For Tia - and all you wonderful mothers! | Autism PDD
How absolutely beautiful!! I'm printing it out now. 
Thanks so much for caring to share that with us.
Kellie
thank you sooo much for sharing that with all of us. it was very beautiful and very true for most of us. i'm gonna print it out also and place it on my frige , so when i'm down in the dumps i'll look at it and smile. thank you again.mom2carlo
Here's another one...
This article appeared in the Louisville Courier-Journal. It was written
by Laura Kreuger Crawford.
Holland Schmolland
If you have a child
with autism, which I do, and if you troll the Internet for information,
which I have done, you will come across a certain inspirational
analogy. It goes like this: Imagine that you are planning a trip to
Italy. You read all the latest travel books, you consult with friends
about what to pack, and you develop an elaborate itinerary for your
glorious trip. The day arrives. You board the
plane and settle in with
your in-flight magazine, dreaming of
trattorias, gondola
rides and gelato. However, when the plane lands
you discover, much to
your surprise, you are not in Italy -- you are in
Holland. You are greatly
dismayed at this abrupt and unexpected change
in plans. You rant and
rave to the travel agency, but it does no good.
You are stuck. After a
while, you tire of fighting and begin to look at
what Holland has to
offer. You notice the beautiful tulips, the kindly
people in wooden shoes,
the French fries and mayonnaise, and you think,
“This isn’t exactly
what I planned, but it’s not so bad. It’s just
different.” Having a
child with autism is supposed to be like this --
not any worse than
having a typical child -- just different.
When I read that, my
son was almost three, completely non-verbal and was
hitting me over a
hundred times a day. While I appreciated the
intention of the
story, I couldn’t help but think, “Are they kidding? We are not in
some peaceful countryside dotted with windmills. We are in a country under
siege -- dodging bombs, trying to board overloaded helicopters, bribing
officials -- all the while thinking, “What happened to our
beautiful life?”
That was 5 years
ago. My son is now 8 and though we have come to
accept that he will
always have autism, we no longer feel like citizens
of a battle torn
nation. With the help of countless dedicated
therapists and teachers,
biological interventions, and an enormously
supportive family, my
son has become a fun-loving, affectionate boy with
many endearing qualities
and skills. In the process we’ve created…
well… our own country,
with its own unique traditions and customs.
It’s not a war zone,
but it’s still not Holland. Let’s call it
Schmolland.
In Schmolland, it is perfectly customary to lick walls, rub cold pieces of metal across your mouth and line up all your toys end to end. You
can show affection by
giving a “pointy chin.” A “pointy chin” is when
you act like you are
going to hug someone and just when you are really
close, you jam your chin
into the other person’s shoulder. For the
person giving the
“pointy chin” this feels really good, for the receiver
not so much – but you
get used to it. For citizens of Schmolland, it
is quite normal to
repeat lines from videos to express emotion. If you
are sad, you can look
downcast and say “Oh Pongo.” When mad or
anxious, you might
shout, “Snow can’t stop me!” or “Duchess, kittens,
come on!” Sometimes,
“And now our feature presentation” says it all.
In Schmolland, there’s
not a lot to do, so our citizens find amusement
wherever they can.
Bouncing on the couch for hours, methodically
pulling feathers out of
down pillows, and laughing hysterically in bed
at 4:00am, are all
traditional Schmutch pastimes.
The hard part about living in our country is dealing with people from other countries. We try to assimilate ourselves and mimic their customs, but we aren’t always successful. It’s perfectly understandable that an 8-year-old boy from Schmolland would steal a train from a toddler at the Thomas the Tank Engine Train Table at Barnes and Noble. But this is clearly not understandable or acceptable in other countries, and so we must drag our 8 year old out of the store kicking and screaming while
all the customers
look on with stark, pitying stares. But we ignore
these looks and focus on
the exit sign because we are a proud people.
Where we live, it is not
surprising when an 8-year-old boy reaches for
the fleshy part of a
woman’s upper torso and says, “Do we touch boodoo?”
We simply say, “No
we don’t touch boodoo” and go on about our business. It’s a bit more
startling in other countries, however, and can cause all sorts of
cross-cultural misunderstandings. And, though most
foreigners can get a
drop of water on their pants and still carry on, this is intolerable to
certain citizens in Schmolland who insist that
the pants must come
off no matter where they are, and regardless of
whether another pair of
pants are present.
Other families who
are affected by autism are familiar and comforting to
us, yet are still
separate entities. Together we make up a federation
of countries, kind
of like Scandinavia. Like a person from Denmark talking with a person
from Norway, (or in our case someone from Schmenmark talking with
someone from Schmorway), we share enough similarities in our language
and customs to understand each other, but conversations inevitably
highlight the diversity of our traditions. “Oh your child is a
runner? Mine won’t go to the bathroom without asking permission.” “My
child eats paper. Yesterday he ate a whole video
box.” “My daughter
only eats 4 foods, all of them white.” “My son
wants to blow on
everyone.” “My son can’t stand to hear the word no.
