Parenting Severe Autism
Parenting Severe Autism is a raw, unfiltered podcast for parents and caregivers raising children with Severe Autism. Hosted by Shannon Chamberlin - a parent, not a professional - this show is your emotional lifeline, real-talk resource, and reminder that you're not alone.
From early childhood to adulthood and beyond, Shannon shares honest stories, painful truths, small victories, and survival strategies for the families the world forgets.
Whether you're in crisis mode or just need someone who gets it, this is your space.
No fluff. No sugarcoating. Just truth, hope, and community.
Severe Autism and special needs considerations. This type of autism parenting is lifelong... it becomes adult autism parenting.
Seek caregiver support when possible.
Parenting Severe Autism
Our Son Lost Everything When He Turned 15, and No One Warned Us
Imagine waking up one morning to discover your child has lost every skill they've ever learned. This devastating experience is the reality for many parents of teens with severe autism, yet it's rarely discussed in autism resources or by medical professionals.
In this deeply personal episode, I share the heartbreaking story of my son losing all his functional abilities and speech within days of turning 15. What began with concerning behaviors—strange vocalizations, withdrawing to his room, repetitive actions—culminated in a complete regression that left him unable to perform even the simplest tasks he once mastered. His 100-word vocabulary vanished almost overnight, replaced only with the phrase "I love you," which he began saying indiscriminately to strangers.
The most shocking part? After frantic research, I discovered this regression at age 15 is apparently a documented phenomenon in some children with severe autism—yet in all our years working with specialists and researching autism, not one professional had ever warned us this might happen. How could something so significant not be part of standard information given to parents of children with severe autism?
Throughout the episode, I detail our attempts to help our son: cross-body exercises recommended by specialists, creating sensory-rich environments, increased therapy sessions, and constant engagement. I share both the frustrations and the rare moments of breakthrough, including a recent heartwarming moment when he perfectly mimicked a Tony the Tiger commercial from the depths of his memory.
For parents with children under 15 with severe autism, this episode serves as both a warning and a call to maximize interventions while your child's brain remains receptive. For those who've already experienced this regression, you'll find validation and the comfort of knowing you're not alone on this journey. Sometimes being a parent to a child with severe autism means celebrating the smallest victories while navigating the most challenging losses.
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Hello and welcome to the Parenting Severe Autism Podcast. I am your host, Shannon Chamberlin. I'm so happy that you're here with me today. I just want to jump right into this. I know I've been absent for a week more than I expected to be and I was planning on just giving you updates and little solutions that we came up with to the things that we were dealing with that I mentioned in the last episode. So we were talking about him overflowing the sink and the toilet and doing those weird crazy voices that scared us and all kinds of stuff like that. They all started happening, I think, between the ages of 14 and 15. So I'm just trying to cover these things because there's something really big at the end which I told you I was going to share in my last episode and I didn't get to it. So let's just get into this.
Speaker 1:I remember trying to teach our son to cook eggs and obviously he was going to be fully supervised, but he had some. I mean, he was demonstrating that he could do things a little bit and I was just trying to see if I could get him to do anything. He didn't really want to have anything to do with cooking eggs. He loves hanging out with me in the kitchen, but he would just whine and whine and whine every time. So I did give up on that very quickly and you know, we had taken him out to go camping to try to detox him from electronics because he was acting like he was in a cartoon or something and it really freaked us out. Well, that happened again and I made a connection and my spouse doesn't think so, but I do think so. So there's that. But my spouse had taken up classical guitar and he was playing it a lot. Once he gets locked onto something, he just goes for it and he was playing this guitar a lot. He would wake up really early in the morning and go down and light a fire and play guitar all by himself and just have some alone time and then he would play for a few more hours and I mean it was a lot. You know, he would play whenever he had a free minute and he was actually quitting smoking at the time. So I was happy about, you know, whatever he needed to do with that.
Speaker 1:And one day our son was trying to babble at him and I was just sitting there listening to him play guitar and our son came in and just kept trying to babble at him and babble at him, and babble at him, and he had been doing this to us frequently, to the point where we had to leave the room. So it wasn't something like we missed out on some profound communication, it was just our son's way of getting in our face and creating some sort of tension in the room, which we learned from the lady at that non-profit. And he just, you know he wasn't going to do or say anything, he was just trying to, you know, have attention, and I mean a lot of kids do that anyway when they're like five. That's what he was doing and my spouse didn't answer him fast enough. So our son got this really weird pitch in his voice and started talking like that, and here's what happened he said dad, dad, dad, dad, and then he kept looking at the guitar because his dad was playing the guitar, and then he goes dad, and that made both of us stop and just stare at each other and then at him. Well, that got his attention, because that's how he got our attention. So he quickly locked onto that and realized, in my opinion, that that's the way now to get attention. You know, they're tired of me. They're not answering me anymore. Now I know what to do. This is the voice.
