What it means to me to have a son with Autism.

I'm 33 years old.  I have an 8 year old son, and daughters 6 and 2.  I also have a wonderful lovely wife.

When our family began with our first son, I never imagined anything other than a rowdy, ruff and tumble athletic boy.  As he developed, I never scrutinized his slower development in certain areas.  He was my perfect boy and he would most certainly catch up with the rest of the kids.  Besides, coordination isn't really developed till later I thought.  Even as a pre-schooler in speech therapy only muttering cave man like sounds I hadn't the slightest notion that he could have Autism.  We found that he was very difficult to discipline and that all methods were rather ineffective.  I simply thought that he was very stubborn and strong willed.  I could always tell that he was intelligent.  Simply by the way he observed things and reacted in certain situations.  But still, there were times when he would seem to not even hear us yelling his name to get his attention.
We had his hearing tested.  It was fine.  There were times when I would stand behind him yelling his name to get him to turn around.  He would completely ignore me.  I really thought he couldn't hear me till one day stood behind him when he didn't know I was there.  I yelled his name with no response.  Then I spoke the word "candy" and he whipped right around looking to see if I had a treat for him.  He must have been about 18-20 months at that time. 

One example of the intelligence that he exhibited was when I was out doing some yard work.  I knew that there was a Black widow's web under one of the front windows.  I took a grass hopper and a stick and tossed the grasshopper into the web.  The spider came out to eat it and I took care of it with the stick.  I turned to get Hayden's attention so he could see how cool the spider was, but he was gone.  We went around the house and found him in the garage with his own stick killing a black widow that he had found in the corner.  Once he sees something that can be done, he must also try it out to see if it works.  He's rather fearless at times, but can also be extremely fearful at other times.

In my next post I'll try to explain the process of finally discovering that our son had Aspergers.  I still don't know weather I should say Aspergers or Autism.  I usually say Aspergers, but I use Autism at times when referring to being on the spectrum.

Someday, I hope that there might be a reader who finds these posts helpful or comforting in some sort of way.  If you are reading this and would like to share your own fun, funny, meaningful or touching moments about your own experiences with Autism or Aspergers please feel free to comment.  My whole purpose of this blog is to help people see how much fun and pleasant life can be when you are dealing with Autism.

Thanks for reading,

Rob