This is a blog written originally for family and friends about our journey as we have experienced the symptoms, the joys, and the heartaches that come when a close family member struggles with life altering challenges. For our son, who joined our family through the miracle of adoption, those come from conditions that have labels:
- Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder
- Sensory Modulation Disorder
- Autism
- a duplication on the Q arm of his 5th chromosome
- Sotos Syndrome
- ADHD
- Mixed Receptive-Expressive Language Disorder
As you are reading things from our journey, I want you to keep in mind that those labels are not my son. He is so much more then what those labels will ever say about him.
Ariana (the mama) and Hannah (the big sister) are the writers for this site. I provide a parent’s thoughts on our experiences, she provides a sibling’s. We want you to know that we firmly believe there is nothing about our family’s story that is more important then any other family facing medical challenges. Though some of the details may look different, one thing many families of such individuals can have in common is that some situations are so intense they are living in crisis mode day after day, week after week, and so on…but on the surface, not so much of that stress is showing.
That is what I call a “quiet crisis”, and we have certainly been living it. And perhaps someone you know is living it too. We also believe that family, friends, and community members can not adequately support individuals with significant special needs or their loved ones if no one helps them understand the things that can often go unseen. So we’re hoping the little bit of noise we make here can create some understanding of what could be quietly going on in the house right next door…
And in case your looking at this site and are thinking: “it looks like Ariana did it, because everybody knows if she’d turned it over to your average grade schooler it probably would have turned out way better…” yah, you’d be right. And because I’m crazy busy, this site is going to be under construction for a while because I’ll only be updating and adding posts once a week at this time. Thanks for being patient with that! If you have a question that can’t wait or need to contact Ariana, there’s an e-mail address in the footer 🙂
The Quiet Crisis Next Door is a permanently advertisement free zone. You’re Welcome.