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tc - Loving Autism

City: Yuba City
State: CA
Country: USA
Member since: May 15, 2008
Last logged in: Nov 10, 2008

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Parent, Mother, ABA, Occupational Therapy, Speech Therapy, Physical Therapy

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http://www.foggyrock.com/MyPage/tc

tc's Bio

Hi there, I'm Teresa, Mom of twin 17 yr old boys who are now said to have higher functioning autism, but that wasn't always the case. At first they were diagnosed with severe autism and mental retardation but with lots of intervention, therapies and hard work they are doing really well!

I am now homeschooling my boys, after getting tired of all the drama of brick and mortor schools, using California Virtual Academy. Which is an online public school where the boys are in classes at grade level and are excelling at it!!! Even on the Dean's list!

I've been married for 23 years to my wonderful hubby! We are a retired (ha ha) military family and my hubby is now a defense contractor and still works in the same building he did before retirement (hence the ha ha) lol!

I live with my family in Northern California, where we enjoy the weather and no snow lol.

My boys are avid swimmers and enjoy stepping out the backdoor and into the pool! We also love bbqing and camping.

Well I hope to see you on the boards!

Teresa

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Autism and Homeschooling

by tc on 09.20.08 - public

This the boys 2nd year of homeschooling with California Virtual Academy High School and they are doing great! We love not having to rush to get ready...

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This the boys 2nd year of homeschooling with California Virtual Academy High School and they are doing great!  We love not having to rush to get ready in the mornings!  School in jammies is great! lol
  
The boys are doing really well so far with A's and B's and the teachers are coming along lol!  Some but not all of the teachers know about the boys autism.  As issues arise I will point out that the boys do have autism and an IEP but I really like that the boys are treated like every other student whenever possible.

We have a great special ed coordinator this year and she's got the boys therapies going with outside agencies started at the very beginning of the year and she's also working to set Jamie up for success for completing the CAHSEE exam.  (John's already passed both sections of this exam, but Jamie has refused to even take it : ( ughh!!!)

The boys have some really tough classes this year!  Pre Calculus and Trigonometry, British and World Literature, Personal Finance, Biology, Government, Geometry, American Literature, Chemistry, Spanish II, Careers, and PE so Mom is getting re-educated right along with the boys lol!!!

Well I hope everyone else is having a good start to the school year as well!
Teresa

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Success means........

by tc on 05.27.08 - public

Sucess means getting thru the hour, day, week, month without a meltdown! I love those hours, days, weeks and months! :)...

Our Journey Through Autism

by tc on 05.23.08 - public

This is the story of my sons Jamie and John. My husband Joe and I waited a long time for the news that we would finally be parents. It came during our...

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This is the story of my sons Jamie and John. My husband Joe and I waited a long time for the news that we would finally be parents. It came during our 8th year of marriage and also during Desert Shield. My husband was a Staff Sgt. in the Air Force at this time and stationed at Offutt AFB in Nebraska. He also spent a lot of this year in Saudi Arabia. When I found out the great news he was over there and I had to put thru a call to him and leave a message for him to call back ASAP. He finally called back at about 3 a.m. and I told him the news at this point I still didn't believe it myself. Needless to say we were both elated that we were going to be parents at last.

My pregnancy was anything but normal with lots of complications. In my fourth month of pregnancy my second ultrasound was done. My husband was home and this was the first time he would get to see the baby on ultrasound. I had had an ultrasound done in my third month during a bad bout with the flu when I had had some cramping and bleeding but the Dr. had said the baby looked good. Anyway we were in the lab having the Ultrasound done when the Tech ran out of the room to get the Dr. (This scared us to say the least) On the screen we could see two circles marked A and B. The Dr. came back in a confirmed that we would be the parents of twins.

This was one week before Christmas and we kept the news to ourselves as we were planning to surprise my parents at Christmas by a surprise visit that no one knew about but my brother Kenny whose wife was also expecting. When we arrived at my parents home I greeting them with "Surprise we're here and surprise we're having twins!!!!!"

The boys decided that they wanted to make an early entry into the world when I was 26 weeks pregnant but the Drs. stopped them and put me on complete bed rest and Turbutiline. This was not a fun time for me. There were a lot of trips to the hospital for stress tests and such. The good thing that came from this is that my husband had to be stationed at the base with me for the last trimester of my pregnancy because I was at such a high risk.

At 36 weeks they took me off the Turbutiline because the boys would now be able to survive on their own at this stage. But lo and behold now they didn't want to come. At 38 and 1/2 weeks I had to be induced into labor.

