A quiet place...

Perhaps. Had a good Thursday. We saw Dr. Klinepeter (who, by the way, is awesome) and are going to try Jaymes on Adderall. If it seems to hinder more than help, then we'll try something new. he's on board for a little bit of experimentation.

I gave Jaymes a double-dose of Risperdal (yes, it's ok with the docs to do this) prior to therapy today, and while it did make him sleepy and kind of spacy, it also made the experience a completely new one.

In OT, Jaymes was relatively attentive, sat at the table, cut with scissors (qith hand over hand assistance), listened to his music with headphones, rode the swing, threw a ball, did a puzzle, and played with Goop. No crying or screaming.

In Speech, Jaymes was very spacy, and spent a lot of time staring at the ceiling. He did, however, complete a pretty tough dinosaur puzzle, put together toy dinosaurs, read a dinosaur book, and play with balls. He screamed a little bit, but really not enough to count it against him in my opinion.

PT wasn't perfect, but you have to remember that by then Jaymes had been through a 2 hour specialist appointment, OT, and Speech. You'd expect him to be a bit frazzled, wouldn't you? Anyway, he played in the ball pit, jumped on one foot on the trampoline, did the stairs, rode the tricycle down the hall to see the fishies at the neighboring doctor's office, threw velcro balls at a sticky target thingy, bounced on the big ball... He did well. He screamed pretty good at the end, but again, this was a long day for him.

Best Therapy Day we've had in a long time. It's really restored a lot of faith in Jaymes, the therapists, and myself.

I've come to realize that despite everything, despite how hard it is to deal with Jaymes and how embarressing it can be... How stressful, listening to the screaming all day long and holding him down when he tries to hurt himself... It's so worth it. Every struggle we survive makes us stronger, and Jaymes proves every day that Autism will not define him, nor will it limit him.

Even when it's hard, hold on to the faith that one day it'll start improving. Even when your child is at his worst, know that it will not last. Better things will come.

After we came home and Jaymes napped for awhile, I took them out this this beautiful park i discovered while driving around lost the other day. It's all woods, with paved trails and a creek with bridges and places to play in the water. There are 3 playgrounds- one that no one bothers with because it's older and not so fancy, one for little teeny kids, and one that kicks the butt of any playground I've ever laid eyes on.

This sucker had stuff i've never even seen. Tons of huge, twisting slides designed to look like snakes and trees and robots. A rickety bouncing bridge. A long tunnel leading out to twin slides with weird texturing on them so your butt goes BUMBUMBUM as you go down. Tons of monkey bars, climbing walls, and a fake cliff face that you can scale. Also, a dog park was right nearby, so we're going to bring Echo and Chance one of these days.

Jaymes was a crazy man, going up and down, on the slide, in the tunnel, on the swings. He was everywhere. Sierra was more reserved, and she let me follow her around as she watched the other kids and went on the slides a few times. At one point I was looking all over for Jaymes, and finally found him all the way over on the swingset, just sitting there. Staring into space, into the sky like I used to do as a kid. In a way it was sad, I remember the sorrow I felt when I sat there like that... I'd swing up high and pretend I was falling into the sky.

But I know that this was not sad. Jaymes wasn't pretending he was falling into the sky to get away from his life, he was deep in thought, enjoying the rhythmic sensation of the swing slowly rocking back and forth. He was happy, peaceful. He didn't notice the wild kids around him, didn't notice I waswatching him. He was in his own little world, quiet, happy, and content. A quiet place.


Sorry for the poor quality of the photo, my cell phone is not exactly a fancy piece of photography equipment.