snowballs in july......

Ran into a very dear friend. A super dee duper Autie-Mom of the highest order. She and her hubby are amazing people. We were in the grocery store and it was wonderful to see her again. We stood there for almost an hour catching up and annoying the shoppers trying to get at the Fig Newtons behind us. (sorry)!

The problem is this. They are dealing with a possible molestation issue with their child and a former autism therapist. The person in question is in jail right now awaiting trial. It is horrible and terrifying all at the same time.

The person in question also worked with our children.

My mind and heart have been reeling for days since our conversation. There is nothing I can do except talk about what happened.

I have to share that I keep going around in my head trying to figure out what anyone could have done to help or detect the problem sooner. I still have no idea if this person perpetrated anything upon my boys. They have no voice or language to talk about it.

Our non verbal children are so vulnerable and I hate it.

One of the problems with doing ABA therapy is that it is distressing and challenging for the kids. We push them really hard to learn how to learn. Thousands of hours are spent playing, breaking down skills, practicing sitting, practicing eating foods, letters, numbers, imitation, practicing listening to stories, learning how to use the bathroom....the list is endless.

And believe me, everyone works so hard to be super reinforcing with the kids to help the medicine go down. It is an ongoing battle to find fun things to tempt good behavior and reward effort.

So when your kid starts protesting when the therapist shows up at the door, it is an emotional challenge. It is a challenge to hear your child protesting on and off for the whole six hours a day that they are working. You are hoping for a miracle with every hour that passes that you are chipping away at that wall of silence your child is behind. I welcomed every therapist every shift with smiles and encouragement absolutely grateful that they were coming to my house. Because they were amazing.

These people are willing to put up with an unbelievable amount of crap so that my kids can learn to do what everyone learns naturally and effortlessly. Hour after hour ....tiny milestone after tiny milestone.

They are very special people. I was happy to trust them to help me fix my kids.

I also knew that my kids were at risk. The protests were there from day one so it is impossible to tell if the kids were trying to communicate anything other than...I really don't want to be doing therapy right now...leave me alone so I can watch a movie.

I guess if I could go back in time I would have put cameras in the therapy rooms. It would have been awesome to have that digital record anyway. Maybe the fact that there were always two sets of people working in my house, nothing happened. I will never know.

So the snowball part is this. It throws it back up in my face how alone I am. What I mean by alone is I do not have regular, valuable contact with other families whose children are in group homes. I am surrounded by a community of families. The blogs I read from friends and family are all about the circumstances I always wanted to have. I quickly start feeling left out and sorry for myself. Hence more snowballing of criticism of everything I am doing incorrectly right now. Every unfulfilled hope and dream piles onto this snowball. And there is no happy ending here.

Basically the snowball melts into a puddle of self pity.

My super attractive cast over my periodontal surgery. My customers at Macy's found it captivating.

Tylers perpetual pose

Spence cleaning the hill...it sparkled.

I went to take the boys the pile of new clothes I bought for them today. I hung out at the house for a couple hours while Spence dabbled in the kiddie pool and Ty got bored and went on the computer. The boys are still vulnerable. I think I'm going to talk to their teachers about my fears. I have to let them know what happened and get some reassurances that safeguards in place. (wait a minute....if I were a good mom....wouldn't I have already done that????....eeehchhhh I sense another snowball).