Wednesday, 31 March 2010

• Charlie's Family

   This is a story about Charlie and about our family and what it is like for us to be parents of a child who has autism. Unfortunately, I can’t tell much about how it is for him to live with us, so this is all a story from my perspective. I am Charlie’s mom. My name is Janet and at this writing, in 2005, I am 38 years old. I have 6 kids. Kimberly is the oldest, she is 22, Rick is next at 20, and Andrew is 18. I was a divorced mom for 13 years until I met and married Chuck eight years ago. He is 41. Our first child together is Jonathan. He is 6 right now and is an adorable, bright, happy little boy, who seems older than his true age because he is so bright and intelligent. Charlie is almost 5, and since most of this story describes him, I will kind of skip him for now. Rachel is our last baby (Lord, Please! She’s the last one - right?); she is just one year old. She is a little doll who was walking at 9 months and can say to me, “Mama, here you go…” to hand me a toy. She’s just your average kid, but it is amazing to me.
  

  We live in a tiny town that has about 400 residents. This is a very rural, mountainous area and although we live in the town, we are very isolated. The nearest Wal-Mart is nearly an hour away and across the border in New York State. We have two collies and two cats and a big tank full of fish. I am the dog person; my husband likes the cats and fish. We had 6 teddy bear collie puppies last year. That was wonderful.
  
  We live in a large, Victorian house that was built in 1890. The yard is a half-acre which we have fenced-in for Charlie’s protection. We moved here from a large city in northwestern Pennsylvania. Chuck was offered a teaching position here and we pulled up stakes and moved. We are still adjusting to the small-town life. Chuck teaches physics and electronics, as well as being the technology coordinator for the tiny district. I stay at home with the kids. I worked until Jonathan was born and then quit work to be with him and the other kids full-time. In my working life, I was a legal secretary and a orthodontic assistant. I also worked as an office manager for an industrial photographer. He taught me to do digital re-touch and web design, as well. 
  
  When I met Chuck he was a driveline mechanic with dirt under his fingernails and strong, muscular arms. He was embarrassed about the dirt. I wasn’t. We hit it off right away; we love science, puns, bodies of water and each other. At that time, he was on the board of directors for a center for independent living. I was immediately interested in that kind of volunteer work. He asked me to sit in on a meeting. I did and was just thrilled to be part of such a group.
  
  This was a group of people, who led by their President, Kathy, were trying to help people with disabilities get out of nursing homes. These were wonderful people, all of whom were coping with disabilities and they were doing great things for people. It was a small organization, which had been started out of Kathy’s bedroom. Kathy is a woman with a major disability (which has her in a wheelchair, but never slows her down) who saw a need for a center for independent living that was run by the people that it served, not run by officials who ‘knew what was best’ for the clientèle. By the time I came to my first meeting, it was a full-fledged center for independent living. I was voted onto the board and Chuck and I stayed on as members for about 3 years. Then came the kids and it became harder and harder to have outside interests.
  
  I love staying home with my kids; I think it is important to them. We must live a lot more frugally on a teacher’s salary, but with the kind of salary my level of career brings in – it would hardly cover the day care. Not to mention the fact that jobs around here are pretty scarce. We break even, but with a child who has autism in the family, staying home has become a necessity.
  
  Life, in our household, centers around the kids. We don’t leave them very often. There are few sitters that we would trust them with. We play games frequently with Jonathan. Charlie is just a little interested in the games, but still is on the fringe. Jon likes to play Cranium Conga, checkers and Monopoly. We tried mousetrap, but it made Charlie just nuts because he wanted to watch the balls run through the mechanism and it kept falling apart.
  
  The kids are our first priority. We thought we knew how to raise happy healthy kids, and then we met autism.

   

   

   

  Reaching Charlie - A book written by a mom of a child with Autism

  
  

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