World Autism Awareness Day – An Update Of Our Autism Journey

It’s that day of the year again! A day that I would rather ignore but my job as an autism mum is to make people aware of the world of autism. This will hopefully create a world where autism is accepted and hopefully help our children’s everyday struggles. Today is World Autism Awareness Day.

Last year was the toughest year of our autism journey so far. Our life routine changed and our son reacted to that change by throwing. A continuous throwing that resulted in me having to seek professional help from the doctor. To be honest it was help that had been long overdue as I have had struggles with how my life has changed since our autism journey began.

Thankfully the throwing stage has passed but we are now dealing with a vocal stim. This stim includes the shouting out of a swear word that an 8 year old boy really shouldn’t be saying. I’m getting some lovely looks from strangers in the street!

This year school is going well and after seeing how mainstream school works with our daughter. I’m glad that we decided on a special school placement for our son. Last year I believe our son was in the wrong class for his ability which really didn’t help with the throwing issue.

Our sons speech is improving. Sometimes, when least expected, we will hear a sentence with more than two words. That is amazing progress considering his speech started to come when he was five. He can also read, I’m guessing at a lower level than his peers but I never imagined learning how to read would be on our agenda.

We still have to plan everything and give our son warnings on where we are going. On a car journey that is over an hour there will be meltdowns. Google maps can help in these situations but sometimes it can make things worse. We also have to know where we can park the car when we arrive. Finding car parking spaces cause great trauma.

Our son is still delayed in many areas and needs lots of support. Some of which his younger sister now gives him. In different ways our family are all carers for him.

Sleep is still an issue and I’m sure will be ongoing. We have to go to bed early so that we can cope with the early morning starts. Our son always wakes in the night and needs support to settle again. A full nights sleep is very rare for us.

I hope that by sharing our autism journey on this blog and over on our YouTube channel people that are not touched by autism will become autism aware. Until then all I can hope is that World Autism Awareness Day will help make those strangers in the street realise that I’m not a terrible mother. I’m just an autism mum trying to do my best.