Autism and Adam

As April is quickly approaching I sit here thinking of my son and how amazing he is.... funny, great personality, smart, loves electronics, extremely good at legos and putting anything together, and he has autism.  

April is autism awareness month, I actually live it 24/7.  I continually learn about him and autism every day.   I'm proud of how far he's come since that little boy, who couldn't speak and had meltdowns as a way to communicate and release stress.  We work daily on communication and life skills.  I remember sitting for hours playing what I called the one item said three ways.   I'd hold or point to an item and say it three something about it three ways and then have him repeat the word.

Example:  a yellow ball

I'd say this is a ball, this is a yellow ball, this ball is round, say ball

and most of the time I could get him to say the word

I'd write each word he'd say down each day.  I have pages of hundreds of words and a few tears on them.

Some of my family would come over and play the game with him.  It got so everyone was talking this way in our home.  It helped so much and Adam slowly began talking more and more.  I'd just sit and talk and talk to him for no rhyme or reason just for him to hear me talk.  I'd sit and read for hours or play movies of books on the TV.  He started repeating the entire book word for word.  This is when we learned he had echolalia.  

He talks nonstop now and I LOVE it!!  I love talking with him and hearing him tell me stories and just communicating.   He loves talking about animals, science, history, and telling about all the books he loves reading.  He is a huge book lover.  He has eight book shelves plum full of books and still can find more books he needs.

I honestly believe homeschooling was the best thing I've done for him.  He didn't start talking until we began homeschooling and he's grown so much.  He LOVES homeschooling and tells me how thankful he is we school together.  That we take time to really go over the subject and we're able to pick subjects he wants to learn about each year.

I'm so thankful for my little boy, he's love, and everything he's taught me.

It you get the opportunity to spread awareness and teach others about how amazing kids with autism are, please do!!  AWARENESS is extremely important and so easy to do.

Thank you for taking the time to read my thoughts on my favorite little guy.

Robyn

Simply Delightful in second grade