November 19, 1994

Tomorrow is Christopher’s birthday.  4 years old!  He’s got a double ear infection but is now getting better.  He’s been sleeping in the daytime and stays up until 12 or 1 a.m. or gets up at 6:30!  I have laryngitis and can’t speak at all!  Hopefully we’ll feel better by Thanksgiving – in five days.  That’s when we’re celebrating Chris’s birthday.

Dr. X wants to have Chris evaluated for autism.  Hopefully it will be ruled out.  He’s really a sweet little boy.  We’re praying for him daily.  I know God can perform a miracle. 

November 20, 1994

It really hurts sometimes when we worry that something if really wrong, that our son can’t speak.  Also that he’s often seeming not to understand us, although when it’s something he really wants to do he understands perfectly (bath).  I’m worried we’re focusing on things that may just be nervous habits – grimacing, playing with his fingers (itzy bitsy spider?), looking at bowls and pop bottles. 

He snuggles, smiles, figures things out (like loading dishwasher), being affectionate to baby Colleen.  We do have the promise that God will not give us more than we can bear.¹  It seems we’ve had enough trials this past 18 months to last a lifetime.  But there have been blessings among the trials.

February 6, 1995

I’m so happy being home with my children.  These years will go too fast.  Chris is 4 1/4, almost.  He’s stretched out so tall and now seems to be getting a little chubby to make up for it.  his sandy brown hair forms bangs to his light eyebrows, and in straight thickness just reaches his collar.  his chocolate brown eyes are framed with long eyelashes.  He snuggles with us a lot.  Especially while I’m nursing Colleen, Chris climbs up on my lap, on the other side of Colleen, and cuddles up to my shoulder.  At these times I thank the Lord for this time.

Christopher is mildly autistic.  He was tested January 24, and the doctor confirmed our suspicions.  We have to do everything we can to teach him all he can learn.  Autistic children can function very well with excellent training.  We, of course, wish that he wasn’t autistic, that he did talk normally, that he wouldn’t make some inappropriate gestures and sounds.  But he’s our wonderful little boy who laughs, snuggles, roughhouses, plays his electric organ wonderfully, reads books (not reads, but looks at), sings Happy Birthday (“ha-tee-dada”).  He’s come up to sit by me right now with his Bible.  I read him bits of the stories in there, but he mostly likes to look at the pictures quickly.  I want him to know about God and the story of Jesus.  I sing Jesus Loves Me to him. 

I know God will be revealed to him even though he can’t talk about it.  If God doesn’t heal him of this condition in this life he will be healed in heaven.  I can’t wait to hear what he’ll tell us.  What he thought of things, saw things what he loved to do, look at, think about things.  That he loves us.  But we know he does through his snuggles.  I never forget right after I had Colleen when he crawled up next to me, on my hospital bed with Colleen, and said “I love you.”  I think he meant it, too.

Wow, what else to say?  A blessed Thanksgiving to all.  I still have to remember to be grateful for every blessing, over 16 years later.

1  A footnote.  I was most struck reading this again about the part that God will not give us more than we can bear.  I just looked up online to find the Bible verse, and couldn’t find it, but instead found several posts about the verse not being in the Bible, but instead that there is a verse saying God will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear (1 Corinthians 10:13).  This surprised me and I kept looking up sources.  This site is a good one, and I will post it below.  http://recklessgrace.blogspot.com/2007/12/god-never-gives-us-more-than-we-can.html

A quote from it:  “3) God’s response to our heartache is to climb into it with us. God knows we can’t handle the tough stuff of life alone. So he walked through the worst life has to offer, taking it all on the cross, so that we would not have to face it alone. And so that we would know that ultimately the tough stuff of life will not have the final word but God will, and that word will be good.”

The first way is how when trying to plan events with Chris, I just wish he would show clearly that he enjoys them. I wish there was a way to look at Chris and say, wow, he really loves this activity!! We took him and Ryan to a Fall Festival, which was wonderful!

