No more mirroring!

I'm sorry to say that I can't keep this blog mirrored. If you haven't noticed, it hasn't mirrored since February. I honestly hadn't noticed until yesterday. Tsk tsk, shame on me.

Please visit the new page for Gryffin's Tail.

For all my Feedburner subscribers, I've finally figured out how to move you over to the new site and you should start receiving your subscription again. Woot woot! ;) I'm embarrassed to say it wasn't that hard. Doh!

You can still use the "Subscribe via email" on this site to subscribe to the new site's feed.

Above you'll find that I added an RSS feed of the new site so any new content will still make it here, it just won't be stored or republished here.

Thanks to all my followers and I hope my Blogger followers and new readers will join me at my new location.

Gryffin's Tail

I Promise You – AGE OF AUTISM Posted: 12 Feb 2012 09:00 AM PST I Promise You – AGE OF AUTISM. Just in case some people don’t realize what happens to the parents of special needs kids. This is the reality, folks. Choosing not to be bullied, hurt, lied to, manipulated, or cheated out of helping our kids makes us the bad guys. It isn’t enough to be ridiculed for standing up for our children. We aren’t allowed to simply love them and do what any parent would do for their children. We have to defend ourselves for it, too. Chew on why that would be.

Gryffin's Tail

---

Illinois McDonalds kicks autistic child and her service dog out – New Orleans pit bull | Examiner.com Posted: 10 Feb 2012 10:45 AM PST Illinois McDonalds kicks autistic child and her service dog out – New Orleans pit bull | Examiner.com. I guess someone forgot to tell McDonalds that it’s illegal to refuse someone because of a service dog. I hope an attorney steps up, I hope they sue but at the very least, I hope they contact the Department of Human Rights in Illinois and report them.

Gryffin's Tail

» Baby Dies After 9 Vaccines in One Day Posted: 20 Jan 2012 07:13 PM PST » Baby Dies After 9 Vaccines in One Day Alex Jones’ Infowars: There’s a war on for your mind!. Absolutely insane.

Fan-freaking-tastic. Really, you’ll love this. Posted: 20 Jan 2012 04:54 PM PST NYT: New autism definition may exclude many – TODAY Health – TODAY.com. "The proposed changes would put an end to the autism epidemic," said Dr. Fred R. Volkmar, director of the Child Study Center at Yale University School of Medicine and an author of the new analysis. "We would nip it in the bud — think of it that way." Yup. Since we can’t make those pesky numbers go down as we continue to add those vaccines (hi flu shot to pregnant women, hello Gardasil!), we’ll just change the criteria and voila! No more ridiculous autism numbers climbing every year! We just knocked it back to 1:5000. Guess there isn’t an epidemic after all. Or wait, try this one on: Well, we don’t actually want to put any effort into studying things that actually help those with autism so we’ll just make it harder to diagnose people with it. Those crazy moms and dads out there that actually believe they are recovering their kids, well, they never had autism to begin with. See how that works? They actually had Social Communication Disorder. Yeah, we just made that one up for the new DSM, we thought you might like it. *pats themselves on the back* We wanted to make sure we could pull a lot of people out of the autism group and get those numbers down that way, too. Yanno, since we don’t want to do anything and all. Those of you with Asperger’s, good luck getting reevaluated and getting that autism diagnosis and for those with PDD/NOS…you already knew that was the diagnosis stupid doctors gave when they didn’t want to commit to autism because “he’s just a boy, they talk later” or “she’ll catch up with time” or “it’s just a phase” or “autism is not a good diagnosis, you don’t want that and it’ll keep us from having to give you as many services too. “ Yeah, you’ll never get that autism diagnosis. And now we will have a severity scale so we can tell you exactly how impaired you are because you don’t know any better. So what if you can’t shower without being prompted or feel hunger? We’ll make you write notes to yourself and maybe you’ll remember to read them as they hang on the refrigerator of your, oh wait, we also took away your group home so you don’t have a refrigerator or walls in a dorm room to hang those notes. Sorry! We have to take your aide away too! I hope your parents are alive and able to take you in. Maybe you have an aunt or uncle? Distant cousin? Because you don’t get medicare or disability anymore, either. See? It’s not really an epidemic! Because we just knocked those numbers back down and it’s all good now. No more autism. Because changing the criteria made them all go away. Poof. And they call us crazy for doing things like giving them a gluten/casein free diet or some other such off the wall wackiness. Good lord, how could they deprive their kids of Wonder Bread? How much more, exactly, does the AMA, APA and CDC have to do before people realize we aren’t that crazy? **Don’t be surprised in a couple years when Social Communication Disorder is miraculously 1:90 with no services available.

