Summer Report

Roll out those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer.  I guess.  I am not a summer person, as people who have read this blog probably know, but this summer hasn't been bad, as summers go.  There was the non-sleep period, which I will never, ever say is over, because I fear a jinx more than anything, but, well, it's better.  Janey has still been often getting up extremely early, but lately, she is into Netflix on her iPad, and watching longer movies, even ones she's never watched before, and it's allowing us to drowse a bit while she's awake.

The big difference this summer, of course, has been having Tony home.  It's wonderful.  I said just before the summer started that it was the first summer I haven't dreaded, and I was right not to.  Parenting Janey is really a two person job, and Tony and I are both more rested, even with the non-sleeping issues, than we were in past summers.  

Another very nice thing has been summer school.  Two years ago, I took Janey out of summer school in the middle.  She was miserably unhappy.  It was the only real time I'd ever seen her crying because she didn't want to get on the bus, and she would come home crying, and I was getting emails from the teacher a lot of the type that say "Do you have any ideas about keeping Janey happy?  Is there something different at home?" to which I always have an urge to reply something like "Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention that we moved because the old house exploded---it just slipped my mind!"  I'm just being sarcastic here, but I do tell teachers if something big is happening at home, and to be fair, I don't get that question often.  So we cut our losses that year, and I was gun-shy last year and decided to just keep Janey home from summer school.  But this year, I thought we'd give it a try again, and she's been VERY happy there.  Her (different than two summers ago) teacher seems great and he stays in touch about positive and less positive things, and he sent me a happy picture of her from Friday, which is something I very much love to get.

Janey is continuing to seem more like a teenager all the time.  Her most used phrase with me is "Want to go away?"  She says this any time I'm in her space, and her space is often much of the house.  I take it with a laugh, though.  It's cool to see her wanting space, and I want to give her as much as I can.  It makes me sad, a lot of times, how little true independence her life is going to have, and I feel like it's important to give her any agency I can about how she spends her time.  It can sometimes get a little severe, though, like when her brother Freddy came home from work and said hi to her, and she replied "NO! Want to go away?" and pushed him.  But I remind myself her vocabulary is limited, and she's getting her point across.

One interesting development is how Janey has been using the TouchChat AAC app on her iPad.  I started with it a couple years ago with great hopes.  Janey has never really used it to talk, though.  She likes it, and she says, many hundreds of times "I don't want to listen to CD" which might sound like it's saying something, but it's what you get if you hit the exact middle of each screen in a row.  I think she likes the way it makes a sentence, and she doesn't ever listen to CDs anyway.  But for a while, when Janey is very upset, I have been pulling up the feelings screen on the app and asking her to tell me how she's feeling.  She usually picks happy first, even when she's very obviously not happy, but then she picks something else, sad or frustrated or angry or tired.  And she calms down.  Like a miracle sometimes, she calms down.  It's like being able to label the feeling helps tremendously.  Today, for the first time ever, when she was upset, she went to the iPad and went to that screen herself, and 

calmed herself down.  I was very, very happy.  I wish she'd use the app more, though.  I use it often around her, and she easily remembers how to get to various screens, and it's always available for her, but she has made plain that's as far as she wants to go with it for now.  And if I pushed her more, I'm 

quite sure she wouldn't be as eager to use it in the limited way she does as she is now---that's my Janey.

Of course, what comes next is high school, and I am nervous day and night about that.  I feel confident we picked the right program for Janey, and I am very happy she can go where we wanted her to go.  But still...it's a new school, and it's a LONG bus ride.  It's on the opposite side of Boston, and if you know Boston traffic, you know it might well take an hour for her to get to school and an hour to get home, on tougher days, and some days, probably more than that.  She loves the bus and she loves rides, or we wouldn't even consider that, but I worry about her needing to use the bathroom while she's on the bus, I worry how she will react if the traffic completely stops the bus for long periods, I worry about other kids on the bus...I worry about everything.  I keep telling myself to wait and see how things go before all the worrying, but that's not my way of doing things, usually.

I was helped more than you know during Janey's no sleep nights by posting on the Facebook companion page to this blog, and reaching out to the other mothers in no sleep land, the ones, as Claire so incredibly well put it, awake at silly o'clock, as those hours in the middle of the night should be officially named.  Thank you, as always, for getting it, all of you wonderful people.  I hope you are having summers that are better than you'd worried they might be!

