Category: autism mom

Parker’s Prom 5/12/2017

When I heard my boy had Autism I watched a lot of videos of Mother’s crying that their son would never do anything in their life. He would not go to prom. He won’t ever get married. He will never have a job.

I would also be sad over this and I would sometimes stop and think that one day I will die and I will not be here for him anymore. What will he do without me. It scares me so.

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Then on May 12, 2017, I got to go to my son’s prom with him. He had a date too. Her name is Seria and I paid for her mom to come along too. It was so nice to be able to go and see my son have a great time. He was dancing and having a wonderful time. He actually got to dance with two women at the same time and he had a smile on his face.

There were a lot of students there and this was Parker’s Junior Prom. I will be attending again with him next year. But he may not be at that school next year because of what they are doing to him. They are failing him. They do a good job in some ways and other ways it seems as if they are making excuses for him.

They took services away from him because he wasn’t doing well with them. That makes no sense but I thought they know what they are talking about so I can’t say a word.

He is 16 nonverbal and has many challenges. They say he don’t need Occupational Therapy and they only give him one 15 minute session of speech and they don’t teach him to talk. They work with him on his speech device which is an IPAD that has pictures that you can touch and they turn to words.

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The day went well. He insisted on a second shower so his hair was still wet. But he still looked so handsome and was having a great time getting a big deal made of him. I am thankful to get a picture of him like this. I used to have to take 50 pictures or more to get one good picture.

I always upload my videos of the family to YouTube and Parker loves to watch them all the time. Any chance he gets he watches YouTube and watches his favorite family videos. He changes my descriptions all the time to a bunch of letters and numbers.

I believe I have over 800 videos uploaded so far. I have lots of Video tapes to transfer still and I have mini DV videos. Our camera broke and now I can’t get those videos off of those tapes. I am hoping I will be able to someday.

Here’s another fun video.

That’s me acting like a crazy mom. I look ridiculous but I will do anything for my son. He did such a good job. He got upset once and scratched and pinched us. But he recovered well. We think it was because of the music they were playing sometimes. He loves music but some of it Parker can’t handle.

Here is a picture of the lovely couple.

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Dawn Meyers

Author of RaisingAutism.me

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Autism Learning Hip Hop

I have been bringing Parker to Hip Hop Dance Class. He does not get used to new places to fast but I know he likes his teacher Anna that we found later is only 16. That’s the same age as Parker and she has an older brother who has Autism.

I know Parker really likes her and he has been good to her and only scratched her once. He smells you if he likes you. LOL. Anna is so kind to him and it is nice to see him socialize with someone that he is not used to seeing every day.

Everyone there loves him. The girls that are in the class always say hello to him when we go to the Pretzel Factory next door after class. They say they have a great time with him and they think he is so much fun to have in their class.

You know I have always been worried about acceptance and it is hard for me to socialize myself with anyone who doesn’t understand autism.

I actually made a friend at the dance studio. Everyone smiles and says bye to us when we leave and I get along with everyone. So far no one has tried to tell me what I should do with my son. That is something I found in the beginning of his life that annoyed us.

One day he will be dancing for us all in a show and he will be a perfect accent to the girls that practice hard every week.

Look for more of Parker Meyers at dance class coming soon.

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Dawn Meyers

The author of RaisingAutism.me

 

Hear Him Speak

I have always been active in making sure my children spoke when they were supposed to. I have always wanted to make sure my children developed in every way they should.

We noticed that one of our boys was regressing in his life skills. Although he had spoken some words one day they were gone. Along with the recording of the only time, we heard him speak. We recorded him and his brother talking on a portable tape recorder for children. We came home to find one day the babysitter just let big brother string it all over the house. We were sad but really did not know that we would never capture that again. At least for a long time and it was a challenge for sure. But one that is rewarding.

We were told when he was 10 that he would never speak so he was discharged from individual speech class. I set out to prove this guy wrong and I vowed to bring him in front of him one day to say “what’s up”?

Here is a video of him in 2016 proving he can talk if we just never give up on him. I noticed he was using our cellphone cameras and making recordings of his own voice and playing it back and when you imitated his words no matter how silly you sounded he would get all excited and very interested in working on his voice.

We have always been active in making sure our boy could somehow learn to live a normal life as best as he could. Here is another video of him proving them wrong.