During my labor there was an ultrasound was done to ensure that the boys were in position and wouldn't you just know it John had moved and was now in the breech position. Jamie was the first in the birth canal and I told the Dr. I was going to be really mad if I delivered one vaginally and then had to have an emergency C Section for the other one. Jamie delivered normally after almost 12 hours of labor. John had to be turned inside of me by two Drs. And even with the epidural this was very painful. But then 1 hour and 43 minutes later I delivered John with a lot of help from my husband and Drs. normally too.

While we were at the hospital my brother called to say my sister in law Tammy was also in labor. My brother and my husband had lots of phone calls back and forth that day and I think my Mom got a lot more gray hair on this day waiting to hear the news. My niece Alisha Marie was born 1 hour and 45 minutes after John so it was kind of like having triplet’s on that day.

Needless to say I was certainly glad that was over. But I think it was just a warm up of things to come. God was getting me ready for the biggest challenge of my life. The first months of the boys were pretty much a blur for me although I was extremely happy with my little family. Daddy had gone back to Saudi as Desert Storm was in full swing at this time and I was in Omaha without much support. The boys and I made lots of trips to SD to see my sister and her family and to CO to visit my parents. My parents also made two trips during this time to see me and check on the boys.

For the boys 1st birthday we went to SD to celebrate with Alisha and her family. We went camping and fishing. It was a fun time for all. My younger brother Andy came back to live with us to help me with the boys while Joe was away so much. This really helped a lot.

It was during this time that we first noticed the boys were not talking to us anymore. They would only talk in nonsense babble to each other. The Drs. called this twin talk and weren’t really concerned about it. They did however become concerned about all the ear infections that the boys were having and decided to put PE tubes in their ears to help with the infections. They also thought that this would help with their speech. It didn’t. Then they became worried because the boys wouldn’t respond when spoken to and wouldn’t at this time make any eye contact. Now they thought that they were deaf or had some hearing loss causing this. Joe and I both knew that this wasn’t the case as if you would put in a Disney tape anywhere they were in the house they would come running. It took a lot of appointments to get Drs. to acknowledge that we were dealing with something a lot bigger here.

Also at this time Joe and I had had many discussions about him getting a new assignment where he would be home with me and the boys. That leads us to California. It was 1993 and hotter than you know what when we arrived in sunny California. My husband was home most of the time and life was going ok. We were still on a quest to find out what was wrong with our boys.

We took them to a Regional Center where they diagnosed them with Mental Retardation. We knew this was wrong because they were very smart they just wouldn’t make eye contact or speak in real sentences. There was still a lot of twin talk going on and they would repeat commercials and such. They also showed no signs of wanting to be potty trained at this time. The regional center got us into speech therapy with the schools and into special preschools for the boys. During the interview with the school Psychologist, Joyce Moore, we finally had a break though as to what may be wrong with the boys. While watching her try to work with Jamie I really noticed I think for the first time the total avoid ness he had to her. I had done a research paper in college on Autism and I don’t know why I didn’t realize it earlier but everything just clicked in my brain and I said to Joyce “Do you think they have Autism?” She said that it was a good possibility and she then tested them on it. I also took them to see a Behavioral Pediatrician and he tested them and sure enough they were Autistic and we had something now that we could work on.

With a lot of special schooling the boys are doing a lot better today. They both potty trained at 5 years of age which I think was one of our major battles. John is really bright but they wouldn’t let him into regular school until he was potty trained. So he didn’t enter regular school until 1st grade because of this. He has been in regular school since then with the help of an aide. He is a very bright boy and doing really well. We have had a heck of a time trying to figure out just what Jamie needs. He seems to not want to go to school at all. He would rather be at home with his pets and computer. But we all know that he has to go to school so it’s an everyday battle. He is much more rigid than his brother and is a lot more violent. We have him on depression meds to try to control his mood swings. He really would rather be at home with us than at school isn’t too much for strangers.

I wrote this almost 5 years ago and some things have changed and some not.  I'm now homeschooling the boys with public school online.  This has worked out great for us as the public school enviroment was way tooooo stressful on both boys.  Jamie seems happier here but I still hear the I want to go back to regular school on days that are trying for him.  They are doing work at grade level and doing a good job at it!  John really likes being home and so does Jamie as he gets to be with his pets all day.  Nothing has changed there.  He's my little animal lover!!!

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17th Birthday!

by tc on 05.23.08 - public

Yesterday was the boys 17th Birthday!

They decided on a Fiesta theme and Mexican food. We ordered all kinds of decorations and cooked up a storm!...

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