Summer Summary

If I had to use one word to describe this summer with Janey, I'd have to say "uneventful".  Not much happened.  We did very little.  There weren't many huge ups or downs.  And I guess that is mostly good, but of course, as always, I still feel like I failed somehow.  I had big plans to take Janey places this summer, to keep her busy, to plan out our days.  I should really know better, by this point.  I'm not a summer person, and to be fair to myself, it was close to the hottest summer ever in Boston, with much horrible humidity.  On the very bad days that way, and there were lots of them, I felt accomplished if we left the house and the AC at all.  But still...

What DID we do?  Freddy was home all summer, and that was great.  Most every day, we did do a walk to the nearby 7-11, the "ice cream store" as Janey calls it.  And about twice a week, we got lunch out at either Five Guys or Chipotle.  Once a week or so, we went to Whole Foods and shopped.  I had Janey help me water the garden every few days, and that turned into some fun spraying water around.  We "snuggled on Mama's bed", Janey's term for lying together on what is actually her bed, not mine, and me singing to her, reciting nursery rhymes, reading or just cuddling.  And Janey watched TV, plenty of TV. She had a lot of showers, sometimes several a day, which she loves.  In the evenings most nights, she had a car ride with Daddy. That was the summer.

Janey awaits the bus

Most of the time, Janey was fairly happy.  When she got upset, it was almost always because I couldn't do what she wanted right away, because I said she needed to wait a minute for snuggling or a shower or a walk.  That turned into one of my summer projects, getting Janey to understand and honor "wait a minute!"  I would praise her heavily for being patient for even tiny amounts of time, and I started gradually asking her to wait a minute even if I could do something right away, and by a minute, I mean a minute, or sometimes less.  I think she made a little progress with patience.

I had thoughts of working a lot on her "talker", her AAC apps.  I put three on her new iPad, but she almost always chose Proloquo2Go over the other two, including TouchChat, which is the one they use at school.  However, as I've seen in the past, Janey did NOT want me teaching her, or demonstrating for her, or basically touching the apps at all.  I honored this, because I want her to like the apps, and she does.  She often chooses to use them instead of watching YouTube Kids, her usual favorite iPad thing.  She doesn't use them for conventional conversation, but rather sort of play around with, which is fine---it's how you start learning to talk, but I wish she would communicate with them, I do admit.  Generally she'll pick two words and hit one after the other, like "play" and "read" or "happy" and "silly", and will push them in turn over and over and over and over, for up to half an hour.  She seems to delight in this.  I think she loves how it makes having a word be said an easy thing to do.  But when I tried to get her to say what she was feeling, for example, when she was screaming, she'd either push away the iPad or would always pick "happy", as if she wanted to tell me what she thought I wanted to hear.

Janey's verbal talking sometimes improves after being at home and not in school for vacations or other longer time periods.  That didn't happen this summer.  In fact, by the end of the summer, her talking was at one of its lows.  She has been saying very little at all.  As the summer wore on, more and more, she wanted to snuggle, and to have me next to her, with us looking at each other, without talking.  It seemed to make her happy, but it's a pretty passive activity, and I must admit I get bored of it after a while.

I think Janey was excited to go to school this morning.  I will say freely I was excited to have a day with her at school, where I know she is loved and cared for, and where there is a lot of things going on.  I don't regret skipping summer school this year, though.  I think Janey needed that break.  We'll try summer school again next summer, but if she needs another summer off in the future, we'll that.

I hope you all had a good summer, and I hope school is off to a good start!  Much love to all of you and to your girls (or boys!)

This and That

Sometimes I wait to write a blog entry until I have one subject I deem big enough to write about, but this time, I've got just a little of this and a little of that.

Last Friday, Janey had an ultrasound as part of the tests she's having to try to figure out why she, after just getting it once really, has stopped getting her period for the past two years.  After asking around, it seems like this has nothing to do with autism or her other challenges---it's something else.  We aren't that alarmed or worried, but it's something we need to eventually figure out.  Blood tests shows she makes almost no estrogen, which is quite unusual.  Otherwise, there isn't a lot up.  They even made sure she has two X chromosomes, which she does.  I was dreading the ultrasound badly.  There is no real way to prepare Janey for any medical procedure, although I tried, telling her they were going to put lotion on her stomach and then "mush" her tummy a bit.  Of course, she screamed when they started.  But I liked how the technician handled it all.  She talked in a comforting way but just kept going, while Tony and I held Janey in place.  The noise attracted a passing doctor, who also looked at the ultrasound and said on first glance everything looked good.  Now we are waiting to hear from the adolescent specialist as to what we do next.

