Through Nathan's Eyes

I can always tell when Nathan is starting to experience anxiety. Things get rearranged over and over in our house. Objects get lined up or placed in a certain position (like the houses above). He crawls back and forth, back and forth just observing what he has lined up. He gets stuck on one thing and you can't break him of it.  Meltdowns begin over every little thing. With him being non-verbal, we have to decipher what might be going on. Did something change? Is he sick? Is he hurting? Are his meds off? Is he just plain tired? Today's anxiety is because his routine changed. We knew it was going to happen. It is inevitable with change. Today, shortly after he got to school, we got a call from the school to come pick him up early due to a covid diagnosis in his classroom. It threw his day all off.  He began to get extra upset over his baby sister wanting to touch his houses. He uses his words to tell her to move. He tries to gently move her. He shows us that she's...

This week I asked Nathan's kindergarten teacher how he interacts with the other kids in his class. What she said surprised me... She said how Nathan is with the other kids, he probably learned from his daddy...Nathan is a little flirt with the girls.  I was shocked. She said that he is always trying to get this one little girls attention. And his teacher told her to say hi to Nathan...she did and I guess he just got the biggest smile. Fast forward to Sunday night shower. We got him all cleaned and I said to him, "you are such a big boy, you smell so good and you are gonna go to school and smell so good for [little girl's name]."  I will tell you he got a smile on his face. So we started doing the little teasing about her and I said is she your friend? He smiled from ear to ear. I got to thinking that I forget sometimes that even though he has autism and maybe his brain doesn't work quite like a typical person, his heart does and his feelings do.  It's always s...

When we got Nathan's diagnosis in July of 2018, it was a lot to process. We knew he had something going on with him and had our suspicions for a long time, but it still cut deep to hear the official diagnosis. Dom and I said we will do everything we can to help, but with a cliche thought and lack of understanding, we were both adamant about not "drugging our child." Fast forward to 2020 we had to do something. When you watch your poor 4 year old deal with so much anxiety about day-to-day living, it breaks your heart. Nathan's anxiety comes in the forms of not sleeping - waking up at 2:00 am and not going back to sleep.  His anxiety is shown through melt downs that cannot be consoled. His anxiety comes in the form of having something in his head, that he can't communicate, and being stuck on it for hours and sometimes days.  Anxiety for Nathan is moving every picture that is not attached to a wall to different rooms in the house, literally all day long....