Author: autismlighterside

One thing we have learned this summer is to relax. I have come to realize how important this is for everyone in our family. It is so important to relax our minds and our bodies.

This past while there has been so much stress and uncertainty with Covid that it’s been hard to think about anything else. We were stuck in our home, all together for so long.

For our family, we are fortunate enough to have a cottage to escape to so as soon as school was over, we packed up the car and headed up. It has been such an amazing summer so far. I think the past year and a half has just taught us to appreciate the little things and to be grateful for our family and our health.

Having two teens on the spectrum, you never know what challenges you are going to face no matter what environment you are in.

I have noticed with both our of children that they just needed a quiet space to calm their minds and relax without having any deadlines or pressures on them.

For our daughter, it means that she gets time to rest, do art projects, listen to music or just relax.

For our son, it means engaging in lots of outdoor fun like swimming, boating, paddle boarding, canoeing, hiking and just siting in the sun.

To relax your mind can be lifechanging for everyone, but especially for people on the autism spectrum as they have so much going on in their minds that they normally just can’t shut anything off. It’s been nice for me as a parent just to see both of our children able to engage in things they like or just not to do anything at all.

This can be hard as we are so programmed that we have to be busy all the time otherwise we are not being productive. But what I have discovered is that by being calm and relaxed is a great way to regain mental strength and become happier people.

In our cottage environment I find that the connection with nature and the water is an absolute life-changing factor for all of us. Just being able to enjoy sitting watching boats or sunsets or looking at trees can provide such calm and peace.

How do you get your child to relax? What do you do to relax you mind?

So we have been on our journey in the biomedical world for awhile now. We have seen so many gains and so much progress over the last 3 years. We are truly amazed at some of the results that we have seen.

We are currently completing (or should I say, our son) is a three month chelation treatment course. To my pleasant surprise, it has been going pretty well. Our son sits for the IV’s and has been really quite patient and handled the treatments very well at the doctor.

The biggest issue with this treatment is not “treatment day”, but the days that follow after. The chelation itself is quite taxing on your body. For our son, it usually means weight loss, cramping and irritability at some point days after the treatment. The treatments are schedule two weeks apart to give your body time to move the metals out of your body.

In a nutshell, our son has toxic levels of certain chemicals in his body. The chelation agent will activate these damaging toxins and move them out of your body via your skin (like sweating) and out through your urine etc. Hence, the cramping and irritability and mood swings. It also explains the lack of appetite.

So we we just finished our last one and now we are ready to do the “challenge test” to see how the treatment worked. At the beginning you do a challenge test to see where the levels of toxins are such as mercury, lead etc. At the end, you do this as well to see if the levels are have been reduced (which hopefully they have in some areas).

This is just one part of the biomedical treatment but for our son an important one since many toxins were showing up on the first report that were negatively affecting his health. This affects focus and brain health as well.

So I’m looking forward to the results of this one for sure.

I’m excited at all the progress so far, but I also get frustrated sometimes at all the things our son has to do just to have optimal health.

Looking forward to what comes next for us!

So my son and I set off to do some grocery shopping recently. This is an activity that we enjoy doing together and honestly since covid started, it has been much more pleasant shopping in the grocery store because it is not crowded and you can move around quite easily.

This is a good life skill also for my son. He can bring the list and find the items and put them in the cart. He is always in charge of the cart and keeping up with me and moving around the store.

He is usually pretty attentive to things and is quite familiar with our grocery store.

So this particular day I was in front of our son, looking ahead at the next section we were moving to. To my surprise, I heard this lady talking to our son in a negative tone. I turned around to see what was happening and it was then I realized that he had hit her foot with the cart. I can’t remember the exact words she used, but she was very upset and basically asked what’s wrong with you (to him).

He immediately apologized but that was not enough. So I came over and also apologized. I told him that my son has autism. She then changed her tune and patted his arm (why I don’t know?) and said okay or something like that.

I was kind of taken aback. First of all, I don’t know why I told her he had autism, like if that was an excuse for him hitting her? I guess I figured she would be more understanding. I don’t know. I don’t know what my reaction should have been. Also, did this woman actually think someone would ram into her on purpose? I have hit people before with my cart when it was crowded.

This just really made me sit back and evaluate the situation. What should I have done? What should I have said? What shouldn’t I have said?