My son’s self portrait

New post on Gryffin's Tail My son’s self portrait by cheryl In class, Gryffin's assignment was to paint himself as an adult in his desired profession when he grows up. As you can see, there's not much to go on here. I had to ask, of course. Me: But what do you want to be? Gryffin: A secret agent. Sheer genius. Posted from WordPress for Android. These are not the typos you are looking for... cheryl | November 12, 2011 at 8:59 pm | Categories: My Funny Kids | URL: http://wp.me/p1KiHn-b2 Comment    See all comments

Thanks for flying with WordPress.com

Low levels of zinc linked with autism in children

via Low levels of zinc linked with autism in children | Mail Online.

Interesting that they say that nothing should be concluded from this. What about concluding that it's worth testing to see if your asd kid has low zinc? Gasp! What an outrageous thought. How very unseemly to be so forward thinking. You should very well let your children run around with low zinc because low zinc is completely unimportant. As a matter of fact, just stop giving all kids a daily multi-vitamin because we don't them. Nutrition means nothing. There's nothing to see here, move along!

Is it really so hard to just say, well, maybe we should look into this? Why is there such a strong need to discredit anything that might support what the crazy autism moms have been saying for decades? Chew on that question for a while.

I think I'm going to start a category of all the stupid shit the media/governments/organizations/etc. say and do to try to prove themselves right while doing their damnedest to make us look bad.

Hypocrites and idiots. Perfect name for it. Look for it on the right.

Took the plunge

We've done mostly everything biomed and after 5 years, we have come to a point where life has to improve for everyone in the family. My son doesn't really have hyperactivity issues but has severe focus issues. His ADD has really come in the way of his own confidence and our enjoyment of each others' company. I'm always yelling at him and he's always too distracted to care and it always ends in tears. No fun for him and makes me feel like the worst mommy ever. It's really not pretty.

He knows he can't concentrate and it hurts him so much. He doesn't understand why he can't think like everyone else and he always feels like a failure. Unbeknownst to me, the first week of school his teacher asked the class to set goals. His goal was not to make good grades, make lots of friends or even be the line leader. His goal was to concentrate better. Talk about a heart-breaker.

We picked up the Ritalin on Friday. We went to our ped for it since my DAN doesn't generally do stimulants. Our ped started him Ritalin but he likely will not stay on it. It's the oldest and most well known drug and he wanted to start with something they know the best. For the first month, he stays on normal Ritalin (not slow release) because it clears the system fast and if he does have a reaction, we want it out as soon as possible. So for the first week, we just stick with 2x a day of 5mg each. We watch and report back to the doc a week later. Then we'll adjust the dose again and titrate up as we feel necessary to get to the right dose. Once we get there, we'll consider going to long acting and possibly a newer drug that maybe has fewer side effects.

Since we started Saturday, I've noticed that he doesn't sleep very well and has very hard time falling asleep. He already gets 1mg of melatonin at night. I'll be upping his dose to 3 mg and see if that helps. It is a side effect of stimulants.

Today was his first day of school on ritalin and his teacher noticed a huge improvement. She said she knew just by looking at his handwriting that he had started (I hadn't told her but she was aware it would happen).

I never wanted to go to meds but biomed just never made a difference. I would never recommend someone try meds first before biomed but for those of us that have done our due diligence, I'm all for doing what works. I resisted long enough. I've known enough ADHD people personally that have told me how medication has made all the difference in the world for them. How they finally felt normal. I can't and won't deny my son that chance. I put it off as long as I could because I just never felt comfortable putting him on it so young (especially after a Dr. put him on antidepressants when he was 3 to disastrous effects). 

Now he's 8, I'm still not happy about it but I feel like it's really the only thing left for me to do. I might end up regretting the decision but I can't tell you how easy homework was today. He's outside playing right now because he got done with his homework faster than ever and not a single instance of yelling. There was actually quite a bit of humor involved as he came up to me as "Paper Head." He put his homework in front of his face and walked around with it until I checked it. Laughing during homework time with him has always been rare.

We call it his "thinking medicine" since it's to help him think better. Today I struggled with my NT son and his homework and my ASD son said NT son needed some of his thinking medicine.  ;)

So for any of you struggling with the decision after years of biomed, don't beat yourself up if you go there. My son is recovered from autism through biomed. His ADD has only gotten worse. Maybe with this, life will be typical for him and that's really what all of us want.