{"id":371,"date":"2014-10-27T13:03:05","date_gmt":"2014-10-27T13:03:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/twinmommeetsautism.com\/?p=371"},"modified":"2014-10-27T13:03:05","modified_gmt":"2014-10-27T13:03:05","slug":"why-im-here","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/twinmommeetsautism.com\/index.php\/2014\/10\/27\/why-im-here\/","title":{"rendered":"Why I’m here"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"cropped-Burnside-bridge-in-sunlight-for-blog-08-28-121.jpg\"<\/a>
\nOn a Monday morning full of technology hassles that have now made me way, way, way\u00a0late for the day’s paid work, it’s more important than ever to remember my #1 priority – why I’m here – and why you should visit me again, dear readers.\u00a0\u00a0 I’m Twin Mom, and while I’m much more – as you are too – my role as autism mom has forever changed me.<\/p>\n

Some parents of autistic individuals have autism as their personal bumper sticker.\u00a0 Others start foundations or write legislation and actively assist the broader autism community.\u00a0 My personal mission is perhaps an inch wide and a mile deep.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0I hope to\u00a0share my story of parenting twin boys on the spectrum\u00a0through to adulthood\u00a0as a semi-balanced human being in the hopes you will feel validated, maybe learn something, or if nothing else, know you are not alone.\u00a0\u00a0 My W. and J. are the light of my world, and when the light is dim, that’s when they do something remarkable that shows me how genuinely gifted I am that they are mine.<\/p>\n

Perhaps it’s that I’ve needed to make money so I didn’t have the ability to quit my job.\u00a0 Or that I was just too overwhelmed surviving the twin thing.\u00a0 But unlike some parents of autistic kids, I\u00a0didn’t discover a genetic breakthrough.\u00a0 I didn’t abandon my one other child so I could lock myself in a bathroom with the\u00a0autistic two and cure them.\u00a0 My kiddos do not go to college and maybe someday they’ll even read or count the correct number of forks at the dinner table.\u00a0 They struggle, sometimes a lot.\u00a0 It’s unlikely they will drive a car or live independently.<\/p>\n

Yet they smile from the soul, and their joy doubles or quadruples my own.\u00a0\u00a0 Most of all they have each other, something that J. thrives on.\u00a0 Right before the above photo was taken as they\u00a0strolled\u00a0across the Burnside Bridge on a civil war battlefield as the sun gently faded, J. (on the right) lovingly took W’s elbow and guided him from one side to the other.\u00a0\u00a0 How fitting, because the two of them have done that for me.\u00a0\u00a0 They helped me walk from a land of rather self-centeredness of Yuppiedom, to a life where I am humbled daily – I have to ask for help, a lot – and I am forced to shed perfectionism and accept with gratitude the small victories that happen each day.\u00a0 With our typically developing oldest kiddo, she made it all so easy. With W.\u00a0and J. there’s much to work and yet much to treasure too.<\/p>\n

It’s easy to find resources lately for younger\u00a0kids with autism,\u00a0and I’m grateful that many friends and fellow parents have made early diagnosis a reality.\u00a0 But the fight to integrate our kids into the mainstream of\u00a0happy, productive living is\u00a0a fresh one, and not nearly begun.\u00a0\u00a0 No offense to wonderful events, but it’s not about autism friendly performances.\u00a0 It’s about making an autism friendly workplace and neighborhood – not just for the pretty little ones or the higher functioning individuals, but for us all.<\/p>\n

Join me on our journeys toward adulthood, and post comments with your own.\u00a0\u00a0 Being parent to an autistic child is not a life sentence, and the path from the teen years and toward adulthood – my own personal focus at present – is well trodden by others.\u00a0\u00a0 Together we show each other the way.<\/p>\n

Happy trails wherever you are today, and here’s to making each step as joyous as the first – because it is, the first step on the journey to the newness your child and you will discover today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On a Monday morning full of technology hassles that have now made me way, way, way\u00a0late for the day’s paid work, it’s more important than ever to remember my #1 priority – why I’m here – and why you should visit me again, dear readers.\u00a0\u00a0 I’m Twin Mom, and while I’m much more – as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-371","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/twinmommeetsautism.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371","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=371"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/twinmommeetsautism.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/twinmommeetsautism.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/twinmommeetsautism.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/twinmommeetsautism.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}