Is it okay to bring autism into it? Why do I feel like I always have to defend something that would be no big deal for a typical child. I don’t know. But this situation just made me sit back and think about these things because I don’t know what the right answer is in this situation. I just know that this is something that I need to have answers for in the future.

I would love to hear your feedback or suggestions on this matter!

So, in our house this can be different in any given day for any person living in our house. Yes, this includes adults!

So meltdowns in our house fortunately have become less and less in the past while, which is very good. But sometimes when they do happen, they are extremely unpleasant and exhausting.

A couple of weeks ago we were going up to our cottage on a Friday evening. The day had been challenging as our son had finished a chelation treatment a couple of days prior. After these treatments, his body can be really uncomfortable as the toxins are moving through his body. This creates irritability and cramping.

So having said that, we got to our cottage and our son was in a bad mood (which is unusual because it is his favorite place). I thought well we will just see how it goes and hope for the best. After a bit of time had passed, I saw that things were not going well. He was getting upset over every single small thing.

I went to talk to him as I had heard some unpleasant noises in the cottage. At our cottage unfortunately, there is not really a safe space to chill out like his bedroom at home. I was extremely tired and irritable myself from the drive up to the cottage so I had little to no patience left to deal with this outburst. I was also afraid of him breaking something as he was so on edge. Since my husband was not up there, I thought to myself that he better not break something so that is where my focus was at the time.

Things fell apart rather quickly and badly. I was yelling at him, he was getting upset and it just went downhill.

It took some time but after awhile things settled down. Just when things were calm. the power went out. Here comes my meltdown! I was ready to cry. I was so tired and I had not even unpacked most of the stuff yet. When we discovered it wasn’t going to come back on, I completely lost it as I knew that our son wasn’t going to last 3 hours (the expected time of power return). It was already 8 pm.

So, I left the dog and my daughter with my mom, who happened to be up there, and we got in the car and headed home.

I was upset at everything! My behaviour, his behaviour, the situation, all of it. What was supposed to be a relaxing weekend, turned into a nightmare.

We finally got home around 10 pm and I was mentally and physically exhausted. I was so done with our son’s meltdown, my meltdown and I was ready for bed.

Sometimes looking back at situations, I think about all of the things that I did wrong, all the things I said that were wrong and I get so upset with myself. As a parent, we are not supposed to have meltdowns. We are supposed to be calm and comforting. We are supposed to lead by example.

This just goes to show you that not only our kids/teens have behaviours but we as adults can have behaviours as well.

When our son was younger, he had behaviours way more often so that when one happens now, it kind of throws me off because it is very unusual. What I need to remember is t be calm and rational. Try to have a “teaching moment” so that our son can learn to make good choices when he is upset.

In this case, I was extremely disappointed and ashamed how I reacted, but I have also realized that I am only human and sometimes my emotions can be extremely high and I know that I have to learn from the mistakes that I make so that I can be a better role model to my children.

I hope moving forward that we can work together to minimize these occurrences and learn to be better people.

It’s a question that people ask all the time – how are you? What do you say? What do people want you to say? Do they really want to know how you feel or do they just want to move along?

These days you may be all over the place – that’s how I feel sometimes.

I mean does anyone really want to know that I ate lunch with my kids who are both on the spectrum and no one talked to anyone? For us, that’s a typical lunch. I sit beside my daughter who wears headphones and listens to music because she needs the distraction of the noise and my son who is immersed in YouTube and I just kind of sit there sometimes watch a little of the depressing news that’s becoming tiresome, but it’s difficult for all of us.

In our family, we all process things in very different ways and the way my kids act or react is not a problem for me, it’s just the way things are when you live with autism.

This pandemic has been so rough on everyone and some days it’s easier to put it aside than others, but in the back of your mind, it’s always looming.

Some days my kids are fine and other days they are not. Unfortunately, it’s usually at different times, but that’s just the way it goes.

I find that at home school, although there are pros and cons, and I do like some of the pros, that we are all missing seeing people and being stuck in the walls of our house. It’s like moving from one room to the next and back again and although we can go outside which we are grateful for, we sometimes seem to be on top of each other. There is no getting away and everyone, I mean everyone needs to get away from each other at times, in order to maintain healthy relationships.

This long weekend, we were finally able to get up to our cottage and it felt great for all of us to be in the car and just leave the walls of our home behind for a few days!

So, how are you doing?

Please comment below!