Balloon Love

This is the balloon Alex brought home for me a week ago. It’s a little deflated now and needs a little propping up to stand straight but I still like to look at it every day. Alex had gone to afternoon mass with the other boys of Dulaang Sibol at the Dela Strada Parish that Wednesday. On the way [...]

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Honesty Is The Best Policy

A few nights ago, before bed:
Mama: Alphonse, were you a good boy today?
Alphonse shakes his head “No,” then giggles loudly.
I had been gone almost the whole day that day. My errands took longer than expected and he was left home with his nanny. That evening, Nanny Lyn had told  me that Alphonse had grabbed her shirt a [...]

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A Common Journey

It was my sister who first put the words “autism” and “Alphonse” together in one sentence. She mentioned it before anyone else, before even my son’s pediatrician.
She was still in medical school then. She had been playing with her nephew for a few hours that day when she stopped and looked at me. “Ate, I [...]

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Baby Blues

I was digging in my plate of tempura and maki when I felt little hands touching my back. I turned around very slowly. Behind me, a little girl, probably around two years of age, poked the hello kitty figures in my shirt, mumbling “one, choo, chee, one, choo, chee.” She counted as she touched them, [...]

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Smile, Baby, Smile

Last week, I wrote about adolescent angst and how it’s making itself felt in my household of two teenagers (technically, both my boys are teenagers by chronological ages, but the young one is still a little child in many, many ways). Of late, it has been one issue after another: late bedtimes, chronic daytime sleepiness, inattention [...]

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Growing Pains

It must be the season for adolescent angst as I deal with two hormonal young men in my household. While Alphonse grapples with his feelings of jealousy and insecurity, Alex seems to find his way into mischief now more than ever. All weekend long, he and I were constantly bickering, and I suddenly missed the days when my son thought [...]

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Affirmation of Respect

Before we are able to love anyone else, even our children, we must love ourselves. To love ourselves, we must believe that we are worthy of respect. Some days, it’ll be hard to believe even this, when we are overwhelmed and tired and dispossessed of all good humor. There’ll be days you will have to butt heads with others, [...]

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Affirmation: Making A Difference

Too often, we measure our children’s progress by the leaps and bounds he or she makes. We  like to measure things in big chunks of miles and kilometers, in grades surpassed in one leap, in medals accrued on Recognition Day. And yet, when we see our child’s milestones creep at a snail’s pace or when progress seems disappointingly slow, we often [...]

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Affirmation of Parenting

These days, the pressure to “perform” as a parent of any child can be overwhelming. Imagine this same pressure heaped upon parents of autistic individuals and magnified much more. Parenting has never been as hard and as complicated as we know today.
Throughout the unsettled questions and controversies raging in the autism community, it’s hard not to be [...]

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Affirmation

For the rest of Autism Awareness Month, I will post daily a note of affirmation to remind parents everywhere, be they parents of differently-abled individuals or not, of the blessings they hold in their hands. The chance to shape another person’s destiny is a gift not to be taken lightly.
I found these notes of encouragement at Love Notes [...]

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