At the beginning of this month, I was opening up our front door around 5pm for the extremely patient Ms. C, who does ABA in the evenings with Tony three days a week. She opened the conversation with comments about Autism Awareness month, and I gave her what I know must have been an incredibly blank look.

To be perfectly honest, I didn’t know that it was Autism Awareness month, and I told her as much. I added that I don’t spend a lot of time reflecting on a specific period for that, because we live awareness every day. This is more than a cause for us- Autism is fused to even the most minuscule parts of each aspect of our lives. And, our family has had too much going on lately for me to be raising my head and looking at the calendar to figure out anything more than when the next appointment is.

Some parts of our lives people recognize now as coming with Autism and show more acceptance for them, like Tony’s love of lining things up. Other times, such as when Tony is trying to smack his own head, I know people are looking at him and our family as if we just stepped right off Ozzy’s Crazy Train. Even on outings where things are mostly going well, the smallest of hiccups can cause stares and irritation. Our little man parked himself in front of a produce display at a Sprouts for about 10 seconds last week, refusing to move, and a gentleman vocally huffed with mutterings that managed to reach more ears than ours, and garnered the attention of several fellow shoppers in the process.

As we were driving home, Emily commented on how many people were staring at us as I lifted our son out of the area to make way for that particular customer and I acknowledged that I have become so accustomed to it, I don’t even pay attention to that anymore the vast majority of the time.

Earlier this month, I heard a beautiful message that wrapped itself around a quote from Maya Angelou: “You alone are enough. You have nothing to prove to anybody.” This is such an empowering sentiment, but the reality is that it will never apply in real life to our sweet son, who will be asked to prove himself nearly every day for the rest of his life to those who doubt his every “can-do” skill, and who will face significant double standards in the way he is treated because of his diagnoses. Chances are, that gentleman would have waited patiently and without comment if a typically functioning customer were standing in front of the produce slowly loading goods into a bag, or scanning items to determine the best choice.

There’s always a challenge to be faced, skills and safe habits most people take for granted that we are investing heavy amounts of time and effort into helping Tony obtain. Most of the time, people don’t fully understand what is really going on, what we are doing, and why it is so important to our little man’s future- even when I’m wearing one of my shirts emblazoned with supportive messages about his diagnoses.

A fair chunk of the time people look at us and may think we are simply “crazy, but that’s how it goes.” You know, to quote Ozzy some more, we don’t want people in our community to see us “living as foes,” and I would absolutely love each person who we come across “to learn how to love” the diverse and amazing group of autistic individuals living every day in our communities, because it can make a person feel like they are “going off the rails” to be rejected by their communities for the way they were born. Most people want to be loved and accepted, and I can tell by his reactions to people that acceptance in particular matters a great deal to our son.

Awareness is our every single day because this is what we are living. Below, I’ve put up some pictures of the ways Tony’s Autism has touched our days this past month.

Panic attack at a location previously tolerated, starting the slow painful work of regaining willingness to enter, photos by Ariana

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Struggling with the changes of schedule and routine with Emily’s surgery, lots more lining things up, photos by Ariana

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Some public and community safety outings where everything went amazing, some where he was getting attention for things like attempted self-harming (not pictured out of respect to our son), trying to push his way to the entrance, or laying down on the street, photos by Ariana

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Even when things are going well for most of a trip, he’ll still do small things that raise other shoppers’ eyebrows, like taking off his shoes when sitting, photos by Ariana

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Trying new things can often be hard, because he likes what he’s used to and not anything else. Sometimes we have new experience success, like his first time watching our latest Veggie Tales DVD, and other times he won’t touch things, like this ice cream sundae. Photos by Ariana

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Easter, like every other holiday, isn’t something he is interested to participate in. He’d be happier if his typical daily routine were observed. Last year he ignored the eggs, photos by Andy. This year, he dumped all the eggs out of his sandpit and started playing. Once I put a few in his basket he decided we were cleaning eggs, grabbed everything he could, then sat back in the sandbox…playing while ignoring the candies. Photos by Andy & Ariana

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Epic screaming meltdown when the pool we walked to during community safety April 23rd was unexpectedly closed for repairs. I had to carry his cute 87 pound self part of the way home…he couldn’t accept the closure and had refused to leave. Hannah valiantly tried to comfort him, but he only calmed down once we neared home, and happily did everything he was supposed to at the second pool we drove to, where we worked a lot on noticing and paying attention to the much smaller kids in his pathway so he didn’t step on them when he was walking poolside. Photos by Ariana

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