More blogging for Autism

Yesterday afternoon, long before trick or treating started, I walked into our Living Room looking for Child 1 and discovered that HE had discovered the giant bowl of candy that was meant for the trick or treaters. I found him surrounded by wrappers with the bowl in his lap. Through a very full mouth he informed me that he would stop eating candy right after this one last piece. As usual, Halloween night ended with us running out of candy way too soon and us turning off the lights and hiding downstairs. This happens every year, and probably would have happened despite the child's miraculous find, but just a little bit later.

Today was a school day and we kept the boys home because hubs is home and I was feeling a bit under the weather (*cough*toomuchvodka*cough*) and didn't have the energy to drag their tired little asses out of bed and get them to school, so hubs stayed home with them while I went off to work, which was a good thing because the first thing that happened today was Child 1 barfing chocolate all over the most heavily traveled part of our house. I had to put his beloved blankets in the washing machine, which is probably one of the worst parts of him barfing, because he hates to be without them. Right now he's lying completely buck naked on the couch asking me about every 15 minutes if his blankets are dry yet. They're not even done being washed. It's going to be a long couple of hours.

So, what does this have to do with not being silent for a Communication Shutdown for autism? Well, both not much and also everything. (HA HA! I'm SUCH an enigma!) I understand that the purpose of the Shutdown is to raise awareness of the difficulties people with autism have in communicating, but I don't see how remaining silent will accomplish that goal. Also considering how many people with autism cannot speak but who can type and can communicate via the social media we're supposed to be avoiding today (Amanda Baggs and Carly Fleischmann are 2 that come immediately to mind). What, I think, will raise more awareness is if those of us who have loved ones with autism, and those of us who have autism, continue to talk and type and share how it effects us, in my opinion this can raise so much more awareness than shutting everything down for a day.

And so, I have shared with you my story about too much chocolate and the horror of having to wait for beloved blankets to come out of the wash. It's really not anything specific to autism but it's what's happened to my child with autism today and I wanted to say something.

He's feeling better, by the way, once you get rid of all that crap from your stomach it's always an amazing recovery.

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