Sparse the next couple of days

Well, my wife and I are off to go to a two-day conference on healing autism. I don't know if I've ever noted this before by my son (you know him as Kyle Skystaff) has high-functioning autism. We found out when he was two. He's now five. Autism has become a HUGE word in our family the past three years because, well, now it affects us. Three years ago I didn't even really know what autism was to be honest. Pretty much the extent of my knowledge on autism could be summed up in two bullets.

• Rain Man.
• A kid I grew up with who didn’t say much.

Now I'm fully armed with all kinds of knowledge because after the diagnosis, that word, "autism," becomes a daily, sometimes hourly, thought for the rest of your life. Everything changes. Your relationship with spouse. Your relationship to all your kids. Your relationship with other people. Everything now has that additional filter or idea in it.

What's it like for me? Well, two and a half years ago, it was like raising a human that was pretty much as close to raising a wild animal as you can get. this kid was on sensory overload, not talking, and doing just downright strange stuff.

Then when we looked closely at his digestive system, we discovered that there was a gut-brain connection for Kyle Skystaff. So we put him on a special diet to help avoid certain chemical reactions in his gut. We killed off his regular flora of critters in his digestive system and introduced a new flora of critters through some special pro-biotics (this is an ongoing war). Then we hit him with some vitamins, some supplements, and special stuff to help nourish his mind. (You should see the list of instructions my wife left with nana while we're going to be away here.)

We also sat down with our local educators and started getting him some special education. His pre-school experience has been full of speech and behavior therapy.

We also started dealing with Miles differently. There was less frustration, guilt, and confusion. There was more understanding. There is more love.

How is he now? Well, he's much less like a wild animal now. He's more polite than his sister. He's still struggles with finding the words. He still has sensitivities to sound and light. He's still autistic.

My wife is also due to have our third child in July. Because of Miles condition and because there's a higher chance that this kid might be autistic as well, we're erring on the side of caution. We're doing things a bit differently with this new child and hopefully it will have a positive effect.

I'm hoping this two-day conference will arm us with even more information so we can keep striving toward making a difference in our kids' worlds.

Thanks for reading and have fun in the spiral! I am bringing my laptop along (as long as my wife doesn't object), so you may hear from me the next couple days or you may not.

Happy Dueling!