At least 5 months have passed and a lot has happened including our family being accused of neglect. Our battle is still not won yet we were found innocent of the accusation. We have to continue to advocate for our son. Until he is able to do it for himself and watching this video will show you how much he really wants to and how close he is getting there.

DO YOU BELIEVE?

Do you believe? I really never knew what I believed. When I was growing up I always believed in GOD and Angels and the Devil. Heaven and Hell.

I always believed there was something out there after we die. When my Grandmother died on April 15th, 2015 I was so devastated. I always wanted her to let me know somehow she was here. Or if she was alright. I started to see signs that reminded me of her and then one day a lady in the hair salon told me she was leaving me pennies and dimes. And that she was. Pennies from Heaven. It’s a story in itself that I will tell you.

But today I want to show you what happened on July 19th, 2016. I just got my phone on July 14th for my birthday. I was so excited to take pictures of the full moon. We started our walk on July 18th and it ended on July 19th with the most wonderous sight.

Here is a video of us ending the night. I had no idea what I was going to find when I uploaded my photos to Facebook. All I uploaded was the prettiest pictures I saw on my cell phone. Then later that night when I was looking through them I said what is that? Holy Hell. LOL. Enjoy the night. The pictures will be in order. Enjoy and leave comments on what you think.

 

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What is weird is as I took these photos I did not realize that there was an Angel there. I was just randomly shooting the moon and I wish I had this on video.  It looks like the angel is flying away. If I would have gotten it on video it would have been a sight. Although this is very impressive I think.

I got a photo from the TV of the news chopper taking a fly by of the sunset and the sky was Crimson. Pretty strange it was the same day 5 months later and 1 day before the Department of Children and Families showed up at our door.

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So do you believe? I thought I always did but sometimes lose my faith. Why would GOD make me struggle so much? I believe he gave me my son because I was chosen. I have patience and love but there are so many things that happen in our lives that take away from the important things. I would love to raise GOD’s child without all the struggle with money and people that get in the way of building the perfect life for you and your family.

I will never give up on making the perfect life for our family. My goal is to live by Disney World someday so I can take my Autistic boy to his happiest place on earth. He was there before and he loves that place so much. I believe that every time we get in the truck that we drove him there in that he thinks we are going to Disney World every single time he is in it.

He wants to talk so bad, so why is no one helping him?

He wants to talk so bad, so why is no one helping him? He is 16 and nonverbal. His name is Parker and he is awesome. He is so smart and he is trying to talk. It is because of us and our constant participation in teaching him how to tell us what he wants while pairing it sometimes with his device.

In school, Parker gets 15 minutes of individual speech a week and 15 minutes of group speech a week and I don’t understand how that would get anyone to say a word.

The school’s therapists had me investigated for neglect and that is so far from the truth. The only way he is being neglected is from his school.

They took away occupational therapy in school and he regressed at home and is doing some really dumb thing that I can’t get him to stop. It has calmed down a lot because we figured out what it was but without his occupational therapy in school, I doubt it ever will.

They won’t listen to me and tell me to get in home services. I got a script from a doctor and they still denied him. He really needs that squeeze machine in school. I don’t have one here at home.

I do like his teacher this year. She is very nice to him and I don’t think she really believes what everyone at school is saying about us. I feel really bad that this year I missed his parent-teacher conference but it was around the time that I was away from home for my mother’s breast cancer treatments and when Parker got home from school he would empty his book bag and I would not see the papers that were in there. One day I found it under the bed. I had never missed a conference ever in any of the years Parker has been in school since the age of 3.   So that may have made me look bad to her.

Parker used to have a vestibular III in our living room and a merry go round and a big barrel and a small trampoline. When we moved we brought the Bolster with us and put it in his bedroom. It was huge. But he had a very big room. When we moved again we couldn’t put it up. But that didn’t seem to bother him because we replaced it with the park. As he got older he could enjoy the park more.

I was told one day by a speech teacher in the Philadelphia school district that if my son didn’t talk by ten he never would. He already knows how but can’t seem to put it all together but is getting better at it daily.

Here are some fun videos we did.

Hope you enjoyed a look into Parkers world. Come back again soon and see some more of Parker’s progress.

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Dawn Meyers

Author of raisingautism.me

Looks like Autism runs in the family.

