You snooze, you lose.

It's been a while since I felt the need to blog about Autism. Reasons: 1) I felt that for some time Will had been making progress, and life was becoming more "normal", 2) been busy with selling the house, then not selling it, then refinancing it and all the stress that came from that, 3) I generally like to blog about the things I love doing, like cooking, photography, music, travelling, and, of course, things I do with and for Will.

But, blogging about Autism is like cutting my heart out of my chest and giving it to the rest of the world to examine, under a microscope. It's that personal. And, it's that painful.

Last night was really tough. Will has a cold, so he coughed half of the night, and was finally able to fall sleep around 3am. At 5:45am, my alarm went off, as always, but, instead of hitting the 'off' button, like I always do (which makes a 'beep' sound), I hit the 'snooze' button (which produces no sound). At that point, I thought Will was completely asleep but, when he didn't hear the 'beep' sound, he went from a sound asleep stage to an absolute psycho melt-down stage in less than two seconds. He jumped off the bed and started running around, trying to push every single button he could find in the bedroom (vcr, tv, light switches etc.) in search of that 'beep' sound. It lasted about 30 min, and me trying to comfort and re-direct him was only making him more frustrated. Finally, I just sat there and stared into space, waiting for all of it to pass. Seeing my child be like this was horrible and, for the first time since his diagnosis, I realized that Will needs more help.

Since Will perceives the world and life around him as a set of patterns, any deviation from those has a disastrous effect. Naturally, the easiest thing would have been for me to reset the alarm and hit the 'off' button. But, you can't give into this ritualistic behavior because, otherwise, as you continue to feed the problem, he will continue to expect the same outcome.

A structured school environment and daily ABA therapy help him a lot with the issues of Autism, but I feel like now we need to do even more. I don't know what though, and I am afraid of what the doctors may suggest, since no one really knows how to treat Autism. I am and always have been against any sort of anti-depressant or anti-psychotic medication but, perhaps, it's time to put my personal convictions aside and take Will back to the Children's National Medical Center for a check-up.