Speaker 1:So then he started talking, like yeah, and it was really scary. Mind you, he only had about a hundred words in his vocabulary, but he did have words at that time and it scared the hell out of my spouse for sure. And I said babe, I think he's trying to match the tone of your guitar. I think that he's trying to compete with your guitar. I think that he thinks that he's being neglected for the guitar, if you know what I mean. Like I think that he's trying to compete with your guitar. I think that he thinks that he's being neglected for the guitar, if you know what I mean. Like I think that he is trying to compete and he wants to be the toy. He doesn't want you to play with the guitar, he wants you to play with him, and I really think that he did that to show you that he's as interesting as the guitar. You know what I mean. That's how I saw it. But my spouse was like no, that's just silly. No, I don't think so, I just think he's being scary, you know. But of course, if you have a new hobby, you don't want to think that it's going to get ruined because your kid is reacting negatively to it and now you won't be able to do it anymore and that's your one thing that you get to do, you know. So I understand both sides of that, but I really do think that that's what was going on.
Speaker 1:But we couldn't get him to stop. We ended up taking him back out to the woods and camping again, and he had to get used to the guitar. You know, he brought the guitar this time and was playing it at the campsite and everything, and we had to just explain to him that this is daddy's time. We are going to be quiet during daddy's time. You can wait your turn, and that's when we started learning about whose turn it is. So it's the guitar's turn, and then it's Jacob's turn and then it's daddy's turn, you know. So you get to hold the talking stick, so to speak. So we started working on that and just trying to teach him that you know you can't just get the attention of whoever you want, anytime you want. There are things happening, people are doing things. You know you have to wait your turn.
Speaker 1:And then the next thing I remember is that he would not leave his room. This kind of goes along with, you know, when he started hating everything and all of that stuff. But it was really, I mean, on one hand it was kind of nice having him out of my hair and on the other hand it was kind of scary because that was just way out of character for him. He was always in my hair and I didn't know what to do. He just wouldn't leave his room and he was just kind of shuffling and humming and it was getting kind of scary. So all of these things happened within close proximity of each other.
Speaker 1:And these things happened within close proximity of each other and, look, I didn't know anything back then. I mean, I don't know. I did research all the time but I didn't learn what I could have learned if I would have been in contact with other moms and dads. I didn't start learning about some things that could have been wrong with him until I actually had to leave Wisconsin, come to Illinois and get into the workplace and I started meeting parents of kids with severe autism and I started learning that, oh my gosh, you know there's this and that. And of course there's a Facebook group or two that I'm in and that's where I learned all my information. I cannot find the information online. Well, maybe now you can, but back then you couldn't. So this was like 10 years ago. I just I didn't know.
Speaker 1:But I want to say now, if your kid is humming and shuffling in one spot or just not responding, or just the look in the eye is different, like our kid, he likes a little bit of eye contact, but not all the time. But I know a lot of these kids don't like eye contact, but you can still see their eyes and if they end up looking different, or you know, if your kid starts getting a little bit weird or withdrawn, or just I don't know, ghosty, you might look into this Catatonia thing. There's a couple different classifications of Catatonia, but you know, the more I learn about that, the more I wonder if he was having an episode and maybe we got lucky and he slipped out of it. But I mean it was really similar. A lot of the stuff he went through was really similar to this autistic catatonia or whatever. And I mean I had been bringing him to the doctor all the time, or the nurse practitioner, whoever I could. I was always like what's wrong with him, something's going on, depending what it was. I mean just so many things. We were always and nobody caught anything. The only thing that the medical professionals ever did was wait for me to say hey, you know what his symptoms match this that I'm finding right now, such as with the toe and the. You know, when he kicked his bed and all that, and we ended up getting him diagnosed with Raynaud's disease. He didn't have Raynaud's disease, he had kick the bed frame disease. But these doctors are just like, oh yeah, yeah, let's do, let's go with that, you know, and so that was no help. But I just, you know, I feel that the medical profession has failed us numerous times. I think that he's got lots of other things going on that have not been diagnosed, which I'll get into another time. But I just wanted to tell you about this catatonia thing because, man, I think that we were close to some kind of disaster with that and nobody caught it.