Janey has been up and down lately.  There were a few days that featured the return of the screaming---the screaming that has no cause she can tell us or we can figure out, the screaming that is so loud it can be heard from very far away, so loud I can't imagine how she stands it without going deaf, or how I do.  There were a few afternoons where it went on for an hour, something that used to happen a lot but doesn't as much now, thankfully.  It brought back all the old familiar feelings of hopelessness and despair, and left us all on edge.  I hope it's over for now.  But there have also been a lot of days lately where Janey has been a delight---happy from morning till night, funny and upbeat.

This weekend, Janey surprised us with a few things she said.  At one point, out of the blue, she yelled over to us "I need a foot massage!"  We were both startled.  She doesn't usually use the first person like that, or use complete sentences, or be quite so direct about what she needs.  She was holding a foot up in the air, so we even knew what foot needed massaging!  That was great.  Later that day, in the car, she said "What does the green light mean?"  I think it's a question she's been asked, but she paused after asking it---she said it exactly how a question is said.

The "talker", the iPad with AAC apps on it, gets a fair amount of use.  Janey seems to enjoy it, but mostly at bedtime.  I also give it to her when she seems to be upset or confused, in hopes she'll find a way to tell us what she wants.  I have two programs on there, TouchChat and Proloquo.  (actually 3, but the third one is pretty useless)  TouchChat is what she uses at school and the one her great teacher helped us personalize, but at times, she seeks out Proloquo.  To me, Proloquo seems more daunting, but it has more content, too.  The other night I saw why she chose it, as she easily got through a few screens to find the word she wanted, "hate".  She'd been in quite a mood, and she hit "hate" over and over and over, while occasionally giving me a meaningful look I had no problem deciphering!  I actually loved that.  She was able to tell me what she was thinking, and it's pretty typical that a 13 year old girl who has spent the day with their mother might be feeling some feelings the opposite of "love".  She isn't usually using the programs for full sentences, more for finding single words, but I am letting her take the lead, and it's fantastic she seems to like having the programs to use when she wants.

All of us in the family have been struggling a little lately with our own issues.  It's been a tough spring in a lot of ways.  But Janey continues to surprise us, to keep showing us new sides.  She is becoming her own person, more and more. We've been pleased lately that she has a trait NONE of the rest of us have---neatness.  She's very organized.  What she uses goes back in the place it's supposed to be.  A little more all the time, she is truly a help around the house, doing small chores we ask her to do and picking up after herself and often after us.  I don't know where she got that neatness gene---maybe from my sister.  But one of the greatest parts of being Janey's mother as she starts her teen years is seeing who she is, seeing her very cool personality unfold more every day.

"Talker Machine?"

Janey does things her own way.  We've learned our lesson through the years, and trying to force her to do thing our way doesn't go over well.  This is proving true with our foray into TouchChat.

Last week, Janey's wonderful teacher synched TouchChat at school with our version at home, and also added to both buttons for our family and friends (and cats).  It's fantastic having a way finally to talk to Janey about specific people at school, and to let her talk about people at home while she's at school.  I've been playing around with TC constantly on my own, figuring out all its features.  And we've had it available for Janey to use at all times.

So, how is she taking to it?  It's a mixed bag.  I'll have to say it can be frustrating.  The most common thing Janey does with the program is pick the exact middle button, over and over, though screen after screen.  Doing this creates the sentence "I don't want to listen to CD"  Maybe this is a message Janey wants to get to us, but the thing is, she has basically never seen a CD, never listens to them, and when I showed her some and tried to figure out if she knew what they were or did, she showed no interest.  So like with a lot of things, I think pressing the middle buttons has become a routine, not really a way to communicate.  And that's fine.  If that is a way Janey enjoys using her "talker", and it makes her feel comfortable with it, I am happy.  But I do wish she'd be a little more interested in exploring other possibilities.

