April- Autism Awareness Month

Many who know me alos know that my 5 year old son is high functioning austistic. We knew at an early age that there was something different about him. He always had behavioral and speech issues since as far back as we can remember. As he got older, thedifferences became much more noticable. When he was around 3 years old it got to a point where I was at a breakdown point. I wasnt getting any sleep because he was not getting any sleep. Then there were the metl-downs. There were so many times when he would just throw himself to the ground and start screaming without warning. It would take several minutes to try and calm him now and sometimes we still would not figure out what set him off. We started taking notes of his behavor, making sure to be as decriptive as possible. I took this information in with Zach to his pediatrician. Just from reading my notes and visiting with him, she told me that she is not an expert, but that she could state that her opinion was that he had some form of Autism. It was a form of relief and yet made me scared as well. I began to take him to see a speech therapist and an occupational therapist, each twice a week. It took a few months, but we began to see improvements. The very first type that he went in to see is speech therapist, she told me that after visiting with him she did not think that he would ever be able to progress because his speech was so bad. After just a couple weeks though, he was blowing us all a way. He would practice everywhere we went because he was so determined. He never gave up and it made me so proud of him. He did so well with it that they have decided that he will need minimum assistance in Kindergarten with his speech! In order to honor Aprils Autism Awareness month, I decided that I wanted to make some puzzle cookies. It was one of my first times trying out the fill cookies like this, but I think that they came out pretty good.