I am actively working with Parker daily to help him learn his words. I have always done this even though I might sound stupid. On one of my videos that now has almost 3000 views, I sound dumber than dumb and got some comments that said Looks like Autism runs in the family. LOL Ha Ha. The world today just really sucks and people are just not the same anymore.

Of course, there are still people out there that care about everyone and normally that is what I am all about. But with recent events that happened to us, I am totally seeing that people just suck and it is so sad.

We could all be killed one day by North Korea and none of it would matter so why not be nice to everyone. We are not all the same and if we were we would get tired of ourselves. LOL.

I think people that are mean hate themselves or are jealous of your situation and want to be more like you. I had a girl comment on my video where I acted like a fool to get my son excited and keep engaged in my conversation and it was horrible. She said so many mean things about my son. But I said oh well that’s her opinion. Others went crazy on her and she said her friend wrote that.

No matter how stupid I sound or how stupid I look I make sure I keep my son engaged in everything. It is paying off. It’s such a reward to see the results of acting like a fool in front of the world.

Here are a few videos of Parker that are amazing to us. If you saw him before this you would know what an accomplishment this is to us.

 

 

 

 

Hope you enjoyed watching some of Parker’s videos. 

How about that one with him doing that puzzle. The puzzle is designed to have an empty peg spot but he didn’t like that at all. He figured out how to fix it and he was really thinking about it.

Follow my blog so I can check out what you do.  

 

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Dawn Meyers Author of RaisingAutism.me

Children in New Jersey diagnosed with #Autism is 1 in 41.

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Children in New Jersey diagnosed with #Autism is 1 in 41.

Our boy is 16 and we have raised him with nothing but love and participation.

His school took away a lot of his services. He gets no Occupational Therapy and only 15 minutes of Individual Speech once a week and 15 minutes of Group Speech a week.

He is nonverbal besides the words that we teach him daily. But still, hasn’t developed a full sense of punctuation. He developed a sensory behavior and it was tough to figure out why he was doing it. But when we did we asked for Occupational Therapy back in school because he had gotten therapy in the squeeze machine and we believe this is why he is doing this behavior at home.

The school called DYFS on me instead and told me to get in-home services for him since they see no behaviors at school. They had us investigated for abuse and neglect with the Department of Children and Families. DYFS. It was found to be Not Established.

We are so disheartened by this situation. Our son has gone to school every day and is always healthy and happy. The behavior therapist told us that what Parker was doing at home was an attention getting behavior and he is begging for attention.

This is a sensory behavior caused by taking away the squeeze machine. It all matched up with his extreme weight gain and the sensory behavior he was now doing at home.
When I begged for them to just let him use it a couple times a month they said he could come down there anytime he wanted. I was also told to get a Doctor script for Occupational Therapy and I did and they denied it and said he can still use the OT/PT room on an as needed basis. He doesn’t talk and doesn’t realize he needs to go there.

I don’t understand what is going on and I am fighting for our family every day. Howard and I have always been 100 percent participating in school. Always at meetings. Always come to events, parties and would drive miles and miles to find something Parker needed to have to participate in classroom events.

We hardly look like a family that neglects our boy. You all can see here on Facebook and on our YouTube channel Parkersmom215 that both my boys have been nothing but loved and cared for. I don’t see how and autistic behavior is caused by us.

I don’t understand why someone that has never come to your home or seen anything you ever do for your child would pick up the phone and do something like that to a family.

Especially a school that is supposed to provide autistic services. I don’t see where he is even getting any services.

He wants to talk so bad and we are teaching him every day just like I always have. I am a kick ass mom and my husband is so supportive and loves his children so much. He works his butt off daily to provide for us. The divorce rate with Autism is very high and always has been and to see a man still raising his family right there should be a sign of nothing but love and participation.

I know I shouldn’t rant on here and usually don’t but I want others to know what has happened to me. I know others out there that have had the same happen to them. We are not the ones you should be looking at.

How about the families that don’t participate in anything at all or don’t show up to meetings that pertain to their children. How about the boy I saw on the news tied up and sitting next to a house in a vacant lot.

