Tag: special needs child
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Sportsmanship Is A Struggle
Yesterday, Sawyer participated in his second Special Olympics. Last year, when my sister asked me if I was interested in letting Sawyer compete, I was nervous. You see, Sawyer is not always the best sport… Autistic people have trouble processing and expressing emotions. Where a neurotypical person learns how to express emotion through body movements,…
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IEP Time
It’s time once again to go over Sawyer’s IEP and plan for the following year with Sawyer’s teachers; next week I’ll go discuss what changes we’ll need to make for Sawyer as he enters 5th grade. An IEP is an Individualized Education Program. Before I had Sawyer, I had heard of kids having an IEP,…
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10 Years
This past weekend, we celebrated Sawyer’s 10th birthday. We had a small group of mostly family come together to bowl and play games, and then we finished the day with a trip to the movies to see “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” (which was super cute!). Sawyer had an awesome day, with lots of fun…
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A Birthday with Autism
Sawyer’s birthday is coming up; he turns 10 this year and officially enters the double digits! He is super excited, and can’t wait for his birthday party. Birthday celebrations look a lot different than the typical kids’ birthday party for a lot of autism families. Sawyer has only had two “official” birthday parties in his…
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World Autism Day
This was originally supposed to be published on April 2, but for some reason my post scheduler didn’t push the post out. :\ April is National Autism Awareness Month, and April 2nd is World Autism Day! There is a saying in the autism community that if you’ve met one person with autism, you’ve met one…
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Autism Made Me a Better Mom
Being a mother is a huge blessing, and my children have always been the center of my world; I’m so very proud of all three of them! However, being an autism mom has made me a better mother and person because of what it has taught me, and because of the things I’ve learned as…
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Help Them Thrive: Training Teachers to Spot Autism
When my girls started school, I didn’t have a lot of fears about it. Both Emily and Caitlyn were social butterflies who had shown me that they would thrive and flourish in a school environment, and I was mostly worried about things like making sure they had the “cool” backpacks, lunchboxes, and clothes; I didn’t…
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Is There a Cure for Autism?
I had a conversation last night with a woman I met on Reddit in a group for special needs parents. Her child was recently diagnosed with autism, and she was freaking out. I felt for her; I remember how overwhelmed I felt when I first realized Sawyer was probably on the spectrum. I reached out…
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Am I Autistic?
“Am I autistic?” I knew there would be a day when Sawyer would realize he was different than other kids. I have thought many times over the years about how I would explain autism to Sawyer, and what that meant for him, but I never thought it would come so early in his life. I…
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Milestones
Yesterday, Sawyer did something he’s never done before- he went into the grocery store and bought a soda all by himself. We live in a very small town, where everyone pretty much knows everybody else. We have one grocery store, and it’s fairly small, so when Sawyer asked if he could go in and get…