Back from Gainesville!

Well, today was really great so far. Alexis sounds a little better on the phone, and we finally had our initial appointment with Angi (our consultant) for the RDI therapy. A little background..RDI is a type of therapy that works on the missing piece in autistic children, namely, social and relationship development. You can read more about it on their website: www.rdiconnect.com

In any case, this is basically a parent led therapy, where we get to do the work. We need to go back to where Eli is developmentally and slowly but surely bring him forward to where he can be. I'm very excited about this process and feel like it gives us so much hope for Eli's future.

So today we went in for our initial appointment. They smartly have a room set aside with some bean bag chairs and balls and blocks where the kids can entertain themselves or they can hang out with us in the office which is very kid friendly. They did both. In the other room there is a camera and a tv in the office so if they did wander off we could still keep our eye on them. Very comforting for me. Anyway, then Angi did a little background stuff and tried to see where we were emotionally as a family coping with the realities of autism. She found us to be calm and receptive where many families are still operating in crisis mode. I'm glad I've been able to move away from that mode, honestly. I see so much potential and hope in Eli that I don't really allow myself to believe there is any badness about our situation. There is challenges, and we as parents meet those challenges. We adore our son and just want what all parents want, for him to grow up and have a life. We think he can do that, and RDI gives me hope he can do it with meaningful relationships and social skills.

So we have some exercises to do. One of the big things they think parents should do is spend time together and build their OWN relationship so the children have a positive example to look at. I have to agree. We both know we need to make time for ourselves that way. And time for alone time, too. One of the exercises is to write out a schedule, getting really nitty gritty, so we can find time for the all important things like that. The other exercise is to visualize a scenario for 2 yrs, 5yrs and 10 years from now. A moment in time, and write about what you think it will be like. I'm looking forward to thinking on that, too.

Anyway, next Saturday we start the evaluation process in earnest and then have a couple weeks off with exercises to do before they finish the assessment May 18-19. I'm hoping we can catch some time to go visit some of my family while they are in Orlando next weekend too :D