Much going on in the Ambriz circus. *cue calliope music*
As the title of my blog infers, our oldest and youngest children have autism. They are our "bookends" so to speak. The first and last of our progeny - unless the good LORD decides to bless us with more. And as I am 41, an hubby is 43 - that window is inching closer and closer to closing. But that is another story.
Our middle child, Jack, age 12, has long struggled academically. Well, if I am honest he has struggle with many things. We suspected learning disabilities. Dyslexia and auditory processing disorders were my best guesses. Others had suggest ADHD. Up until this year I had homeschooled him with the other 3 children.Our oldest child - whose autism was always on the more severe side has attended a special education program from the time she turned 3. Back to Jack. Schooling him at home had become very difficult and disruptive to the learning of the other 3 children. So as the 2013-2014 school year loomed over our heads - hubby and I prayerfully decided to enroll Jack in gov't school. It has proved to be good for him. He has a wonderful teacher who jut adores him, and knows how to meet him where he is.
Earlier in the fall we were able to take Jack to see a neuro-pychologist to have in depth testing done to get to the bottom of his academic struggles. The neuro-psych did close to 6 hours of testing over a series of several days. Jack was also evaluated by a speech and language pathologist, an audiologist, and an occupational therapist. Last month hubby and I went in and met with the neuro-psych to go over the results. I went in hopeful. Expecting to find out which learning disability(ies) were plaguing him and how to help him overcome them. Or that he had ADHD and a magic pill would help. Instead we were gut punched...Autism.
Autism.
Another one? Another autistic child? Thank makes 3 out of 5.
Noooooo.
Certainly she must be mistaken. No learning disabilities? No ADHD? No pill that can help?
***I do not advocate medicating children. In fact - for years when others had suggested medication might help out son, we had shrugged it off. No way. We are not plying our children with drugs to make him easier for us to handle. After struggling for years (and years) - we had come to realize maybe he needed something, as it was getting clearer everyday he could not control his behavior. Not that he did not want to....but that he could not.***
Autism.
He is going to struggle for the rest of his life. Always. I do not want that for my precious boy. I do not want to go down this road. Again.
But we will. Hubby and I will take his hands in ours and we will walk this path together. We will not give up on him. And he will be the best he can be. We will fight for him. We will fight with him - against this enemy that we can now name. Even though the beast is different from the one we thought we were fighting. You see - we heard hoof beats and were looking for a horse....we didn't realize the sound was coming from the zebra in the room.
I have heard that God only sends his strongest and best warriors into battle. And as we gear up for our 3rd deployment against this monster - we realize we are not alone. We have been tasked with this for a reason. His purpose. And we may never know it. But we must trust our Creator and Savior - that He knows better than us. And He never gives us 2nd best.
We are all fearfully and wonderfully made. There are no mistakes. So even Jack was made as he was intended to be. He too will touch the world for our Master's sake and change it in ways we may never know.
