The monkey has been doing really good. I strongly believe that it’s because of his communication device. He’s able to tell us what he wants which means he doesn’t get frustrated as easily as he had before. His meltdowns are a lot less and also last very little.

He’ll come home from school and right away tell me on his iPad: I want Dogs Please.

He wants his doggies outside so that he can play with them. I’ll go outside and work while he is swinging away. He’ll come over to me and type on his iPad: I want to drink juice please.

This communication device is great because before we would guess. Do you want to eat? Do you want to drink? Do you want to go on a drive? We would constantly be guessing trying to figure out what is it that he wanted. And of course he get frustrated and upset because we would get it wrong. A meltdown would ensue and there would go the evening.

His teacher sent me a note yesterday saying that he was very hyper after lunch. She thinks it’s due to ketchup and the sugar that it has. She already asked that I send sugar-free juices and now she asked me if I could send sugar-free ketchup.

As the bus arrived to drop him off, I mentioned to the bus driver and the monitor how the teacher had mentioned that he was very hyper.

The bus driver right away defended him. “He’s not hyper, he’s just happy! He loves to sing and he’s been humming all the way home. She probably got confused between happy and hyper. “

He always defends my monkey. He always tells me how smart he is and how great he’s behaving. Even though I know he doesn’t always behave the way he should.

But the monkey is loved. He goes to a place where they have patience and understand him. We have had some really rough times throughout this autism journey but lately we’re just enjoying it.

He’s happy.

Aside from this he’s also meeting his milestones. The goals at school that were set up for him are being met. And adding to this is how much less frustrated he gets at home.

Our in home trainer was here yesterday. She was so happy because he did all of his work without any issues. She was remembering everything that we’ve done to try to get him to communicate. Since the beginning she helped us with PECs on his binder, and we tried a few different binders, she helped us by putting names of items all over our home, alphabet & numbers charts on our hallways, and even letters of words so that he could learn how to spell. His communication did not come easy. She told me it was the perseverance that helped him overcome this barrier. And throughout many tears, and a lot of meltdowns, we got here.

The past few weeks, the monkey goes to his bed at night and falls asleep on his own.

On his own!

A few years ago I would have never thought that this would ever happen. Sleeping all on his own, and on his own bed??!! Crazy!

All of his successes proves what a little bit of love and a lot of patience can accomplish.

And hope.

Despite many nights that I cried myself to sleep because a specific technique that we tried was not being grasped by the monkey.

Despite these setbacks and heartaches, hope helped us pull through to end up here. I know we still have a long ways to go. But right now I feel like he’s taking leaps and I’m running to catch up.

Hope. ❤️🙏