bountifulplate

I'm guilty. I admit it. I am reminded by both Lauren and the hubby, more often than not, that Dominic is capable of much more than I give him credit for.  I really don't know why I sometimes underestimate what he can do. Maybe it's because I don't like to see him fail? or get frustrated? I know to learn, he will get upset and cry and possibly scream. I guess it's the maternal instinct in me, I don't like to see my children or anyone else's children sad. Having to tell Lauren that Santa Claus wasn't real was a pretty tough thing. At one time, I was convinced Dominic would never get toilet trained. It truly was easier to just change his diaper or Pull-Up . We knew there was no physical reason why he didn't want to get potty trained, which made it all the more frustrating. More than once I was ready to give up, but his old teacher, Mr. P., planned out the whole process and it did eventually happen. Just in the past three weeks, he has ASKED to use the ...

When we signed Dominic up for baseball through a special needs sports league, we had high hopes that it would be a good "fit."   Well, he did fine the first game, but the second game he cried through most it.  I mostly attributed it to him having been up since 4:30 a.m. that morning and having seen a few gnats and mosquitoes (he is terrified of any kind of "bug").  The week prior to the third game, he kept telling me, "take a little break from baseball" at least once a day. Think he was trying to tell me something?!?!?!  I told him before we drove to the field, that we would try it one more time and if he really wasn't enjoying himself, he didn't have to go anymore.  Shortly after we got to the field, he saw a mosquito.  Well, that was it.  He walked off the field and started crying. We encouraged him to take his turn at bat and in the field. Lauren even went out to the field with him and so did his "buddy" (who was extremely ...

Even though Dominic is over nine years old, he just recently got 100% potty trained. What a long, difficult and stressful road that was for all of us in this house.  How many of you out there with typically developing children had a difficult time with the potty training? Did it take a few days, weeks, months? When you have a child with Autism, it can be a totally different experience and may take much, much longer. Dominic doesn't have any physical disabilities that would prevent him from being trained, so we knew he was capable of it.  In the past, whenever I would ask Dominic about using the potty, his response was always a resounding, "no!"   He was perfectly content to be sitting in a soiled diaper or a Pull-Up for hours.  Believe me, I got out tons of books from the library, spent hours on the computer researching the subject and asked parents of special needs children how they accomplished the toileting - nothing was helping.  I knew that him be...