Ten Turning Point Posts

This morning, I was doing a little reading back of my posts, something I do now and then.  My first impression---"Wow, that woman sure does like to write a lot!"  Yes, there are over 700 posts.  That's over the course of seven years, but it's still a heck of a lot of writing.  Another thought was about the early years.  For the first few years, I was using the blog mostly as a diary.  The posts are far more dashed off and, in my own worst critic mode, poorly written.  I don't think it ever occurred to me that anyone would be reading them, and at first, nobody was.  Now, I do get a fair amount of readers, which still amazes me every time I think of it.

It struck me that most people probably don't have the time or desire to read through 726 posts to get the story of Janey's life so far.  I decided to pick out 10 posts---posts about what I would call turning points in our journey with Janey.  They aren't my 10 favorite posts, or most popular posts, but they are ones that write about moments I think back on as instances that changed something in our life with Janey.  Here they are, in order of oldest to newest...

The Bad McDonalds Trip

Up until the day of this trip, I felt able to take Janey most anyplace I felt like.  She might have tough moments, but they weren't such that it made a scene or made me feel I couldn't handle her in public.  I remember this trip to McDonalds vividly as the day I realized everything had changed, and I would be no longer ever just jumping in the car with her to go wherever I felt like.

The First Wonderful Music Moment

This might not really have been the first, but it's the first that stands out in my mind as a time that Janey completely surprised and delighted me by making me realize she could communicate things in musical lyrics and melodies she could not do in other ways.

The First Medication 

This was, after an extremely tough stretch, when we gave in and first put Janey on medication.

Deciding Where I Stood

I think this was the first post where I felt I had earned the right to decide for myself where I stood on how I was approaching Janey's autism.  Up until then, I didn't feel I'd earned my stripes enough to do so.

Giving Advice to Non-Autism People

One of the first times I felt I was part of a community and that as part of that community, I had something to say to those who might not understand the community completely!

There Isn't Any Respite

Up until the point written about here, I think I still had a feeling that there was respite for us out there, if we really looked.  After giving up on what we thought we had found, we realized there are kids with special needs and then kids with specialer needs, and that Janey was not the first kind.

The Next Level of Tough

This is what I remember as the beginning of the next era with Janey---when it felt like the stakes were getting higher and Janey was entering a new stage of tough behaviors.

The Biggest Sleep Nightmare

Sleep has been an issue for Janey right along, but this night was the apex of it.  Knocking on wood a thousand times, it never again has been quite as bad as this fabled night.

The End Of Inclusion

It build up to this day for a while---the IEP meeting where we formally agreed Janey would leave the Henderson Inclusion School and enter a program with autism-only classrooms.

The Hospital Month

A summary of the month Janey spent in first a regular hospital and then a psychiatric ward.


This posts point a bit of a negative picture, but that's not of course the whole Janey story!  Right now, again, knocking on wood, Janey seems happier than she has in quite a while.  We are hopeful her latest medication and the changes we have made and the schools have made in how we work with her, and of course her own maturation and remarkable spirit, has started another turning point, a very hopeful one.

The Bad McDonalds Trip

Yesterday was really something, but I am hoping perhaps it gave me some insight into Janey. I took her with me to two stores Christmas shopping. Usually she loves to shop, and I have tended to stay home too much with her in the morning before school, so I felt good about taking her out. She asked me at the second store "you want chicken nuggets?" which meant SHE wanted to go to McDonalds, and we have done that before and it's gone quite well. So we went there. I think the first problem was we couldn't sit where we did the 4 or so other times we have gone. Also, there were kids at the next table, nice kids but talkative and Janey kept hearing them. But who knows what really was happening---she kept getting more and more upset. Finally she crawled under the table to me, and just FREAKED OUT---started biting the back of the chair, the table, anything within reach, and then tried her hardest to bit me. I had to hold her coat between me and her mouth, and she bit so hard on the coat her lips was bleeding. I was truly a little scared. I knew I just had to get her out of there, and talked to her as calmly as I could and got her out as quickly as I could. She didn't say a word in the car, but as we got home, she said one of her longest statements "I heard a clicking sound, and the clicking sounded like BOOM! I heard a footprints sound". I really don't know if this was about the McDs, but I think it was---she heard some kind of clicking sound that sounded really loud to her, and maybe like someone was walking over to her. She kept repeating that same phrase many times. I tried of course to ask her more about it, but to no avail.

A long time ago I read a book, I think called "The Sound of a Miracle" about a girl diagnosed with autism that is "cured" by something I think is called auditory training. I thought it was pretty foolish, but now I do wonder how much sounds and extra-sensitive hearing affect Janey. I know William also has very sensitive hearing, and Tony sometimes too. And I know Janey is very bothered by things that sound wrong---songs sung in a silly way, and even things like a burb noise. A few nights ago she went crazy because I was singing "Away in a Manger" to her and said "The stars in the BRIGHT sky" instead of how I usually say it, "The Stars in the Sky". I really don't know what to do about this all, but I might try to do some more research. I know I think the expensive "training" the book talked about is a huge scam. I actually went years ago to a talk about it and was extremely underwhelmed.

Oh, well.