And as we were attending the event, which was a pumpkin patch, food, guitar playing, animals and a corn maze, we could not get Chris to stop and look at anything. He did stop and eat a hot dog. He seemed happy, and he really did seem to like the corn maze. I just wish we could learn how to get him to stop and look at things, the way Ryan does at this point. We will keep striving.

And is there a way to teach enjoyment of things to Chris and other children/adults with autism? Why for example do we have trouble with this with Chris, but not with Ryan, when they both have autism? Ryan, however, is much worse with hitting randomly, throwing things, and running off. A different problem, but still a problem. Autism spectrum is a mystery to me still . . .

So then of course the other side of the coin is teaching enjoyment as in the enjoyment of teaching. I was thinking about that as well as I was trying to think of how to teach our Chris and Ryan. I do enjoy teaching, though I never wanted to do it in the traditional sense of a regular school teacher. I now surprisingly find myself going in the teaching field as a special education teacher, which I never expected. I do feel God has led me into this journey to get my teaching license, perhaps to help me learn to enjoy teaching more? To help me become skilled at it? I thank Him for the opportunity which has come unexpectedly, and can’t wait to see what He has in store for me through it, both with the boys and with the world and my career.

At the beginning of speech class called applied phonetics, our teacher sat in front of us and shared that of the 100 people in the class, only 15 would make it into the master’s program. She advised to have another option in mind. I thought about that for a week or so, as I knew it was competitive but didn’t realize how extremely competitive it is – figured if I had the 3.7 GPA I was fine. As the week went on I got more nervous about it, wondering if I should change something, so Wednesday of this week I went to see one of the advisors.

My one advisor is a former speech therapist of Chris’s and a very nice person that we have known for years. I have not yet met with my formal advisor for me with senior status, but just meeting with her gave me more insight, though she encouraged me to still meet with the senior advisor. She thought in my situation I would be very wise to choose a different major and then pursue the speech pathology as a master after graduating with a degree that could be used as a job.

I thought all of this over. I am not really a wimp (lol) and had to decide if I should really just drop out of this degree at this point (after finishing this semester) or if I should see it through and apply for the master’s. However, I am not as young as I was, with three years to gamble on whether I will be able to get farther in a degree that has no future as a bachelor’s. If I do a different, marketable degree, then I could be employed in that field in three years, and then possibly get employee tuition reimbursement to go for my master’s! So I decided to make a major change. But it is was not because I don’t like my classes, or think that I can’t do well enough.

After researching for a day I emailed some chairs of departments and set about to decide between the bachelor’s degrees of Special Education, Deafness Education, ASL (American Sign Language), and Psychology (though I thought there was a fifth? Oh well…). Once I narrowed down more about each degree, I thought that the course requirements in the Special Education (Moderate to Severe) were most fitting to what I was trying to accomplish, with courses such as Applied Behavior Analysis, American Sign Language, and Speech and Language Development being a part of the listed courses.

I don’t want to be a teacher standing in the front of the class though – I hope I can be a one-on-one or maybe a home schooling teacher where you teach virtually. And I definitely want to work with individuals with autism/and/or deafness.

So Monday I will be turning in my program of study form (or before if I can do online) in preparation for the registration date of October 10. God willing, I will still get my master’s in speech after I’m done with this, but good grief, I’m actually getting a teaching degree! Wow! It’s not anything I pictured myself doing . . .

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RJ is in the 4th grade now and starts Wed. in his autism class, with a new teacher for the 4th and 5th grades.  Hard to believe I have an older elementary school student now!  Will get pictures of all three kids and post soon.

Colleen is a senior!  All the festivities that go along with it we will be discovering – I know we need to get senior pics, and order her senior yearbook, and she’s talking about getting her class ring.  Then of course graduation, and the resultant party, and filling out a FAFSA for her this year, and visiting colleges.  Some sort of graphic arts is her plan as we all expected.

