My kids – your kids – all kids grow every day, no matter how big the leap.\u00a0 That includes forever kids like W. and J. whose developmental age of maybe 5 years old on a good day belies their 18-year old bodies.<\/p>\n
Yesterday was not a special day, really.\u00a0\u00a0 We let the boys sleep late (Mom actually slept late, which was amazing), went to late Mass, and did neglected chores like putting away the Xmas ornaments.\u00a0 We did treat the boys to their favorite “restaurant” (Chipotle, where W. inhaled a wrap before I got to my seat – truly).\u00a0 And\u00a0we did the usual drive-around errands of the grocery store, a few other stores and the bank where the boys basically tag along with us and practice behaving in lines and in public.\u00a0 We made dinner at home, quite\u00a0a fabulous one cooked by Dad, folded clothes and readied for the week.<\/p>\n
Buried in the ordinary were milestones, and I hold them in front of me to guide me today:<\/p>\n
-W. zipped out of church door far ahead of us, got in line and independently shook the priest’s hand, saying “Hi Father.”\u00a0 Without prompting!\u00a0 and without parents to guide him!<\/p>\n
– J. painted 2 sides of his favorite craft boxes using side-to-side, “cover up all the white space” strokes and not the stimmy circles he does when he’s simply calming himself.<\/p>\n
– W. spent between 4 pm and 8 pm playing\u00a04 different preferred activities – his word cards, puzzles on his iPad,\u00a0 puzzles and\u00a0iTunes on his computer, and money in his cash register\u00a0– without a disrobe and without hyper-vigilance on the part of Mom and Dad – so the parents could do other chores around the house.\u00a0 OK, some of his play was stimmy, but it was so delightful not to have to run and chase him all the time to make sure he was behaving appropriately.<\/p>\n
– J. independently awoke to the alarm clock and shut it off each day – just like we’ve been practicing for about 3 months.\u00a0 He even\u00a0proved he is no different than any typical teen, when he hit the snooze bar and promptly went back to bed. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n
Growth is about progress, not perfection – about the unending\u00a0journey to better ourselves, one step at a time – however small.\u00a0\u00a0 W. and J. are growing, and for that my day is all sunshine today, inside and out.\u00a0 Here’s hoping this Mom can do the same.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My kids – your kids – all kids grow every day, no matter how big the leap.\u00a0 That includes forever kids like W. and J. whose developmental age of maybe 5 years old on a good day belies their 18-year old bodies. Yesterday was not a special day, really.\u00a0\u00a0 We let the boys sleep late […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-217","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/twinmommeetsautism.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/twinmommeetsautism.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/twinmommeetsautism.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/twinmommeetsautism.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/twinmommeetsautism.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=217"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/twinmommeetsautism.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/twinmommeetsautism.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/twinmommeetsautism.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/twinmommeetsautism.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}