So, tonight's Joe's night. And how fitting. Facebook told me that it's *siblings day* today. Cool.
And in true Joe fashion, he was procrastinating on writing something up for me. He went to see the new Batman/Superman movie earlier today with his Dad, and then this came up, and that, and then something else. He finally went to write something up on his computer and he was going to email it to me. How convenient that his email crashed. Hmmm. Interesting. Very interesting.
Anyway, instead of making this a huge argument with my teenager, I decided to leave it alone. I wanted it to be something that he wanted to do. Not something that he felt he had to do, not a chore. I wanted his honesty and his thoughts. So I decided to go about it in a different way.
He's in 10th grade and is taking an Honors English course this year. He has a year long project that he is doing; he had to research and write papers using different literary genres on his topic of choice. You guessed it. His topic of choice is autism. I think that speaks volumes about Joe. Not only does he live with autism on a daily basis at home, he wanted to learn more and educate others more in school about autism, and specifically Vicki's autism, as well. He is constantly reviewing articles and submitting new pieces of writing for this project. So, I decided to steal one of his rough drafts (with his permission, of course) to use for tonight's blog post.
In Joe's own words, here is the autism he knows:
Vicki was born on May 12, 2002. She is one of my two younger sisters. She has Autism.
Vicki was diagnosed at a very young age. She has gone through many different treatment options, by which I mean therapy, as Autism has no cure. Since she was little, she has had therapists come over to our house to do therapy (ABA). We are always looking for new therapists, as the ones we hire are in college, and they all have to be trained. We have had over 20 therapists over the years.
Autism has greatly affected by my sister's life and my family's lives. Autism has many symptoms. Vicki has different speech patterns, often she speaks in fragments and in third person. Vicki doesn't respond to all questions, often just repeating the question. When she doesn't get the things she wants, she yells and may get aggressive sometimes. She cries randomly and without explanation. A while back she started to hurt herself, through smacking her head and tying to knee herself. Autism used to make Vicki terrified of animals, as in scream and try to run away terrified. Vicki also had elopement issues, meaning she has wandered off before. Vicki got out of our house one time when I was really young. We had to call the police and she was found a few houses down the street. That made us get alarms on all the doors and windows, so we know when they are opened. Recently, Vicki won't get into the car anymore, and being my height and strong, we can't get her into the car, even if we need to, without my Dad. When we went to The Netherlands, every time we got into or out of the car, we had to wait for usually a half an hour for Dad to be able to put her in the car. Vicki can not be left alone at home, even for a short period of time, and with her not being able to get into the car, getting somewhere or doing something is a challenge. Vicki has OCD, so combined with Autism, things NEED to be the way they should be. For example, Vicki needs to sit on the middle cushion on the couch; she won't sit on the ends. She also has PANDAS, which is a diagnosis for a subset of OCD or tics (an uncontrollable repeating behavior). Vicki also has seizures. So it's all very confusing and interconnected. She would freeze up and be completely unresponsive and repeat whatever she was doing, including shaking, swallowing, and blinking.
Despite all of this, my sister is a wonderful person. She loves our new puppy that we are training to be a service dog. She used to love horseback riding before she was scared of animals. She loves to draw and color. She really loves music, with some of her favorite songs being Cheerleader by OMI, Crazy by Gnarls Barkley, and Budapest by George Ezra. But most of all, she loves to cook; and a fantastic cook she is. My mother created a blog for her, as well as a P.O. Box, for people to send her recipes, and then Vicki would make it and mom would post pictures of the meal. Food Network or The Cooking Channel is commonly on TV in our house.
I hope with this you have a better understanding of what Autism can do to a child and her family.
Just as I said last night about Ally, I don't push Joe to open up. I know that when he wants or needs to talk, he does it in his own way, in his own time. I have tried not to badger him about this year long English project. I haven't asked to read his papers. He shows me when he is ready. I didn't see this one until after he turned it in. He knows I am here to talk anytime he wants to. And help him in any way possible, but it's his voice. Not mine. And I respect that.
I hope you enjoyed reading about Autism from Joe's perspective. I find it very interesting what the kids pick out to talk about. I really liked the last 2 days of posts and plan to interject their thoughts more on the blog if they let me.
Back to me tomorrow. Boo!!! ;) Thanks, as always, for reading and for loving and supporting our whole family. Love you. xoxo
No comments:
Post a Comment