The therapists at the meeting that I asked to have with everyone who has anything to do with Parker on January 18th told me that I had to tell in home services that we feared for our lives when my son got upset and we also fear for his. We were told we had to tell them he is so much worse than he is so that we get the services we need in place for him at home. I said they would take him away from us. They said not necessarily and if they took him to crisis for a couple days it would not be so bad. When I told them I was helping my mom when I could because she had breast cancer surgery so what he was doing at home might have gotten a little out of control but now I will have to make sure I can’t help my mom anymore so I will be there all the time with him like I always am. The behavior therapist said I am sorry this is such bad timing for you.

I am still so sad over that meeting. The people you trust to take care of your kid every day at school would allow him to be traumatized at a crisis center when he absolutely does not deserve to be there. They even said he has no behavior log in school anymore because his aggressive behaviors are not existent in school. Then why do you want him to go away and why would you say I need to get in home services. Something I have begged to get for years and years when yes I would say we really needed it. But now our boy has calmed down a lot and knows what is expected of him and tries hard every day to let us know what it is that he really wants.

I spoke to the new social worker there several times since September and asked for help in the situation because we believed it was sensory. I also asked for a couple other things she could help me with and I got this instead. I am getting no help from them.

I really think someone better hurry up and figure out what is causing Autism so we can cure it. Soon there will be no one that doesn’t have #Autism.

Our Autism Experience

I wrote Our Autism Experience 4 years ago and I never shared it with the world as much as I wanted to. So here it is. Enjoy.

I thought I would write about the Autism Experience. Our Autism Experience. Sounds like the name of a ride at Disney. With the rate of Autism rising daily maybe it should be. I know my experience has been a ride. An experience that everyone should feel. To be in someone else’s shoes is the best way to learn.

Imagine if we could only feel like our children do then we would know what they need help with. Imagine if we could feel like others that raise children with Autism.

My experience so far is rather hard to talk about. Just a lot to say is more like it. Not that I don’t regret every minute of it. Children with any disability can teach us lots. Instead of teaching them they teach us.

Every time I go to a Children’s Hospital I see how lucky some of us do have it. I see Children worse off than my boy and parents that I am sure they cry themselves to sleep every night.

I feel sad that I ever dare complain that I have a child that is healthy to some extent. He may have problems communicating but he has full use of his limbs. My boy may not be able to process things like we do but I know I have a 99.9 percent chance that he will wake up tomorrow morning. Others don’t have that chance.

So who am I to complain that I have to make sure that I never sleep at night with fear that my child will creep out into the night. He has done this many times before and to my horror and my joy he has done this while completely naked. In turn was returned to us safe when a good person called the police to report what he was seeing. If my child were not naked he may have gotten farther and would have brought him right out in the middle of The Roosevelt Blvd.

I thank God every day that I have the strength to keep him safe from harm. I thank God every day I see him smile at me. I thank God every day for his Guardian Angel that watches over him when I can’t.

My Autism Experience has been nothing to complain about. I get to stay home now and grow old with my kids. If my child were not Autistic I would have no choice to stay with the career I had built over 11 years.

My Autism Experience is nothing to complain about. We save lots of money cause it is hard for us to go out. It is really hard to find support when your child could hit a person and we don’t understand why.

So you see I should not complain about a thing. But I still seem to feel so much pain. I know how lucky I have it but yet I still feel hopeless. Not sure if this will ever get better for him. Will he ever speak to me so he can tell me how he is really feeling? Will he ever stop hurting others so we can take him out more often and show him more of the World?

What seems to be happening is I am learning to live The Autism Experience with him.

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Dawn Meyers  Author of RaisingAutism.me

 

Until Someone Told Us Different (#Autism)

A video series by Dawn Meyers about the struggles of our family dealing with a situation of Autism, State, and School. It’s an interesting story if you would like to listen. It is broken up into 8 parts so you can come back to it. The story is quite long and I could have written it but I decided to record it so you can just relax and listen and see some of our family photos. I am happy to do this because it helps me and helps raise awareness of what is going on out there in the world of autism. Thanks for watching and leave comments, please. I would love your feedback.

My YouTube Channel Parkersmom215 / Facebook dawnmeyers96 /

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hope you enjoyed my video series. I know I babbled. But it’s kinda like watching a movie where you need to build the characters before you tell the story. I did both at the same time. Hope it wasn’t too painful. LOL. It was a long night. I was up till after 5 am. recording this. I don’t even remember what I said most of the time but I do know what my point was.

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Dawn Meyers Author of raisingautism.me