Autism Awareness Month Post #2

First off, I was blown away by the love and support show to my first post! These are thoughts that have be bouncing around in my head for a while and I do hope they can help someone going through this or just help others understand what it is like to be autistic or have an autistic child! :) Atticus was born in May 2008. He was a big healthy boy! With the blue eyes and blond curls mom always dreamed about. And right from the start, he needed help processing sensory information. He needed to be swaddled and rocked and in movement all the time. Many children need this, and not all of those are on the autism spectrum, but for us we know that he has always needed help dealing with sensory overload. He was a hard but sweet baby, and a crazy toddler. He could run until his legs gave out on him and then get up and do it again! We now know that verbal instructions are hard for him, and in those early years it was very hard to get him to follow all the verbal instructions you give a small child. If I had only know then what I know now! But God gave us a wonderful family and good friends to encourage and love on Atticus. Atticus has always been loved! We didn’t know he was autistic, but we did know he could not do what a lot of kids could do. Going anywhere new, especially if it was loud would only end up in meltdowns. He could not stay still. But he was bright, he loved being with people. He has been able to simple math in his head since he was three. But he could have meltdowns that could be heard far away, and it was extremely hard to calm him down. And hard for us to understand why he would not obey no matter what technique we tried. But most of those techniques apply to kids who do not think like autistic children, and therefor are ineffective. We didn’t know this but struggled with feeling like we were not good parents, or being judge by other parents. He looked big as a toddler, but acted much younger then he really was. Here are some photos of those crazy years. :) (And gosh were those curls cute!! :D )