BELATED BIRTHDAYS, BOWLING and BUDDIES.
We are all so excited about this Sunday.
FINALLY.... my family has the opportunity to celebrate the very belated
7th Birthday of my youngest son.
It has been a long time coming. His actual Birthday was in April. I had posted about the
choice my family and I had made to delay the celebration and why. But to quickly recap....
it came down to "timing."
MILESTONES in life can not be assumed or expected when raising a child with Autism.
The emotions, the memories, conversations, the excitement and understanding of what a birthday celebration is? .... just happen within normal childhood development. We do not really need to think twice about it.... it's just natural.
But when you have an Autistic child.... it's these simple, little things.....
that cannot be assumed to just occur. All that thinking and feeling and experience..... needs to be retaught and most of the time what is fun, exciting and wonderful to us..... is noisy, scary, unknown and confusing for a child on the spectrum. You cannot as a parent, EXPECT your child will just "love" the whole annual ordeal. To comprehend what a birthday is, what their age means, the singing, the attention and the forced social contact...... it's extremely difficult.
It is incredibly important to our family to create a momentous "Birthday Memory" for my young son. We are following our RDI philosophy.... creating Episodic memories. Information and life experience that he can rely on, drawing information from in the future.
These memories, will be used by our little guy, when faced with uncertainty in life based on; events, times, places, associated emotions, and other relevant social knowledge.
A credit to my son, his personality, my family and friends - we have 34 children attending his Bowling Party. Yep everyone has returned their R.S.V.P !
"Oh my!" .... Yes... I do know what you are thinking.... I'm a little scared too.
But my teaching background has helped me to be extremely over prepared.
Not every little child who has a birthday party is fortunate enough to have his entire class coming, his teacher, his aides, his respite workers, family and friends. But that is my son's life. We have a massive group of people involved in his development.... it is not just me. We all work as a team and we all play a different, equally important role. I have always felt quite humbled acknowledging this. It reminded me of the African proverbs....
"No man, woman, or family is an island."
"It takes a village to raise a child."
So far this week, I have seen my young son, understand and become very excited about his upcoming Birthday celebration. This in itself is a huge milestone. Something I have never seen. We have been counting down the days on his visual weekly calendar. He has been helping me writing invitations and then proceeded to hand them out at school. He even assisted his older brother and I in making the party guests lolly bags last night. We picked up some balloons today, and we have made a Bowling Birthday book... to teach him the process of tomorrow.... and what to expect. He even has a wonderful Toy Story Birthday cake to share. With such a large number of children and adults attending, some are expecting my lad to be quite over-whelmed...... but you know, I have learnt over the years, that if you expect the worst.... it will happen. So maybe we will just wait and see.
I need to say a MASSIVE thank-you to Chermside Hyperbowl, located in the Westfield Shopping Centre, Chermside. The absolutely incredible management have been a huge support, helping me to organise this long awaited dream for my son. Without their kind hearts.... we would not have been able to do this. I know we will be spending many hours, enjoying their hospitality and centre over the coming years.
