Why is winter so hard?/ Happy Birthday!

As I reflect back over the years winters are so hard for my son with Aspergers.  He is always sick or moody because of the weather.  This year is no different.  I am seeing more evidence of his trials this year in particular because of him being in kindergarten.  He is acting out more at school.  He is so bored and has s difficult time sitting still through the introductory lessons of this letter says, and this is how you but that word together.  He fidgets and squirms, and gets in trouble.  I hurt for my little boy. 

He turned 6 the beginning of the month.  We had a wonderful party for him.  It was the first year we invited his friends.  We are bless with numerous people in our life who love him unconditionally.  We has a couple friends from our neighborhood and one from school come.  We had a wonderful time.  I was quite nervous about the whole day but I had planned well.  We had a very structured party at a gymnastics place.  They had a coach instruct them and take them through a huge obstacle course, they did a trampoline trick section, and snow ball fight with foam.  The kids were laughing and all having such a great time.  We served Popsicles and cupcakes while my son opened presents.  He smiled the entire time.  Grinning ear to ear!  It was a wonderful day!  He felt important, and most of all loved!  I couldn't ask for better friends and family !  They help us more than they know!

Already?

I can not believe how much friends can change the course of our days.   My son was really sad last week and I asked him what was wrong.  He took a minute and I could tell he was deciding if he should really tell me what was wrong.  He said, "the kids are mean to me, the call me names." I asked him who these kids were and he named a few kids.  I hate that they are in our neighborhood/ward. :( Then at bed time as he was going to sleep it all came out.  At school his class had a substitute teacher and he was unprepared (which was my fault, I forgot to remind him and walk him through what would happen at school) he was very upset.  When he is upset he cries and so all the boys on the bus called him 'baby face', and 'cry baby' he even said someone called him stupid.  I was so heart broken for him.  As he was telling me he started crying again.  I have never felt so sad.

The Bus!

School is in full swing!  I marvel at how well my son is doing! I am a little paranoid and feel like I need to protect him but he has come so far. He is succeeding in the classroom and thriving in school.  Always so happy to go.  We have had a few troubles that I would like to share.  After the first week of school, my son was crying everyday getting off the bus.  I was perplexed about the reasons for this.  I was having trouble getting him to calm down and tell me the problem.  Is turn out to be friends.  He wanted to have a friend over or go to a friends house everyday and the kids would plan whose house the would go to on the bus.  For a couple of week I tried to figure out how to help him.  Turned out to be a simple fix and I am much relieved.  We wrote a schedule for after school.  1. get of the bus, 2. RACE home, 3. Eat lunch, 4. make a choice, ie friends, or home work, movie, etc.  Turns out that Racing home is the best thing in our day.  We never have the fight or tears associated with whether a friend can play. This served as a huge reminder to me how much my little guy needs friends in his life.  I pray daily that he can make and keep some great friends that will love him for is differences and help him progress through the challenges.  Thus far it has been hard.  Some of the neighbor kids have told him that he is stupid and oh how my heart hurt trying to love him and buoy him up.  He is so tender hearted.  I also pray that I have the wisdom of how to help him through the meanness of others.  What a challenge, it is so hard to be a mom.

Kindergarten

My Asperger son starts Kindergarten tomorrow!! Yikes!  I am not sure I thought this day would ever come.  When he was two and we found out about his challenges, I had the thought, 'will he ever go to a normal school?' 'Have friends?' 'Tell me that he is hungry?' Some of my worries seem silly now.  He is so successful in many ways.  He is going to be in mainstream kindergarten, and will ride the bus. He has friends that love him and ask to play with him.
My worries now are much different. Will he follow what the bad kids do?  Will he get lost in the crowd getting off the bus?  Will he be able to keep up in class? Will he have a potty accident at school? Will the kids make fun of him?  I think all parents are ever worrying about there kids and I guess that makes me no different from them.  I am proud of all his accomplishment and how hard he has worked to get to this point.  He is strong and will be amazing!  I know it!

Summer Break

We have been going strong for about 3 years with all sorts of therapies and schooling for our son and our therapist is going to have a baby so we all decided to take a break for the summer.  I have been nervous about taking a break but it has been good.  We did start summer school this last week and still do the Listening Program so I guess it is not all stopping. :) I do feel like I have given myself a break though and it has been wonderful.  I hope to see great things in Kindergarten from all our work! 2 months to go and I sure hope we are ready! I am nervous but I have been assured by at least five teachers/therapists that he will do well in kindergarten.  It is fun to see him learn and grow!!

Millet Milk

I recently was given a alternative milk source by a friend, that has been awesome for both my boys.  My one year old has shown some sensitivity to milk so I have been hesitant to given him cows milk with the experiences of my older son.  It is very easy to make.  I was very intimidated but don't be. 

