{"id":1182,"date":"2006-11-12T12:12:00","date_gmt":"2006-11-12T12:12:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog2\/2006\/11\/the-sweetest-thing\/"},"modified":"2006-11-12T12:12:00","modified_gmt":"2006-11-12T12:12:00","slug":"the-sweetest-thing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/2006\/11\/the-sweetest-thing\/","title":{"rendered":"The Sweetest Thing"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>
Blue eyed boy meets a brown-eyed girl
(oh, oh, the sweetest thing)
You can sew it up, but you still see the tear
(oh, oh, the sweetest thing)
Baby’s got blue skies up ahead
And in this I’m a raincloud
Ours is a stormy kind of love
— U2, <\/a>The Sweetest Thing
<\/a>
<\/span>My blue-eyed boy. My Sweet Guy. I want you to be happy. I want you to thrive. I love you so much.<\/p>\n

But love alone does not always help me understand these boys of mine, it takes study. Research. And I am increasingly troubled by Nat’s growing apathy\/inertia. He spends his weekends lying on the couch, or crouched on Max’s bed, or my bed (unless Ned or I insist that he take a walk, rake leaves, or offer for him to bake with me.) He wanders from room to room, his silly talk getting louder and louder when he wants something, but he does not tell me what it is. I ask him in so many different ways without actually asking him, because I want to encourage communication and yet also I want to fade his dependency on me.<\/p>\n

How can I get Nat to initiate? How can I get him to come to me when he has a question, without waiting so long, wandering back and forth? Is he unhappy wandering back and forth, without our intervention? Or is it that it just takes him a lot longer to figure out what he wants? Can any of the auties out there who read this give me a clue? Nat is verbal, but very reluctantly\/hesitatingly so. Should we be drilling him to get his communication stronger? Will that help him, or just bore him and turn him off and make him retreat? I fear the latter is true. I fear it is already happening, as a result of our home Verbal Behavior program. I think he hates the drilling and doesn’t get why he is doing it, and it makes him stimmier. Is it my job to combat the stims or to let him be? If I let him be, how will he develop the communication skills to get a job and live on his own (with some oversight by a PCA)?<\/p>\n

Don’t tell me he can’t live on his own (with some oversight by a PCA)<\/span>. I am not ready to hear that. You may be wrong.<\/p>\n

But if you can, help me figure out the communication piece with him. (By the way, no offense meant to anyone who follows these therapies, but I am not interested in any approaches that suggest I alter his nutrition, or that involve flashing lights, vibrations, listening to musical tones, certain forms of massage, injections… I am interested only in one-to-one talking, connecting, or other communicating techniques. )<\/p>\n

I love this boy with all my heart and then some. Sometimes I want to will him to let me in, just by hugging him to me. What can I do? What can I do? I hate to see him lying around so much. Mostly, I want to see him smile more.
<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Blue eyed boy meets a brown-eyed girl(oh, oh, the sweetest thing)You can sew it up, but you still see the tear(oh, oh, the sweetest thing)Baby’s got blue skies up aheadAnd in this I’m a raincloudOurs is a stormy kind of love— U2, The Sweetest ThingMy blue-eyed boy. My Sweet Guy. I want you to be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1182","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pSTth-j4","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1182","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1182"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1182\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}