About Me

I am a mom of 2 – a daughter (who has a kind heart and has been a better big sister than we could ever have imagined) and a son, who was diagnosed with Autism just before his 2nd birthday. 

I have a background in Psychology, Biology and Math and have been a High School Math teacher for 18 years in Ontario, Canada.

I initially started this blog as an add on to my TPT Store Adventure. However, I am realizing that I get really excited when thinking about sharing what we have learned in our Autism Journey, in the hopes that maybe we could help support families like ours who find themselves in this new and unexpected world.

I also get excited about sharing study tips and hope to get a YouTube channel that can teach concepts that all can access for free. But…one thing at a time. I am getting ahead of myself!

As a mom of 2, a teacher and a wife, I won’t be able to post nearly as much as I would like to.  After you read our story, please feel free to leave a comment with any questions or topics you would want to hear more about. And thank you so much for visiting this page. It means more than I can tell you!

Our (Autism) Journey, Our Progress

SweetBoy5 was diagnosed with Autism in the middle of Covid (2021).  It started with a few “red flags”.  We mentioned it to our family doctor and wanted to go through all the appointments and hoops to make sure it was nothing to be concerned about – just in case.  I told my family that we were just being cautious and wanted to make sure we didn’t miss anything, but we’re pretty sure he was fine. 

We were able to find a Pediatrician who had been trained to administer the RITA-T Test and made the appointment. A month later we returned for the results, sure that we would be told that yes, he has some red flags and we will keep a close eye on him since he is still so young.

So, when we left with a conclusive diagnosis, my husband and I were reeling. I felt like my entire world had gotten rocked. I had no clue what our family’s future and my son’s would look like anymore. And because he was so young when we was diagnosed, we had so many questions:

Will he ever talk?

Will my dream of my kids being super close to each other be an impossible one now?

Could the result be influenced by the social isolation from lockdowns, mimicking autism symptoms?

A few months later, he underwent the ADOS assessment and it confirmed that he did indeed have autism.  I went through a journey of focusing on all his deficits to fully enjoying every little quirky thing about this precious boy.  And yes, my kids are super close. Closer than I think they would have been otherwise.

As is my way of dealing with everything, I threw myself into researching and learning as much as I could. I knew that waitlists would be long, probably even longer now with covid, and I didn’t want him to suffer because of it. I ate, slept, breathed autism education for weeks. 

I also have the most supportive and qualified family who were invaluable in helping me learn what Early Intervention meant and how important it is – more on that later.

Today, Sweet Boy is in kindergarten and needs little support. His speech has come a long way and he is beginning to have small little back-and-forth “conversations” with us. A year ago, I didn’t know if he would ever be capable of it.

There are SO MANY things I want to share with you all, but this is already quite long. I guess I’ll have to save them for other posts.

For now, THANK YOU so much for popping by and reading a bit about me and my family. 

If you have any comments, I’d love to hear them. Any suggestions on what you would like to hear more on would also be so welcomed and appreciated. 

Some topics I hope to post on in the future:

• What is the RITA-T Assessment?
• What is early intervention and why is it important?
• What did we look for in a speech therapist
• the importance of being your child’s therapist at home and not relying solely on therapy appointments
• “People Games”/”Social “Games” that helped us
• Books that helped us to engage with him

Are any of these topics you might be interested in? Do you have any other suggestions? Leave a comment below!  Thank you!