I've been doing a lot of reading about getting started with AAC, and modeling the use of the device is a big part of it.  So I am often using it to either say things I want to say to Janey, or to model what she might want to say with it.  For example, if she is irritated we don't immediately take her for a car ride when she wants to, I make it say "I am frustrated" or " I want to go to the store" or "I want to wear shoes" (another way she asks for rides).  This doesn't seem to encourage her to use TC to talk to us, but it does seem to be helping her organize her verbal talking, which is wonderful.  We've heard her use more complete sentences lately than usual.  The other day, she said "I want you to clean my foot" to me, extremely clearly.  The usual way she'd ask something like this is to point to herself and say "you want to clean feet?"  I was startled and thrilled.

The tricky thing with getting Janey into TC is that she is at the height right now of a teenager phase of not wanting me around often.  The most common thing we hear lately is "Want to go away?"  She wants to be alone when she watches her videos, or plays with her regular iPad watching YouTube on her bed, or basically any time we are around harshing her mellow and getting in her face.  So having me cheerily constantly around modeling TC is not really how she wants to spend her time.  I'm finding the time she's most open to it is when she wants something from us.  If you've had teens ever, you know that is about as typical as it gets.  When she wants a ride, or wants us to cook her something, or wants a certain video, she is much more motivated to at least watch us use the TC than other times.

Most nights, as I lie down with Janey to snuggle as she falls asleep, something I do most every thing, I've been having the TC open and playing around with her, saying silly things to each other like "I'm so over that!" and "Whatever!"---one of the great features of the program is it lets teenagers say teenage things like that.  Last night, though, I didn't bring it with me for our snuggle, as Janey has been resistant to it throughout the day and I didn't want to irritate her.  But after we were snuggled down, Janey said "Talker machine? Want to get talker machine?"  That was a wonderful thing to hear.  Whether Janey is using AAC in a conventional way or not, we are having fun with it, and I'll continue to model and play around and do what I can to give Janey a way to augment her verbal talking.

What the AAC consult said and what I think

At Janey's IEP meeting, I requested she be evaluated by a specialist in AAC (Augmentative and Alternative Communication).  She has had access to an iPad with Touch Chat, an AAC program, at school, and we recently got her a new iPad at home and put Touch Chat on it.  My main goal with all of this is to find a way to decrease Janey's frustration with what I think is word finding problems---when she knows in her head what she wants to say, but can't find a way to say it.  I also just wanted to give her another way to communicate, because although she does talk, her speech is limited.

The consult was done about a week ago, and I got the report this week.  It was a good report---thoroughly done, and I felt the woman who did it got a pretty clear picture of Janey's speech as it stands now.  Her conclusion?  That AAC apps are not something that will help Janey's speech, that in fact, they actually distracted her from communicating functionally.

I was not totally shocked by this conclusion.  There's a couple reasons for that.  One is that for years, I had sort of thought the same thing.  When I had downloaded test versions of several systems like Touch Chat, Janey had no interest, and in fact really seemed to not like the programs.  She even said one time, when I said something like "this can help you talk", a very clear statement "I CAN TALK"  The other reason is that I have been told through the grapevine that the powers that be in the school system (not the teachers or therapists, but the higher-ups) never want to say kids will benefit from AAC, because then they have to pay for iPads or the like.

However, I have to say I don't think I agree that AAC is not a useful tool for Janey.  The main reason the woman evaluating Janey concluded it wasn't is that although she can navigate the system and she show an interest in exploring it, she isn't using it to communicate.  My answer there is---Yeah.  That's why I would like her to get HELP with using it.  It seems like what is being said is something like "She shows she could use it, and she shows an interest, but she doesn't already use it to communicate, so we aren't going to recommend teaching her to communicate with it"  That seems like saying "well, this kid has the capacity to read, and is interested in reading, but she doesn't read yet, so we won't teach her"  It just doesn't seem to make sense.  And isn't exploring a way to learn?  When babies learn to talk, not every single utterance is for communication.  The tester noted that Janey kept pressing the "stop" and "go" buttons, over and over, without a break.  Maybe she was figuring them out?  Maybe she wanted to learn them by repetition?  Maybe she was just having fun with them, and what is wrong with that?