You will need: hulled millet and dates, water, a large sauce pan, and a blender.
15-20 dates soke over night in water.
I take one cup millet and bowl it with 2-3 cups of water, cook it like rice for about 20 min. 
Pour in blender and make a pasty mixture.  Then dilute as needed for bottle or add to smoothie!  I have added apple juice, peach juice as the millet does not have a strong flavor. So much one year old will drink it better.  I have loved it!

Eternity

So it has been an eternity that we have been potty training our 5 year old.  This has been by far the worst thing we have had to overcome. I mean who really likes to potty train, but in the end you just go for it right. Well that is what I did but that was just about a year ago that we started this long long process.  I never imagined it would take this long or be this hard.  My son had zero interest in potty training.  Zero...didn't care that he had poop in his pants at all.  One day I decided to see how long he would wait before asking me to change him.  He never did. After knowing he had poop in his pull-up for a couple of hours I couldn't help but check....his butt was so sore that it was red and to the point of bleeding.  It did not register to him that the poop makes my butt hurt if it just sits on there.  That was just the start of this process.  We had therapist and well meaning friends and neighbors put there two cents in and still no success.  Over Christmas he got really sick with the flu and all the progress we had made was gone.  Back to square one. Literally Diapers. But slowly and surely I worked him back by these steps.
Going to potty with timer/ verbal cues (no underwear)
going to potty with verbals cues no underwear
going potty with no verbal cues no underwear.
going potty with timer/ verbal cues with underwear
going potty with verbal cues with underwear
going potty with by himself with underwear
then the same thing with pants on. 
Next I focused on a time of the day to poop.  We chose morning after breakfast.
Every morning after breakfast he had to sit on toilet for at least 10 min.  Then he could get off.  I would constantly watch  for his pooping cues and help him realize when he needed to poop. This step alone has taken months. But this morning he RAN TO BATHROOM BY HIMSELF AND SAT ON POTTY AND POOP ALL BY HIMSELF. I want to scream from the roof tops!!  I am so proud of him. I hate to even talk about it in case it was a fluke but I am so excited! He is trying so hard and really making alot of progress.  I am now not so worried about starting kindergarten this fall with this seemingly on the right path.  Wish us luck in the last leg of the process!! Yahoo!!

New Supplements.

We have recently started my son on a couple new supplements. Something called Guna-Awareness( to help with concentration/restlessness), Guna-Bowel( to help with constipation/irregular bowel movements), and Solidago (to help with metal toxins that hang out in the kidneys). I was very apprehensive about trying any of these but....I have seen so differences in him. I will not state for sure that they are helping yet but...this week he was able to tell me about an entire day of school (with much coaxing) but he never does this. He sat through a hair cut without screaming, and he has tried a couple new foods. These are all big things for us and it is fun to see him grow no matter the reasons.

Getting Started

In the last 2 weeks I have had a couple of people ask how I started our Gluten/ Casein Free journey. I will tell you, it wasn't easy and there were many tears but this is how we made it.

Step one 4 us: we actually went off Casein first. It was less scary since my son did not drink milk. I started testing what alternatives he would eat best and what tasted best in each different recipe. Conclusion: I use rice milk most, but also use soy and coconut, depends on the taste you want. Rice milk is the most bland. Coconut has the most flavor and is good in oriental stuff.

Step two 4 us: I found a flour that I liked...Grandpa's Kitchen blend is my favorite. I know that many people have their own blend but for now I am still at the easy phase. I have too much on my plate and not enough storage to keep that many flours so a blend works for me. (even if it is more expensive)

Step three 4 us: Figure out your favorite meals. I decided to take what my son liked and try to adapt a recipe to make it gluten free. Like....Chicken and Rice I found a gluten free chicken bouillon added a flour thickener and wallah. I did this with numerous muffin/ bread recipes because we love the breads. Which some my find sad but we have a three great muffin recipes we love. Pumpkin muffins, zucchini muffins, and banana bread muffins

Step four 4 us: Add a meal a week until you feel that you have a good working menu.
I asked around and found there are so many more people eating gluten free diets than I ever imagined. The stores that you buy from can be helpful, just don't take what they say as gospel, I have been given wrong information before, but it is a good starting point.

If you are taking gluten and casein out of your diet to help with behavior I would recommend starting slow. I did the best I could and gradually took everything away. I think it took us 3 or 4 weeks to figure it out, and much longer to be perfect. I kept finding things that had gluten in them that I was previously unaware had gluten in them.

Be careful and be educated. I went to numerous websites and read lots of books. Good luck in your journey!