J. Lorraine Martin cheeselesspizza.blogspot.com “Your son has pervasive developmental disorder, not otherwise specified.” That’s a mouthful to say, let alone hear. It was explained as a type of autism. That was 16 years ago. I did not have the Internet at home. There was no Google for further research. Dustin Hoffman had provided my only experience of autism in the movie, Rainman. Looking back, the declaration–the actual diagnosing words from a stranger, a neurologist, is fuzzy. What did those letters, PDD-NOS, mean? Could a socially constructed diagnosis tell me who my son would become? When I got home from that appointment, teary-eyed and uncertain, I looked at my son with his large brown eyes, head of blondish-brown ringlets, and cherub face. We had already begun to find our rhythm together. In our first year together, I intuitively discovered that if I laid him on the floor, and placed my head…
Tag: J. Lorraine Martin
J. Lorraine Martin cheeselesspizza.blogspot.com The setting was surreal: a mountain range, cast in orange hues against a crisp blue sky; cactuses dotting the landscape and the occasional roadrunner darting across a street; row upon row of well-tended tennis courts and throngs of onlookers all dressed in their tennis best. It felt unimaginable that my daughter’s neighborhood tennis team had played a year of matches leading them all the way to a coveted spot at the National Championships in Tucson, Arizona. Amazingly, it came down to the final match with my daughter representing her team in singles. My heart was pounding, a whirlwind of joy and nervousness weaving through all the struggle and collective effort to reach such a thrilling moment in time. Years later, I found myself witnessing a moment involving my oldest son that carried the same beautiful thread of perseverance; however, before one can understand the depth and…
J. Lorraine Martin www.cheeselesspizza.blogspot.com I was sitting in a lawn chair in my garage with the door open. A thunderstorm was in progress. My tears synchronized with the outpouring. I don’t usually take the time to really feel and watch a storm, but on this day I was drawn to the outside, perhaps seeking a powerful physical stirring to match the emotional stirring that had just occurred. Earlier, mulling around the kitchen, I reviewed the details of our planned social outing with each of my kids. My initial goal was to gently stretch my autistic son outside his comfort zone by having my daughter invite one of her friends to join us to go bowling; however, it soon hit me that allowing new people a full view into our life brings to the surface feelings of vulnerability that we all would prefer to avoid. In fact, the mother of our…
J. Lorraine Martin cheeselesspizza.blogspot.com It was a typical, suburban day at my local grocery store. Besides loading up on Mad Housewife wine, I had other highly important plans: channeling the wisdom of Pavlov on aisle 12 as I held up a bag of Skittles — think mad housewife becomes mad scientist. What can I say? An autism mom often reaches new heights (or is it lows?) to help her child step outside of his self-imposed postage stamp zone of perceived safety. In case conducting Pavlov experiments isn’t in your shopping repertoire, allow me to explain. You see, my oldest son, at the age of nine, developed some intense fears at our local grocery store. Despite uneventful years of happy grocery shopping experiences up until that time, he one day became dramatically frightened over the thunder sound in produce when the water sprayers came on; not much later the mooing cow…