Also, Janey DID, in the presence of the woman doing the evaluation, communicate with Touch Chat.  In the report, she said Janey navigated through a few levels of the application to say "Eat Goldfish Crackers"  However, the reports said that the tester didn't have any edibles with her, and it didn't seem to bother Janey, because she didn't seem to be asking for something to eat.  Now, just exactly how did the woman doing the test know that?  When Janey used the device to say something, why was it assumed she wasn't really saying what she was saying?  I do know the impulse to think "She doesn't really mean that".  For example, at home, Janey has quite a few times gone through several menus to make Touch Chat say "I don't want to wear white.  I want to wear orange"  Because Janey has never, even either shown she knows colors or objected to any certain color being worn, my first impulse was to just think she was playing around.  But I realized that's a pretty big thing to assume.  Maybe Janey never had a WAY to tell me that before.  Maybe she really does hate white clothes.  Maybe she wants more orange in her wardrobe.  No matter what, it seems pretty presumptuous to give someone a way to communicate and then when they do, to assume it means nothing.

To be fair, I really am not sure myself if AAC is going to help Janey with communication, and I don't know if Janey wants to use it or not.  After the initial few days with the Touch Chat (and Proloquo) at home, Janey has been rejecting using them, at one point very pointedly by means of hitting me in the face (I made her stay on her bed and not have TV for a while, but I left the Touch Chat out for her in case she wanted to speak ill of me on it!)  But I think she deserves a chance.

The good part?  Janey's wonderful teacher agrees with me.  Today, I sent her new iPad into school, and the teacher is going to update Touch Chat with things like the names of her classmates and with phrases they working on.  She is going to continue to make it available at school, and we will continue to make it available at home.

I'm trying not to get discouraged.  But at times, I do.  It has seemed over the years this same kind of scenario has played out a lot.  I am told there's some kind of help available.  When I actually decide to try to get that help, it's not actually available in Janey's specific case.  This isn't quite like that.  Nothing stopped us from getting Touch Chat on our own (and I'm glad we did, because if we had wanted to get it paid for by the schools, we would have been out of luck).  We are so, so lucky that Janey has a teacher that believes in her and works closely with us to coordinate our efforts.  But still---it feels often like a theme.  Janey just doesn't quite fit into any program.  She's not "high-functioning", as the music classes we looked into required.  Special Olympics, while friendly and welcoming, was not at all aimed at kids like her.  And now, her particular combination of being able to talk some and not being instantly inclined to communicate through technology---she isn't quite right for AAC either.

More and more, I realize there just isn't a lot out there to help.  And more and more, I appreciate the hands-on school people, the teachers and therapists and aides and all that don't say "she's not quite what we are looking for" but instead just accept her and work with her and love her.  And that is what we will keep doing at home, too.

Day One with AAC apps

I thought I'd write white it was fresh in my mind about how it went yesterday afternoon introducing Janey to her new iPad with three AAC apps on it.

I was a little nervous about showing Janey the "talker", as I had told her it was called.  I'd mentioned for a few days that I was going to get her a talker, and that she could use it for an extra way to talk.  She had seemed somewhat interested, and yesterday before going to school when I mentioned it, had actually said "Talking!  Talking!  Talking!"  But I was wary, as sometimes if Janey doesn't like the looks of something, she will never, ever take to it after that first negative impression.  And a few years ago, when I had gotten some demo versions of AAC apps, she'd hated them. So...

Right when Janey got home, I had the iPad out and waiting.  She asked for cheese, and I used the TouchChat app, and said "Let's see if we can get the talker to say that!"  I made it say "I want to eat cheese", and right away I went to get cheese, leaving the iPad with her.  As I had hoped, she jumped in and played with the "dairy" category I had open, pressing "ice cream" and "butter" to hear them said.  We had the cheese, and then Janey asked for soda.  I did "I want to drink..." and got onto the "drinks" page, and she pressed "soda".  So far, so good!

When Janey asked for the store, I had TouchChat say "I want to go to store" while Janey watched with interest.  We went to the store, and when we got back, Janey right away grabbed the iPad and had TouchChat say "I want to talk to Grandpa"  I wasn't surprised, as her teacher had told me that's the sentence she often does at school.  Still, it took going through several screens to get it said, and I was impressed with the ease she had doing that.

A bit later, Janey started screaming, a common interlude in our afternoons.  This time, I used Aacorn, and brought up a choice of five feelings.  This app is a little different---when you pick a general category, it gives you a circle of five choices, surrounded by the general category, so this said "Feelings" surrounded by "happy", "excited", "sad", "love" and "hate".  If none of those are what you want, you can press the "Feelings" button again and get more choices.  The more you use the app, the instructions say, the more it knows what you might pick, and puts those choices in the first 5 to come up.