Speaker 1:But the lady at the nonprofit, when I explained it to her, she said, well, that's his bubble, that's his autism bubble and he will stay there forever if you let him. You have to bring him out of that autism bubble. You have to do whatever you can do to make him get out of that comfort zone. That's the comfort zone he wants to be in. I don't have to think, I don't have to try, I don't have to function, I don't have to do anything but stand here and be autistic, and that's where I want to be. This is comfortable for me. I don't want to try. That's how she explained it. So I was like, oh my gosh, you know.
Speaker 1:So we started learning that you know, do patty cake, patty cake with the cross your arm, you know, arms across the body and start making him slap your hands, cross body slaps and just all kinds of just cross body stuff where your right arm crosses your left side of your body, etc. With your hands and your feet. I mean his hands and his feet. You know, that was one thing and he seems to really enjoy that. And I did start, you know, taking him to that CP center and she sent us home with a big therapy ball and exercises that we had to do with him and we were also instructed for dad to start wrestling with him to. I don't know, it's some kind of physical therapy, you know, just let him squeeze you and let him. I don't know, he needed some kind of testosterone outlet, I guess is what it was.
Speaker 1:And we have had experiences in the past where he wants to play with dad and they had like a couple Nerf swords and lightsabers and stuff like that and Jacob would get really crazy with it. He would beat his dad so badly with these swords and lightsabers and his dad would just be laughing and you know it's all in good fun and he was really. You know he's strong and he's big and Jacob was small and not strong and so it didn't bother him. But Jacob would go from really just wailing on him with this sword or lightsaber to having a full-on meltdown, crying and screaming and inconsolable. So we weren't really too keen on this whole wrestle with dad thing but they did a couple times. But I mean, who has room? He was already like you know, 5'7", 5'8" and daddy's over six foot, so who has room for that? But they did a little bit here and there. But we just usually do compression, hugs and stuff or squeezes all up and down the arms and legs and we do get him massages now. But those were some of the suggestions to help him with his weirdness that he was developing and both the weird voice and the shuffling, humming, seclusion behavior.
Speaker 1:And right around that same time there was another thing that had happened when he was not afraid of the four-wheeler. We were all outside one day and Tweedledum was there. And Tweedledum is standing out there and says Jacob, you know, he's running around a little bit restless. And Tweedledum says hey, jacob, you want to go for a ride on the four-wheeler with Papaw? And Jacob says yes, I was like okay, well, that was unexpected, you know, and me and my spouse are just kind of looking at each other like, wow, okay, neat.
Speaker 1:Two minutes later Jacob is like getting restless again, like waiting for the cue to get on the four-wheeler and take a ride. I look over at Tweedledum. I'm like he's ready, and Tweedledum goes oh, I'm tired, I changed my mind, I don't want to go. And like you can't do that to him. Maybe you can do that to other kids, but you can't do that to Jake. What is the problem? You can't just offer him entertainment and then say, no, I don't feel like it within two minutes. What is wrong with you? So that really sucked.
Speaker 1:But eventually Jacob did start riding the four-wheeler again and his grandpa was not around when he was doing it. We would all go down to the fishing dock that we had there and we would let Jacob ride the trail behind us. Right there, we were sitting there and Jacob's riding up and down the trail but then he rides to the left of us and we hear the four-wheeler stop. So we're instantly like, oh no, what happened? There's nothing but woods, but who knows? You know, we got to go, so it's just just out of our view off the trail, and we go down there and it's a play place that we had set up. That's where he was stopped.
Speaker 1:We went down to figure out what. Did he get stuck? Did he have an accident? What in the world's going on? And he's standing on the ground with the four-wheeler running and he's yanking on it on the luggage bar or whatever. And he's just yanking on it and then he's picking it up and trying to, you know, turn the back end of it a little bit to the right, and then he's yanking on it some more and then picking it up. I'm like, what are you doing?
Speaker 1:We learned that every time not every time, but most times, I guess when he would ride the four-wheeler as a passenger with his grandfather, his grandfather would somehow get over there and not be able to make the turn and he would pull up and then get off and then yank on the bar and pick it up and wrestle the ass end of the quad around until he could turn the stupid thing and get back on the trail. And this is the habit that Jacob learned from. So he thought. I think he thought that he could. He's just supposed to ride down to this little pine tree area, pull in in this little stupid position, get off and then try to wrestle the thing out, when our son is very good at steering this thing and there's absolutely no reason for him to do that. I guess be careful what kind of habits your kids are seeing, because they'll think that's just the way to do it. You know, glad that we found that out and broke him of that. We were like no, that's just, that's just silly. You know who does that. Where'd him of that? We were like no, that's just silly, you know who does that, where'd you get that? And he says Peppa, and okay, well, we don't have to do that, you can just ride it and turn around the way you always do. He's like okay, but I wonder if it was some kind of experience with his grandpa on that four-wheeler. That made him stop wanting to ride the four-wheeler. He loved that more than anything and it really was shocking and sad when he stopped wanting to ride it and I'm glad he got back into it. But I wonder, you never know, because he's never, ever going to tell you. Even in his chatter there was no way. I never heard anything about that.