Chris is also a senior in a sense – he is going to be 21 this November and is in his last full year of school.  We want to also get senior pics for him, and whatever yearbook they may have.  He is changing schools and is going to be in a workshop program that should lead to an excellent adult workshop for the years after this where he does not have regular school anymore.  This school also has, I believe, a Homecoming and a Prom!  He has never done these things before so we are so excited.  He will also have gym and swimming.  He has not attended this school since 2nd grade so it is a sort of homegoing for him – he has had several different schools through his lifetime, all with different focuses, pros, and cons. 

Then me, I am classified as a senior at this point, strangely enough.  it is also listed that I am in “pre” speech therapy, so oddly enough as a senior they still have me pegged into a “pre” associates degree area, where I actually already have an associate degree.  This will change, however, after I maintain a 2.5 or above GPA for a while, and then I will be solidly listed as a speech therapy major.  I did get a 3.4 from the summer classes so I am at a good start – need to get up to 3.7 or 3.8 by 2 years from now so I can get into the Master’s program.  Classes – clinical phonetics, English grammar (online) and hearing science (don’t have the book yet).  I start back next Monday.  To drive to Kent two days a week.  Good thing I love a good country drive – should be fun in the winter (ha!)

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I have been wanting to post about this for ages, but could not find the book I was thinking of – but this may be part of the concept:

http://www.churchchrist.net/Sermons/Prayer.htm

“YARPING Stuart Brisco

Stuart Brisco came up with a great acrostic for those wanting to know how to pray

P = Praise

R = Repentance

A = Ask for others

Y = Yourself

Sometimes people get this backwards. But that isn’t praying… that’s yarping.”

It was about  35 years ago that I read a book shortly after I became a Christian in 1975, where the unusual theory of YARPing was first introduced to me.  I have always remembered it.  I don’t remember the name of the book, however, but seeing this quote inside the very long page on prayer that came up when I googled “yarping”, causes me to assume it was a book I owned.  I tend to remember that acronym, however, whenever I go to pray, as by nature I do believe we tend to pray in the wrong order.

It is difficult at times to put first things first, the P, for Praise, and just Praise God.  It turns usually into asking, or for yourself, or, less often, repentence, (which should be #2 and instead probably is last or close to it) and you have to purposely direct your mind back to praising.  It can also be hard to praise when everything is wrong and so difficult.  But I am so thankful for this acronym that I read about 35 years ago, in most likely a book by Stuart Briscoe, and hope I will always remember to pray and not yarp.

And do check out more of the prayer site, there are some really cute things on there as well, like this:

 

“KIDS SPEAKING TO GOD
One little girl began her prayer like this: "Our Father, who are in heaven, hello! What be Thy name?"
A boy who thought he knew the answer to that question, prayed, "Our Father, who art in heaven, Harold be Thy name."
The prayer of another boy went like this: "Our Father who art in heaven, Hollywood be Thy name."
A girl whose visiting uncle was a horse player bowed her head with a plea that God "give us this day our daily double."
A five-year-old girl who was trying to cope with Sunday School and kindergarten at the same time came up with this charming blend of Church and State: "Give us this day our daily bread,
and liberty and justice for all."
Another kindergarten child asked God to "give us this day our jelly bread."
Then there was the little boy who prayed, "Forgive us our dentists, as we forgive our dentists."”

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So I just finished the equivalent basically of 21 credit hours (7 times 3).  I took about 21 also in fall of 84 – that was the last time I took so many.  I remember thinking at that time that I’d never do that again – that was quarters so must have been 10 weeks, and I was working too – ha!  I remember thinking I’d go nuts. 

I am proud of myself though.  As far as I know I got at least 2 B’s – hoping maybe one was an A but not sure.  Still working on the third class – have a B now I think but am pretty sure I can bring up to an A now that it’s my only class.

Happy to be able to breathe again and catch up on time with the family AND the housework!  And if I ever did get to the point I would go full time again, maybe I could make the Dean’s list again (only did it twice in my life).

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