Hello,
I'm a 43 year old father and for the past 8 and a half years have been a stay at home parent while my wife pursues a career in IT for a regional bank. Our older son Justin is 8 years old and on the autism spectrum with labels that have ranged from "mild" autism spectrum disorder to PDD-NOS and more recently "intellectually disabled" with ADHD thrown in for good measure. Our younger son Joey is 5 years old with no cognitive or developmental delays but with behavioral problems of his that could signify that he be labeled as ADHD too. These past couple of years have been rough. Not only has Justin grown and made progress in some areas, but he's also taken on some behaviors which (and not to understate them) are destructive and self-injurious (we've been to the hospital MANY times) and caused our entire family a lot of stress. I'll be sure to be asking a lot of questions of the people here in an effort not to only help Justin grow up into at least a happy and semi-self-sufficient young man but to keep our family unit together and functional as well.
15 Aug 2012, 2:14 pm