Speaker 1:So another thing that happened and I may have told this story. It's short and sweet but it's hilarious to me. So I'm going to say it again because it was all within this time frame. It was, I think I want to say it was fall, I don't know.
Speaker 1:Tweedledum was there and he was sitting on a cooler in our living room next to the fireplace. Jacob came up to him. He stood next to his grandfather and put his arm around his shoulders, stood there for a minute very quietly and then he says I love you, papaw. Papaw says I love you too, jacob, and Jacob gives a little side nod and a nice little soft smile. Then he almost quickly removes his arm, takes a big step to the left, big, wide step, and folds his hands in front of him and he looks at him sideways and goes dumbass. I will never forget that. That was so funny. That was so funny and I don't know. He pretty much learned all of his words from me. You know, it seems like and I mean that's obviously I say that a lot and I'm just like, oh my gosh lot. And I'm just like, oh my gosh, do I call his grandfather a dumbass, and I don't know it.
Speaker 1:Okay, now, before I get to the big, alarming thing, I want to say that with the water issues in his bathroom that we were dealing with, we just turned the water line off in the bathroom. We also ended up having to figure out that we needed to lock all of the shampoo and deodorant and toothpaste up. So now he's completely reliant on us to help him with his hygiene, more so than before, because now he doesn't even have access to it, because he was just squirting the stuff everywhere all the time and it was, you know, hey, that's expensive, especially when you're buying stuff that's clean and doesn't have chemicals in it and stuff. We locked up the toiletries, we turned off the water and then he starts this weird thing that I can hear all the way downstairs and all the way across the house. So his bathroom cabinets had a really good roller on it so it closed very securely and if you close it really slowly it would go, because I mean they were really good closers on the cabinet. So all of a sudden he develops this.
Speaker 1:You know, I'm like, oh my gosh, this is going on for days. I could not make him stop. And I mean I would go up there and have a nice talk with him. Please stop doing this. It's too loud, it's making me crazy. I have a nice talk with him. Please stop doing this. It's too loud, it's making me crazy. I can't stand listening to this. Please stop. Find something else. Let's do this. How about play that? And no, he would always go right back. Ka-chunk, ka-chunk, ka-chunk, ka-ch taped the hell out of it. And on the painter's tape with Sharpie I wrote no and exclamation points all over it and that stopped him. He doesn't, you know, really understand painter's tape and stuff. He could have just opened it right up, but it did the job. That's kind of how I have to make rules with him.
Speaker 1:I remember one time at our office he would just yell I mean, you know, he just being silly and I had to make a. I did really good, one of those little like a Pac-Man head, but it was a person. I put hair on it and stuff and made it with its mouth open and some lines coming out of its mouth to indicate yelling, and then I put a circle and a red line diagonal across it all, so that meant no yelling. So that was how we worked on our inside voices. So anytime I really need to communicate something to him, it seems like I have to write it down, like right now he's got a water jug that he will not close and I wrote all over it close it, close it, close it. He still won't close it, but at least I don't have to tell him.
Speaker 1:I guess we were always trying to find ways to counteract what he was doing. That was not a good habit, not a good way to go, and he would always adjust to that. He would do what we needed him to do until he figured out a workaround, and then he would do the workaround and still do whatever the thing was, and it was just maddening. That's why I was always threatening or asking him and threatening him about throwing games and movies in the garbage because he would be abusing them or, you know, scratching them up or just, you know doing crazy stuff with them and I would threaten hey, you want me to throw it in the garbage, because that's kind of permanent Now, with the shuffling and the humming and not leaving the corner of his room.
Speaker 1:I decided to try to make him. I couldn't get him to come out. He was not leaving this autism bubble, as she called it. I couldn't get him to cooperate at all, he would not leave. So I decided well, I'm going to go and get some crafty stuff.