We can’t use any
negatives at all in our house.” “We finally had to
lock up the VCR because
my son was obsessed with the rewind button.”
There is one thing we all agree on: we are a growing population.
10 years ago, 1 in 10,000 children had autism.
Today the rate is approximately 1 in 250.
Something is
dreadfully wrong. Though the causes of the increase are
still being hotly
debated, a number of parents and professionals believe genetic
pre-disposition has collided with too many environment insults
-- toxins, chemicals, anti-biotics, vaccines -- to create immunological chaos in the nervous systems of developing children. One medical journalist speculated that these children are like the proverbial
“canary in the coal
mine” here to alert us to the growing dangers in our
environment. While
this is certainly not a view shared by all in the
autism community, it
feels true to me.
I hope that
researchers discover the magic bullet we all so desperately
crave. And I will
never stop investigating new treatments and
therapies that might
help my son. But more and more my priorities are
shifting from what
“could be” to “what is.” I look around at this
country my family has
created, with all its unique customs, and it feels
like home. For us, any
time spent “nation-building” is time well spent.
Thanks for the chuckle.
We fly our Schmolland flag proudly!
Kellie
OK - so now I'm cracking up!!
So much of Schmolland is much like it is here, and the line of 4 foods - all white really got to me!! (Riley only eats hot cheese sandwiches (grilled to you and I) dry cereal, occasionally bacon, and spaghetti only after a CVS episode...milk (only at home!!!), and now I find that pink is rather appealing to him -strawberry milk or pink donuts - pink medicine (to much of his father's dismay!) pants???? what pants? TOO funny!
HOWEVER! I still like Holland, and there really are some wonderful things about our life that just wouldn't be if Riley were ANY different! Afterall, the sonagraphers at the hospital wouldn't know how old everyone of us in the house is if he wasn't HIM! And the poor pizza man wouldn't get a hug (yeah---scared the s**t out of me too!) And I wouldn't know every song to every cartoon...or the new version of Humpty Dumpty:
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall
All the kings horses and all the kings men
And all kings people........
had scrambled eggs for breakfast!
I'm glad that you enjoyed it...it is a saving grace for me! (and I do cry too everytime I read it...almost daily!)
First I cried, Welcome To Holland was so true for me! This is not where I intended to go. Oh the stories I could tell of my dreams for my life and the lives of my children!!
Then I laughed my butt off w/ Holland Schmolland. This too is true. So often I feel as if my friends live on different planets and I'm occassionally treated like a resident alien. My favorite one is when people suggest that I just need to "force" him to do certain things, like eat food that's touching other foods, be in a room with a closed door, and eat brown M & M's (why I'd ever force anyone to eat brown M & M's I'll never know). Apparently in Schmolland we don't eat brown M & M's and quite honestly, I'm ok with that. I think that Nate will be able to lead a completely fulfilling life even if he never eats one of those. Some people would rather blame the entire situation on poor parenting and leave it at that.
Thanks for the good cry, the new perspective and the nice laugh. I enjoyed all of it. Glad to be here,
welcome to holland is wonderful and puuts everything into perspective, Schmolland is the FUNNIEST thing i have seen. It's nice to know there are others that share our whacky sense of humor because i always say, if i don't laugh, i'd cry !!! what a hoot !!! great post !that is the best thing i have ever heard!!
i am sending a copy to my mother who is my best friend and who is like a second mom to my asd son!!
thanks for making my day and making me cry.
i have had this poem on my fridge for 16 years since my son was diagnosed, got my through some tough times in the beginning. thanks for sharing.I would thank you more, but I can't stop crying.WELCOME TO
I am often asked to describe the experience of raising a child with a disability - to try to help people who have not shared this unique experience to understand it, to try to imagine how it would feel. It's like this.
When you are going to have a baby, it's like planning a fabulous vacation trip - to
After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The stewardess comes in and says, "welcome to
But there's been a change in the flight plan. They've landed in
So you must go out and buy new guidebooks. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met.
It's just a different place. It's slower paced than
But everyone you know is busy coming and going from
And the pain of that loss will never, ever, ever, ever go away, because the loss of that dream is a very, very significant loss.
But, if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn't get to
~Emily Perl Kingsley
I have this framed above my desk to remind me that 'it's just different'....and I still wouldn't trade him for ANYTHING!
~Lesley
mom to "Smiley Riley", 8, DSI, CVS and recently dx Autism
and Jake - 17, Josh - 12
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