I'm writing this blog for a lot of reasons, aside from stepping into homesteading with my kids, I want to share our family's day to day struggles and challenges and progress (God willing) to hopefully give other people with similar painful struggles, hope, in knowing that they are not alone and that there are things we can do to fight the battle to improve our families' daily lives and maybe even dare to dream of better days ahead in the sense of the relationships we have with each other within the family unit and our children's emotional / mental development and spiritual growth.
First of all, it's important to know love is the most important thing in life, it's even more crucial when you have kids that have adhd, autism, depression and anxiety. And I'm not talking about feeling it all the time, we can't anyway, we can just choose to 'default' back to it when we apparently lose touch with the love we have for our child say when they continuously bite and scratch us because they lack self control.
Yep, those are from my autistic 5 year old Ezra, the cute little fella pictured at the top of this post. He's got a sweet loving side to him, but because he lacks the necessary communication skills that are typical for a normal 5 year old, he resorts to scratching and biting. His main targets are Hezekiah his 2+ year old brother, myself and sometimes Abigail, his 7+ year old sister. Sad, very very sad, my heart is broken really over this and I'm angry that I, we, have to endure this, but I always try to default back to love.
When the rubber meets the road, what does this mean? Bible verses to remember here, "love covers a multitude of sins" 1 Peter 4:8 (one of those verses that pertain to so, so many things) and "do all things as for the Lord and not for man" Colossians 3:23 We are supposed to love God with all our hearts, remembering that we're actually doing everything for Him regardless of how we might feel in the moment about the someone we are dealing with. So basically I've got to remember how God wants my little guy looked after according to what Ezra's needs are to fill those gaps in his mental wiring.
I'm not going to give anyone any discipline details, but my advice is this, if you're not doing so already with any of your kids, you know, using discipline, start right now. Biblical instruction and discipline, apply it and listen to your Christian, loving but old school elders. A few of the limits on how to discipline your kids are these: don't bruise your child, don't injure your child and use the righteous judgement of God, (not your anger) . And try not to yell (I know this is hard, but sometimes a calmer, very serious, stern voice can have more impact anyway, whereas, yelling can stop your kids from learning anything that you happen to be screaming at them.
Dealing with this autistic child. Speech therapy, if your kid is not talking (or at least trying to talk) in an intelligible way to some degree by 2 or 3, my advice, bring on the speech therapy. A friend of mine, lovingly advised me to get my little guy started with signing and I didn't listen to her till he was 4 1/2 years old. And if you get started any later, as one of the lovely speech therapist ladies I've been listening to, Laura Mize, has said, get started, because it'll will help them anyway, they need all the help they can get.
Please don't make the same mistake I made and tell yourself, you'll have to wait too long to get your baby into therapy, or it's too expensive, guess what? Most of the work you'll have to do yourself, at home anyway and there are trained professionals out there who can show you how and teach you everything you need to know. So here are a few speech therapists and people who deal with autistic children and help parents to basically, parent their autistic kids more effectively.
Laura Mize is the most experienced of the speech therapists I listen to, please listen to her podcasts and sign up for her emails, A big eyeopener for me was her podcast about the "11 skills Toddlers Master Before Words Emerge" and when I signed up for her emails I received the print version of this list and like all her podcasts she instructs how to help your child develop these skills. Here is the link to her youtube channel https://www.youtube.com/c/teachmetotalk
I found out about Laura Mize through the recommendation of another excellent speech therapist, Kayla Chalko, She also gives really good speech therapy instructions and examples as well as covers a lot of behavioral issues caused by speech delays and autism and discusses what to do about these issues. Her youtube channel can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/c/WalkieTalkieSpeechTherapy
And if you want a great resource for learning "Signing" and fear not all you tired like me parents out there, IT'S NOT DIFFICULT TO LEARN!! in just half and hour a day, you can pick it up with your child, so you can help them learn to communicate from Rachael Coleman's "My Signing Time" signing videos you can get 14 days free trial at her website https://www.mysigningtime.com/browse and check out a sample of the easy to learn signing videos she does here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0uK1YiHNFtU&ab_channel=PocketPreschool
Hope this helps all you emotionally exhausted parents of autistic and/or speech delayed children out there. Much love to everyone.
