Conners autism usually means meltdowns, screaming and not so fun stares because he doesn't talk or necessarily understand. Thankfully this weekend was a complete turn around.
We attended children's day this weekend which had bounce houses and horse rides and lots of booths and games. Of course my child wanted to do everything but he had trouble waiting but even with long lines he did amazingly well. I wore my surfers healing shirt which says "surfers healing a foundation for autism" on it in hopes that if Conner acted up others would see my shirt and be kind. Surprisingly enough, people were! I even had a very nice gentleman at a booth ask me about surfers healing and I was thrilled to explain their organization and what it had done for my child.
Surfers healing is basically a bunch of professional surfers that volunteer their time and kindness to take children with autism out on a surf board for the day. It's amazing to see how wound up these kids are on the beach and how calm they are out in the ocean with a board and trusting a complete stranger. I cried when "mark" our surfer came in on a wave and picked Conner up on his shoulders- seeing the look on conners face was as if he was on top of the world. I posted on their Facebook page telling them that I shared their organization at the event and surely enough they replied saying thank you and said "it only takes one voice". I am proud to say I'm speaking for myself and most of all my son.
Please enjoy these photos!
For what it's worth, my experience with my David (and this is stuff I figured out after the fact) is not that he didn't understand what I was saying, he didn't get the cause/effect relationship. As I'm scolding him for trying to stick a fork in the electrical socket, he had already moved on to thinking about how to get outside to pick a dandelion. He and I have talked about it and he has no clue if my assumption is right, but looking at it in the rearview mirror, I can see him looking at me like "What the heck are you yelling at me for?" He understood there was a problem, but didn't connect it back to the cause.
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