Showing posts with label the Spectrum. Show all posts
Showing posts with label the Spectrum. Show all posts

Tuesday, April 12, 2016

Aspergers & Noah

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It's Autism Awareness Month - and let me tell you a little something about our lives on the Spectrum. We don't have just one kids on the Spectrum, we have two.
Noah was diagnosed with Aspergers just recently. He's always had it, I started questioning it when he was about three. There would be days where I just *knew* he had some form of Autism. Knew it - deep in my bones. Then the next day, I'd question that feeling. I ended up being on the fence about it for years. Then when I did all the paperwork for Nathan, it was pretty clean Noah was on the spectrum too. So I brought it up - to the Neurologist that sees both the boys, and he had me do some paperwork for him - and it was clear he was also on the Spectrum, more on the Aspergers side. Plus pretty severe anxiety, and ADD.
Noah has times when he's so badly got sensory overload, and it comes on quickly, and sometimes with very little stimuli ... He kinda sits and just covers his ears ... he gets super angry, argumentative, and sometimes it's hard to get him to move to a quieter place where he can calm down. Sometimes it's hard for him to pick up on things, sometimes things have to be explained to him over and over - sometimes in different ways - before it clicks. He also needs a ton of reassurance about some things.
But that's just Noah, it's how his mind works.  We LOVE him just the way he is.  







Autism and Nathan



It's Autism Awareness Month - and let me tell you a little something about our lives with Autism. Nathan is an amazing kid, we wouldn't trade him for the world, because even with the medical issues, and the Autism, and everything else he has going on - he is perfect to us, just the way he is. If we could make life a little easier for Nathan, we probably would, but not in a "I need to cure" him type of way. However, if cures could be found for some of his worrisome medical stuff, that would be AMAZING, but Autism isn't one of those things. We aren't out trying every single thing out there to try and "unlocking" Nathan or Noah (who has Aspergers.) But there are things that we miss. Like Nathan was a typical child (on the Autism front) up until 18 months, and then there was like a switch that got flipped, and I knew he was autistic. I just knew, I had been on the fence for years with Noah, but I just knew it about Nathan. So those moments when we get real eye contact, true smiles, and deep gut laughs, him being super excited about something are moments that we truly TRULY treasure.
At the zoo last Sunday, our last stop was play area. There are these little cup type things, that spin around and around, and Nathan automatically veered to that... and what happened just made my heart sour with happiness, just watching him. These are true smiles on his face, in the pictures. You know, because you can see his dimple!






Nathan came in my room and DB and I were watching TV, so I paused it and Nathan was hiding at the foot of our bed, and he'd jump up and "roar!" us (this is the first time he's done this in a long time) ... and I'd jump and scream like he scared us, and he'd laugh and laugh - and OMG that *real* laughter is the best sound in the world!! It's so rare that we hear it. So he kept doing it and (I nudged Daddy to get in on it) we'd keep jumping and pretending to be scared just to hear that sound.... it was AWESOME... truly ..