A Sibling's Point of View

There was a news story a while back that you may have missed and I feel that it is still important to talk about. It was about a very popular YouTuber named Myka Stauffer. I had never heard of her until my daughter, Lauren, forwarded me an article about her. Myka Stauffer and her husband had adopted a son from China, who was named Huxley. After finding out he had Autism and other disabilities, they decided that he should be placed with a different family. The Stauffer's already have four biological children. Evidently, some of Myka Stauffer's followers were asking what happened to Huxley since he wasn't in any of the videos she was posting. About a month ago, Myka Stauffer and her husband made a video explaining where Huxley had went. There was a lot of negative fall out from the video including tons of judgment. Everyone seemed to have an opinion. Very few supported her decision to return him. What I learned from one of my best friends is that you shouldn't judge others unless you are walking in their shoes. Many were concerned about Huxley and the effects of all of this on him. I read a lot of the comments and I don't think I saw any about how having an adopted brother and then not having him in the family would affect the four biological children. That was Lauren's number one concern about the whole situation, given that she has a younger brother with Autism, named Dominic. As a mom, I could only see it from my perspective. Besides having an older sister (Lauren), Dominic also has a stepbrother who is 36 and married. My stepson has never lived with us full time and when we moved to Michigan in 2001, he was a senior in high school, so he stayed back with his mom in Maryland. We talk to my stepson and his wife each week, so Dominic is able to stay connected to them. Lauren was eight years old when Dominic was born. When the Myka Stauffer story came out, Lauren was like, "what about the other kids?" "They will be wondering where their brother went." During the time of the Pandemic, Lauren stayed with us for close to three months. Dominic started reading the "Magic Tree House" books to her. When she went back to her apartment, I was trying to figure out how the closeness could continue. That's where Skype comes in!!

Even though Lauren has a full-time job, she makes time in her day for Dominic to read to her. He reads a chapter to her at a time and they are now on their fourth book!!!! Lauren has always thought of Dominic being her brother first and having Autism second. Isn't the way it's supposed to be?

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A Book Every Autism Mom Should Read

When Dominic was diagnosed with Autism at 2 1/2, I went to our local library and took out every book I could find about Autism. Sometimes I would bring back 20 books. This was 2006, so a lot of the information was very "dated." I guess I was looking for a book that would tell me what I should do next, like a "manual." Autism doesn't quite work that way! The saying is, " if you know one person with Autism, you know one person with Autism." Every mom to an individual with Autism follows their own "path." I think as moms, we judge ourselves much harder than anyone else does. I was 41 when I had Dominic. Did he get the diagnosis of Autism because I was an older mom? because I drank a lot of pop? I could sit and think about that every minute of every day. I am pretty integrated into the Autism community around Lansing and have told more than one person that it took me about two weeks to come to terms with Dominic's diagnosis. It is so incredib...

Mainstreaming and Inclusion

The hubby and I were discussing the other day how special education students were treated back when he and I were in school. He remarked to me that in his time, they were "hidden away" from the rest of the students. When I was in elementary school, I can remember seeing the kids in those classrooms pass by us in the hallway. I don't ever recall seeing them in the lunchroom or playground. I'm so glad that times have changed. Even though Dominic is in a "self-contained" special education classroom, he does get to go to the art, gym and music classrooms. He also gets to eat lunch in the school cafeteria. He loves hot lunch on Thursday - pizza!! Given Dominic's abilities, he is able to be "mainstreamed" into the general education classroom for small amounts of time. Every moment he is able to do that gives me so much hope for his future. I absolutely love what Dominic's current teacher is doing. He has started a peer-to-peer progra...

It's a "Group" Effort

Since going to the local barbershop is still not allowed where we live, it fell upon us to figure out the best way to shave Dominic's beard and mustache. Typically, Dominic goes to our local barbershop to get his haircut and his barber (Vince) also takes about 30 seconds to shave the beard and mustache. This August, it will be five years that Dominic has been going to Vince. That in itself is a huge milestone as anyone with a child/adult with sensory sensitivities knows. Anyways, earlier in the week my hubby, Lauren and I had all noticed that Dominic's facial hair definitely needed some assistance. I mentioned to Lauren that I needed to find a "social story" about getting a shave. Before I had a chance to find one, she took it upon herself to find one and print it out, it had both an electric shaver and shaving cream/razor stories! That meant so much to me, because she didn't have to do that, she wanted to! I showed the social story to Dominic and sai...

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