We will be moving home in a month’s time but we have concerns about how our autistic son will cope with it. Our son has made a few friends where we live now; something that he hasn’t done before, which has made it such a hard decision to move. But we can not stay where we are; two adults and two kids squeezed into $950ft² just doesn’t work!
Even the suggestion of moving really upsets him; he starts crying and keeps trying to talk us out of moving. We explain that he’ll make new friends; but he just doesn’t seem to be able to accept that fact. We will also be moving schools as we’ll be moving to the other side of the city and a 25 minute drive to his current school next year is too much to deal with, but we’ll keep him at his current school until the end of this school year to minimize the disruption, hopefully after seven weeks off, the transition will be easier on our son!
We really don’t like seeing our son upset; but we desperately need a larger home and the larger homes on the east side of Wichita where we live now costs more than we are comfortable paying to get something decent. So the only option is to move to the west side of town where home rental costs are cheaper and the properties are better maintained.
I’m sure our son will adapt in time but we are really worried about the immediate fallout of the move. We just hope that he makes new friends quickly to offset his unhappiness of losing his current friends. The other option is to let him indulge in his favorite pass time of playing computer games which will make him happy, but we like to limit his game time as it affects his behavior negatively when we tell him to turn it off after long periods of play!
Over the Xmas period; our autistic son Conner has exhibited a rather ugly new behavioral issue; ungratefulness. This is a completely new behavior; one that I dislike immensely. Conner received a total of 11 gifts and he threw a huge fit because he didn’t get something he wanted; but didn’t tell anyone he wanted it until after he had unwrapped his presents.
I’m so angry right now; our neighbors kids have been bullying my autistic son, Conner; but he doesn’t realize what is happening; the other day; they were making him eat leaves off the ground; and today they screwed up his drawing and threw it over the wall.
Last night, my autistic son Conner stood up in front of more than 150 people and performed in his first school concert. My wife and I had doubts about whether he would be able to cope with the occasion, almost not letting him perform as we didn’t want to see him have a meltdown in front of so many people; but he did excellently, delivering his lines perfectly, dancing and singing with his classmates, so happy we let him get up there.
In the past few weeks, our eight year old high functioning autistic son has had a real chip on his shoulder, answering back, being defiant, we warn him of the consequences of his actions and he laughs it off. Basically a complete lack of respect for us; his parents.
Two weeks ago; my son dropped my laptop, breaking several keys and as punishment; he was barred from playing any computer games for two weeks. During those two weeks, his behavior was much improved, being more sociable, wanting to go out and play with the local neighborhood kids and generally more responsive to us and the World around him.
Over the last couple of weeks, we have been noticing that our autistic son, Conner has become increasingly emotionally unstable; getting massively upset about trivial matters. For example, last night he started crying because our Roku box froze; which it does from time to time, it honestly looked like his world had come to an end, we tried to explain that it happens and it can be easily fixed but he still ended up going to bed in tears!
Our son’s SSI, and therefore Medicaid benefits are in doubt yet again as we receive a bill for $3752.77 plus another bill for $138.56 because the Social Security Administration claim that we were over the resource limit for the last twelve months with seemingly no proof to backup this claim. It seems to me that the SSA pluck figures out of the air without one bit of evidence to support these figures, but of course the government is never wrong!
Since finishing summer camp with South Central Mental Health, our son, Conner has been much more sociable; at least with the neighborhood kids. Inside the home, not at all, he would rather play on a computer or watch a DVD or TV in another room alone than spend time with my wife, daughter and I, but that is no different than previously, at least he is getting out and playing with other kids!
Over the weekend we got notification from the Children’s Miracle Network, via Valerie at Individual Advocacy that our application for funding to get an iPad 2 for our son to help with his speech therapy had been successful; but we had to buy the iPad 2 and software out of pocket first then we would be reimbursed. I really hope that the promise of reimbursement is kept as we had to compromise our finances to make this happen, total cost of the iPad 2 and software came to just under $450.
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