art class but sometimes just getting through the day is a challenge so extras are at a minimum right now. With a little more maturity under his belt we will see. We do let him draw on every extra piece of paper he can get his hands on, and I keep extra pens and paper in my purse just for that need. But we do work with playdough and all kinds of stuff just to keep the creative side flowing... Who know maybe some day it will payoff.... My brother works with alot of autistic adults who code for him. He has to remind them to eat and go home. He said they were the best coders he had. He said give Brandon some time and he will work with him on the computer stuff... hmmmm Bill Gates here we come??

Sensory Problems

It's always hard to see other children run and play in the sprinkler and Brandon stay on the concrete because he won't run on the grass. I look back and remember when we would go out on the grass and if Brandon fell in the middle he would hold up his arms and legs and rest on his middle kinda like sky diving. He cannot stand to run in the grass. We have solved it with using sandals but you can tell that he still stresses when grass or mulch gets in the sandals.
The bad thing is that clothes and smells get him too. The advent of the tagless t-shirts came right on time(Thank you Hanes) for Brandon. He hates tags in his shirts. Flowers will never live in Brandon's house( he makes me move them to another room) the smell distracts him to much. But he loves the smell of foods, he can tell you what you are having from a mile away. I love it when he comes in the kitchen saying "what's that smell, let me see what's in the pot?? "He just wants to know if he's right. He is unique.. and one of a kind.

Different thoughts on funerals..

Been gone for a while, my grandmother died this weekend. We had a wild trip out of town. I thought it would really throw Brandon out of whack but he really did well. A few thoughts on the weekend from watching him deal with all this. 1. He went up to the coffin and laid his head down and I asked him what he was thinking. He said, "I'll really miss her." The funny thing about this is that she has had altzheimers and has not been around for a while. I asked why he said that and he said that is what you say. I guess he knows that there is a proper response to a funeral. 2. He asked what we were doing when we went to the gravesite and I said we were going to bury "Mom"(we called her Mom). His response was "Can we help? I forgot my shovel!!" Well, after I stopped laughing(Not out loud, as not to hurt him) I explained that there were people there to do that and we were just going to go say prayers for her. He seemed really put out..

I love my Brandon....Things are never boring, and there is ALWAYS a fresh perspective.

The effects it has on the siblings

What a week. My oldest girl decided that she would tell the teachers at the daycare that she would put the suntan lotion on Brandon when they were swimming. Brandon looked like a red light bulb when he came home. She really wants to help. And she tries to be responsible for him. We try to tell her to be a kid, you'll be an adult soon enough. I think that the siblings of autistic kids try to be useful and get used to acting like an adult when having to help get the autistic child from one thing to another. Even my younger child will try to help Brandon understand one thing or another. Especially when she gets tired of hearing a question over and over, she'll answer sounding exasperated. We try to explain what is going on and why he acts like he does so that they don't feel excluded or like they have to help in some way to make it better. My oldest felt sooo guilty for forgetting to put the lotion on him. I told her it really isn't her responsibility but you do need to do what you say you are going to do. We followed up with teachers and explained that she dose not need to be the one responsible, they do.

I hope I can work through this with both girls. I know that eventually I will probably get counseling for both the girls just to deal with the effects of having a sibling with autism. There are not alot of resources where we live to deal with this. HMMMM..But I think given where we live it's coming, it's just a matter of time. but how much time do I have?? or do they have??

The funny things..

My mother in law reminded me about a time when I thought my son was having seizures. I had asked his doctor about this and was really scared. When I would looked at him he would stop and be blinking over and over and over. I though he was having some kind of seizure. He didn't look like he was suffering or get tired. He would just have this look and blink. My boyfriend (now my husband)came over one night and saw him doing this and said his name. He stopped and looked at him. My boyfriend then started blinking his eyes just like him and Brandon got really excited and blinked back. Well from the start, you can't stop a seizure by saying his name. What Brandon had discovered was how to blink and that he could control it. He also learned that he could communicate. I can still see him blink...blink....blink...

Yes this is just one of the things that Brandon would do that when I look back now, I laugh. Then I was just trying to fix whatever was wrong. Little did I know........

The signs I missed...

Well after that diagnosis I remembered looking online at autism and OCD but thought maybe but one of these doctors would have said something... WRONG. What I missed was the night terrors(horrible at 4 in the morning), the inability to switch from one thing to another, hopping and flapping, inability to talk until close to 3, the tantrums, insistent on me scratching his arms or legs, sensitivity to sounds, the lining up of his toys in lines all over his room, he can't locate his shoes in the middle of the floor, sensitivity to foods and textures, the tag in his clothes bothers him to where he can't function, he can't get glue on his fingers because then he spends HOURS picking it off, you can't get glue on your fingers be cause then he wants to pick yours off, can't sit still in his chair needs to rock or move, has a hard time staying on task, LOVES to draw intricate pictures with alot of details that a 7 year old would normally miss, can't walk on grass without shoes on, can't go to a Gotta Bead place with out him on his hands and knees picking up all the beads, is not close to his friends but everyone loves him, just quirky, will stare off into space, won't look at you unless you request it, inappropriate behavior, will do what the other boys tell him to do because it's funny without thought of the consequences, will respond to any threat with extreme force, has had to be pulled out of the class by the principal for yelling at the teacher, choked the principal by grabbing his tie(whoops), will defy authority unless you get his number from the git go, if you don't start with the upper hand you are screwed, loves to dance and spin, ALWAYS has to have something in one hand........ I could go on and on and on....

Now I can look back and see the things I missed, the signals that mark a child an autistic child. I knew that something was not right but all his medical issues masked the real problem. Could I have made a difference earlier?? Probably, but I won't beat myself up over it. I do the best I can EVERYDAY.

Today he bit someone in his class, I treat him just like his sister, there are consequences to every action. He understood that you cannot bite anyone and we did a role play with the WHOLE family on what to do if someone pushes him again. I think we got our point across.
Everyday is a challenge but it's never boring around here...

Just the beginning...

I have been through all the moments that most mom's of a autistic child have been through-Did I eat right, did I bump him wrong....Well I know that a lot of things were going on when I was pregnant with him. I had left my husband before I knew I was pregnant, had a baby already who would be 18 months old at his birth, had a difficult pregnancy due to him laying on my cyatic nerve, was on medication so I could walk since I had to work, I worked up until the birth so I could take the full time off to be with the baby, I was 3 hours away from my family....the list goes on and on. When I did have him he was sick all the time, I really wondered was this child going to live?? He had pneumonia 4 times before he was 2. I finally moved and changed doctors, they told me that I needed to go to an ENT who looked at his ears and we had tubes put in immediately. They told me that he would need speech therapy since he was already 2 and could not talk(his old ped told me not to compare him to his sister, that he'll catch up). I did this, he still was sick and throwing tantrums. We went to a ped pulminologist and found out he had asthma, we had his tonsils and adnoids out. He graduated from speech therapy. Still having tantrums and other issues like just wanting to rock and getting in trouble at daycare. He only wanted me to scratch his arms. He would only eat certain foods. I really could not get the doctors to help. They ran every medical test there was. They finally said let's go to a psychiatrist since we can't find a medical problem. By now we are in Kindergarten. I tell her about the problems we are having and she looks at him reads the notes from the Kindergarten teacher that I get daily so we can keep track of whats going on at school(mostly bad). She looks at me and says you had not idea he was Autistic?or Obessive Compulsive??as he is stacking the blocks in the same way the third time??