Vacuum Cleaner. Enough Said.

School let out for the summer and she didn't write for days!  What happened to her?  Is she okay?  What have the children DONE to her???

Truly, I'm fine.  After I escaped the duct tape and tore up the ransom note, I put all the kids down for a nap. They'll never try that again!

Seriously, change is hard for an autistic child.  Logan has had a devil of a time adjusting to school being out.  It's because their schedule is disrupted...suddenly everything is different, we're not going the places we normally go, and that makes things difficult for him.  The kids are now, as we speak, camped out on the couch watching "Billy the Exterminator".  Oddly enough, my oldest thought he spotted a copperhead slithering into a closet this morning.  There was no snake.  We checked.  

So, I've been thinking about Logan and how things started with him, and how no two autistic children are alike.  But...there are things you should pay attention to, if you have a baby, that are good indicators that something isn't right.  If your baby exhibits the following behaviors, then you should definitely get them checked out:

-Won't respond to his/her name.  (For the longest time, Logan would not do this.  He still sometimes refers to himself as "Giovanni", a former classmate from a year ago.)

-Does not babble or make gestures by 1 year old (Logan DID do these things, BUT---)

-Loses words (This, Logan did.  Words he used were suddenly gone.  Never to be heard again.)

-By two years old, should be combining two or more words.  

He/She may also exhibit the following:

Poor eye contact

Fixation on a particular object or toy

Does not play with toys they way they are intended (Logan plays with "pieces" of toys.  He will carry around a single piece for a while.)

Makes odd movements, repetitive movements

Sometimes appears to be deaf...won't respond to questions even if you get in their face and repeat it loudly

There are a lot of other things that can cause the above symptoms...But I want to reiterate, as I did in an earlier blog, that you won't be doing your child any favors by ignoring the problem and pretending it's not there.  With autism, the sooner you catch it and the sooner you begin therapy, the better chance you are giving your child to make some progress.  You won't cure him/her, but you will be giving them a chance to overcome social and communication obstacles, however slight their progress might be.

And on that note, dear friends, I will close by relating the conversation Logan had with his father on the phone the other day.  There was a time when Logan refused to even put a phone up to his ear and did not understand what a phone was for.  So, my husband called from work the other day.  We talked for a few minutes.  Then I said, "Logan, do you want to say hi to daddy?"  He took the phone and said, "Hi-yeee, Da-deee!"  "Hi Logan!  How are you?"  "Vacuum cleaner!"  "Wow, I like those too!"  And Logan handed the phone back.  Vacuum cleaner.  Enough said.