Friendships while dealing with Autism in your family.

This was a paragraph I wrote late 2009/ early 2010.  It is being posted just now as I still think it is true...

'If you feel you are slowly loosing friendships, you are not the only one. Dealing with the situation you are in will make an emotional person even more emotional. Especially if you live far away from relatives, the friends you make will be the ones that you consider to be family. You will have to lean on them for support in everyway. Unfortunately, your needs might be more than your friends can fulfill and that is when the problems start. Even with your own family members this might happen. It is the very sad truth of how this can affect many areas of your life. Loosing friendships is not uncommon among families with kids with ASD. It is just that I thought it wouldn't happen to me and it did.'

A couple of years later after I first wrote this little paragraph that apparently I didn't finish back then, I keep seeing here and there people that were in my life prior to Nina's diagnosis and my 2-3 year long battle with depression. Some left because they couldn't handle it and didn't want to handle it and others tried really hard to reach out to me but I was in such a dark place I couldn't be friends to everyone at the time. It is unfortunate, but when I find myself missing those people that truly were friends and I pushed away, I remind myself that I did the best I could at that time and that if their friendships were a casualty of all this, well, I think of how great Nina is doing and think it was well worth it.

Now I see how as a family we keep people at a distance... We don't do it intentionally, but I see my other friends socializing with their kids and I just simply can't bring myself to do that.  I am always nervous of how things will go as both my kids are simply different. They beat to their own drum.  Matthias just recently diagnosed with ADHD has so many difficulties at a social level, that it is painful to watch him interact with other children his age.  So when I look at my HUGE belly, and think of my twins boys coming soon, I feel relieved that even if the world is not so kind to my kiddos, they will always have their siblings.  So if there are any feelings of loneliness, they do go away when I realize how busy our lives will be in a month or so and how Nina and Matthias will always have two other kids that will love them for who they are.  I will try my hardest to make them understand how important it is to have a good relationship with your siblings....

Survived the weekend again...

Well it is Sunday now, and we had quite a week. With Matthias turning 3 years old yesterday, we had a lot of stuff to plan for the big day. On top of that we had an incident with Nina's daycare teacher where she basically asked my husband Carlos to come and 'help take care of Nina or take her home early' during an experiment that would be presented to the kids after nap. The experiment involved liquid nitrogen. However, if the experiment was so dangerous that for security reasons they wanted my child restrained in some way, I would assume that it was dangerous for everyone in the first place, so they shouldn't have it.
After processing all this, I decided to call the center Director and told her about this, told her this was straight out discrimination, and that considering how mild my daughter was, I didn't believe she needed us to get out of work to care for her while in DAYCARE. Needless to say the Director was very apologetic, I insisted that this was not the first incident that had happened to us, and that I wanted to know if they couldn't handle Nina, they should just tell me.
I also told the Director and the teacher, that they needed some sort of training if they were going to receive children with special needs, especially since autism's prevalence is 1 in 150. Nina was not going to be the first nor last case they were going to see.
I had a lump in my throat all day, felt like crying since I was so angry and hurt for my daughter since I know this will not be the first nor last incident that we will have to deal with.
On a positive note, my beautiful princess is starting to try and converse a bit more these days. She put together some sentences yesterday basically trying to tell me that she was happy about a toy I had given her, and that she was sorry she had kick Carlos while she was having a tantrum in the car earlier that day. She was hugging me and saying she was sorry. I love those conversations, I love when I see how far she has come. I cannot believe it will be two years since hr diagnosis this October. Realizing what we have been through, I am thankful since God has shown all along how he never leaves our side.
I have my dream job, that helps keep me alive basically. I got this job through working at Starbucks. Cannot believe it. I have been working as a counselor for almost eight months now. I didn't think I would ever work in my field, and here I am working part time with wonderful people. So when bad days happen, I have to concentrate on the good ones, because when you are hurting and looking at what you 'don't' have, it is really easy to forget what you DO have.
We are having a babysitter take care of the kiddos this afternoon. Looking forward to some time with Carlos. Ever since we have started doing this on a regular basis, our relationship and my mood :-) are so much better!

Today was a particularly rough day...

I have to say it has been more than a year since I'd cried this hard. I called my older sister, the one person I always look to have deep conversations with...However, my mom answered the phone and hearing her voice, well even as an adult... I lost it. I had been feeling a deep sense of sadness and did not really understand why. I felt alone today. I missed my family more than ever today. I am scared and I wish to get to a point where I can finally accept that Nina has this diagnosis.
However, I realize more and more as I think about all these emotions that I am feeling, that these ups and downs will be part of my life. As my daughter reaches every single milestone, I will be faced with the reality of her disability. I used to wish her autism away, but now that I think about her autism being a part of her and not who she is, would she be the same? Would she still be the sweet girl she is early in the morning? when she hugs you so tight it seems she wants to become one with you? Would she easily forgive my mistakes as she does now? Would she seek my comfort even when I have not been patient with her? Would she find happiness in the simplest of things as she does now? I really don't think I want to run the risk.
All is OK when we are in our little world, however when someone new steps into our world or when we venture outside it is too painfully clear how her peers inevitably see her as different or strange.
All these emotions came about after the most uncomfortable play date I have ever been on. I had a feeling it would happen, but I still decided to have them come and visit. The moment they came in our backyard, as it is customary, Nina and Matthias ran up, ignoring any sense of personal space and started to hug the kids as they were struggling to get away. Looking at my children as aliens, strange beings. That is not their fault, Nina and Matthias do seem different. Nina is awkward with her social interactions, and Matthias simply has modeled after his older sister's interactions. He even has the scripted talk that Nina started using to communicate with us early on in her language development.
Anyway, back to the awkward play date. I needed at one point to talk about the elephant in the room. The person who brought these children to my house was their aunt. Her niece is basically 6 months older than Nina, very smart and with a language development that is higher than average. When I started mentioning how obvious the differences between Nina and her niece were at this age, she answered that yes, five minutes after they had arrived, her niece had come to tell her she wanted to go home.
I do not understand why she felt she needed to tell me this, as it really just broke my heart and made me realize the difficulties we will be facing soon. Rejection is hard enough, but when you feel your child is rejected, well, it hurts more than your heart can bear...