My beautiful little girl has autism and she touches my emotions so deeply that she leaves fingerprints on my heart.

The overwhelming love you have for your child. The heartbreak when you realize your child is slipping away from you and you can't pull them back. The undeniable frustration when they try to communicate the only way they know how but you don't understand and don't know how to bridge the gap. The determination you have to free them from the prison they are in. The pure Joy you feel with each and every step forward they make towards healing no matter how small it is. Those are the fingerprints of autism.

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Too Many Billboards!

I did not realize there were so many billboards along the roads until I had Sierra!  On the way to school or on the way back I have to acknowledge numerous billboards that she points out.  There is the one with the fireworks, one with 2 dogs, one with one dog, one with planet fun (her favorite place to go), we also have the balloon guy and the big blue gorilla she points out.  I also have to watch for advertisements on trucks and other moving things. 

Here's the problem, I can only understand Sierra when she is talking in context, if she comes out of nowhere with something I don't know what she is saying, which is about 70 percent of the time.  If she points something out and I miss it she gets upset, and she will keep repeating it until I figure it out.  Sometimes I have to turn around and go back to see what she is talking about to calm her down.  It has to be so frustrating for her to talk to me and I can't understand her!

I have most of the signs and landmarks memorized around home, but when we take a road trip I have to be vigilant at keeping up with what we are passing, especially on a major highway when we can't turn around to see what she saw.  When we went to Florida last month we pasted a sign for Disney but I didn't see it and we were on I95 and you can't turn around.  I had to keep guessing what the sign was and asking 50 questions to figure it out.  My husband finally got it and all things were well again. Another sign she saw was the Geico lizard but I was able to understand the word lizard after she repeated it a couple of times.

I never realized I was so unobservant.  I think I should  install a dash cam to videotape the roads, then I can just hit rewind to see what I missed!

3 comments:

  1. Do you know what I notice? Food places. Sad, huh!

    BTW- I gave you the stylish blogger award. Check out my link...

    http://www.snippetsnstuff.com/2011/01/stylish-blogger-award.html

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi, i followed the link on Dee's blog! I think life would be easier if I was able to do everything (journeys, visits etc) without BB first so I could check out everything I needed to know, THEN do it with him!

    ReplyDelete
  3. @dluvscoke - I guess we notice what we like and that is what Sierra is doing. Thanks for the award!

    @bbsmum - I agree with you, you never know what you are going to run into on a trip. Thanks for checking out my blog.

    ReplyDelete