Sunday, 20 March 2011

• The Strength to Change

  
  

  

  Life has been extremely difficult for most of us over the past few years.  People have lost their jobs, houses, and just about everything during this financial crisis.  With that said, I wanted to address how the past two years have impacted my son, Brandon’s world.  Brandon has been living alone in his own apartment for almost fourteen years.  He lost his job a few years ago because his seizures escalated while at work.  Due to cutbacks he receives only $13.00 a month from the Regional Center to buy a bus pass. 

  His support team, which included mostly my friends, have moved away, or have became ill, or are just too busy finding a way to stay afloat financially and they have left Brandon without their support.   Brandon gets absolutely no support from anyone other than myself and on a very rare occasion his older brother will pitch in, but he too has been affected financially and is dealing with his own family issues. 

  Today, I am looking at how to help Brandon get back on his feet and find stability and a new group of people who he can trust to be around.  His world; his personal experiences have been shrinking, and he is becoming more rigid each and every day.  We all reach plateaus in life and need to adjust, because life is ever changing.  However, if you have autism, change is very difficult and sometimes it is nearly impossible.  

  Brandon needs to do what we are all asked to do and that is to reinvent ourselves when the world around us changes.  Everything was moving along so well for Brandon for many years and now his world looks and feels different, because it is different.  It has been hard for him to accept the changes and to get motivated all over again.  Most of the time he finds it to be overwhelming and exhausting.

  It is a tough place for my son to be, but I am grateful that I am around and can help him pick up the pieces.  This time we have to make the plan for him to move forward more solid than ever before.  I see what went wrong and I am writing a book about this subject right now. 

  It is extremely important that as parents we do not judge how our children feel by how we feel, and that we do not allow our own inadequacies such as fear and our own limited life experiences to color their world. Brandon will never live his life the way I do and I do not expect or need him to. What I am doing with Brandon is helping him to identify what direction he wants his life to move in and what works best for him now and how I can help him achieve his desires.   

  After listening to what he had to say I have some new ideas that will incorporate his desires and I believe one of them will work.  We all want to feel accepted and these new ideas will incorporate acceptance at Brandon’s core.  I shall keep you posted as Brandon and I step out into new territory once again.  Although it often brings up great fear in Brandon, with my support he is more likely to move through these obstacles and hurdles although it will take time. I am staying focused on how very exciting it can be. Our children learn from how we act not what we say. I hope to be an example and a good role model for Brandon during this difficult process.

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