Janey picked "happy", even though she was screaming.  That's another thing the school had mentioned she does---identifies her feelings as happy no matter what they are.  She pressed the "happy" button over and over.  I pushed the feelings button a few more times, and it came to a place with a choice to pick "hurt"  Janey pressed that, and one of the choices came up "head", which she pressed over and over.  I took it back to a screen with a Yes or No choice, and said "Does your head hurt?" and she pressed Yes, over and over.  Interesting.

Later, I showed her the Proloquo2go opening screen.  She right away started playing with it.  To me, it looks like a more intimidating and less user friendly interface, but as the evening went on, it seemed that was the app of the three she liked best.  Before bed, I put both her old iPad and the new one on her bed.  She grabbed the new one, and went right to the Proloquo app, and played around with it for quite a bit.  What surprised me is she seemed drawn to words like "I", "on", "it"---not so much the nouns.  Maybe those words are harder for her and she likes being able to hear them said so easily.

We were on the feelings screen as Janey was getting tired, and she picked "sorry" and "tired" and then turned to her old iPad and put on YouTubeKids as she went to sleep. 

Overall, quite a wonderful start to trying AAC!  Janey was more interested than I had even hoped.  I'm going to work hard on keeping it all low-key.  That's essential with Janey.  She's a typical teen in a lot of ways.  If I act all hyped up for the "talker", it's quite likely she's react by showing less interest.  So I'm going to keep doing what I've been doing---modeling a bit, leaving screens open for her to play with, and just letting her have fun hearing what she presses be said. 

I like having the three different app choices available for her.  She doesn't seem confused by it, so far, in these early stages, and it's quite interesting to see she seems to like busy, very full screens more than minimalist ones.

I'll try to update our AAC journey regularly!

Celebrating Autism Day by going all AAC

I'll just call it Autism Day, without putting an "awareness" or "acceptance" or anything else on it.  Autism deserves a day, and it doesn't need any modifiers.

Proloquo2go

I'm starting something new this Autism Day.  Janey has never shown much interest in AAC apps (Augmentative and Alternative Communication).  This year, however, her school has been using a program called TouchChat to has her say certain things, like to help her ask other rooms if they have any recycling or to help her participate in morning meetings.  Reports were she showed some interest in it, and I decided to go for it---to really try to do AAC at home.

TouchChat

The first thing I needed was a more up to date iPad for her, and the very kind gift of a dear friend helped us out there and allowed me to buy Janey a brand new one.  She still is using the old one we got her, and that thing has been through hell and back, protected with a Gumdrop cover.  That is one product I will recommend to the stars and back.  So I've ordered a cover for the new iPad.  Today, since it's Autism Day, a lot of AAC programs were on sale (although not TouchChat).  Since we got the help with paying for the iPad, I decided to toss caution to the wind and buy 3 different AAC programs---TouchChat, ProLoQuo To Go and Aacorn.  The last two were on a good sale.  I figured I'd fool around with them some before showing them to Janey, and see which she likes, or if she likes a combination.  

Aacorn

So far, after just a little bit of testing by me, I really like Aacorn.  It is set up in a very kid-friendly way, and had a great tutorial.  But that's an extremely early observation.  I'll be writing about our AAC attempts in days to come, I'm sure.

How am I celebrating otherwise?  Well, Janey will get her trip to the ice cream store when she gets home, and we'll watch some videos, and Daddy will probably make her some soup for dinner, and we'll snuggle at bedtime.  There might be a car ride, too.  Nothing much different than what we do every day, because in a way, every day is autism day here.  We've figured out the routines that work, mostly, and we don't stray a lot from them.

I'm not going to try, this year, to say anything summing up or meaningful or awareness-raising for this day.  Part of that is just tiredness.  Part of it is a growing realization that thinking about autism as one entity, one type of life, is like calling all different kinds of fruits just "fruit".  There are way too many ways autism shows itself, way too many different variations, to be able to say much about the autism community in general without over-simplifying.  I can talk about Janey, and I can talk about our family, but I can't really speak for others in any general way.

I can, though, sent out a special wave of love to everyone out there with a life that includes autism, whether it be those who are autistic themselves or those who love someone with autism.  Happy Autism Day!