Speaker 1:So I got some contact paper and a bunch of different textured things. I got feathers of all sorts, I got googly eyes, little fake marshmallows. I just got a bunch of random stuff from the craft section at the store and I made this cute little craft corner. I got washable markers, all kinds of stuff so he could. He could do anything and he could stick stuff to the wall because of the contact paper and I don't know. I thought it was really cool and I set that all up for him. I was so excited he had every kind of textured item you could want without being too messy. I didn't get him glitter or anything like that, but I did this whole thing up in the corner, right where he's at and I just covered the whole wall with artsy, fartsy stuff and I made him these little bins and connected them to the wall and there you go.
Speaker 1:You know you could do anything. Now why don't you just do your autism in this corner and keep your brain active a little bit? You know, just do something fun and pretty and have colors. And you know, just staring at a white wall with a blue carpet, come on, he never touched it, never. I would go in there and play with him and try and he would humor me. I tried to show him that you can just make some weird, abstract kind of animal and you know, just make stuff and just put stuff on the wall. It doesn't hurt, you can do any of this and it's fine. Look at this, how fun, you know. And he would humor me when I was there, but he would never touch it.
Speaker 1:When I wasn't, he made sure to kill his fish. He didn't want to do any arts and crafts. He didn't want to do any homeschooling, any schoolhouse. He didn't want to do any gardening. He didn't want to be outside. He didn't want to ride the four-wheeler, he didn't want to fish. He didn't get to play games or any kind of media on the iPad or anything, because of his behaviors.
Speaker 1:He didn't want to help in the kitchen, he didn't want to make his own food, he didn't want to wash his hands, he didn't want to wash his little plate, he just didn't. He was learning to do stuff but he just wouldn't do it. His little hand would just go limp. Instead of holding a sponge, he would just limp his whole hand and just like knuckle, wash a plate. It was just ridiculous. I mean just, you know, fuck it. You know, try to get him to cook eggs. Even his dad tried to work with him because his dad's his favorite person in the world, and he tried to get him to cook eggs and just no, not having it.
Speaker 1:You just whine and complain and make and just make us suffer, make us miserable, and that's how he gets out of everything. Because there's just we can't take it. You know and I keep having to remind myself and my spouse and he reminds both of us too that we were not trained for this. You know, my spouse is a salesman and I'm basically an office person. We're not trained for this. We never followed that career path to work with special people and be so freaking, patient and know how to do everything with them. You know it's not our field and you can't be too hard on yourself if that's not what you were doing for a living anyway, right? I mean, geez man, I even cooked for a lady whose daughter had Down syndrome and she was a teacher at the school and I was like, oh, that's awesome.
Speaker 1:Do you guys, do you have her in your class? Does she respond well to you? And she's like, oh no, I will not teach my own kid in my class. She was a special ed teacher but she would not have her kid in her class and it just the dynamic is wrong. So I totally agree with that. I wasn't in the position at the time to understand and I ignorantly asked her and thought it would be cool. But later on I realized through my own experiences that no, it is not cool to try to teach your kid anything when we're at the stage.
Speaker 1:It just sucks. I don't have what it takes. I've done a lot, I've taught him a lot, I've protected him a lot. I've done a lot for this kid, but in all honesty, to do more therapy type stuff, I don't have it. I don't have that. He has taught me an immense amount of patience. I was not a patient person before I met him and I have really grown, but I just don't have it. I don't have any more than what I've been giving him. He needs help, he needs services. He's not getting any. No one wants to help and it just sucks. But anyway, back to this other past stuff. Here is the most alarming thing. It's not the end of this episode, but we're almost there.
Speaker 1:Within days of turning 15 years old, our son lost all of his skills, every single skill. He lost his vocabulary. He lost the light in his eyes. He lost the ability to wash his hands at all. He lost the ability to fold his clothes at all and put them in the closet. He lost the ability to hold a sponge. He lost the ability to wipe down the table, which was one of his best chores. I would have him wipe down the table before mealtime. Nope, nope, can't do it, can't do anything anymore. He couldn't put on his shoes. He couldn't do a damn thing. It was alarming. He couldn't do anything. He was just a blob. He couldn't function, and the hundred word vocabulary that we were trying to build on every day was absolutely gone, like it never existed.
Speaker 1:All he would say at first was nothing. And then I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, that's it, that's all he would say. He has lost everything. So I'm frantically trying to figure out what has happened. I do remember the lady saying well, you have to hurry up and get him all his therapy because by the time he gets 16, he's not going to be able to learn anymore, and I remember that. Remember, I told you. So I'm thinking about that. I'm like but he's 15. And it's not that he's, it's not that he's not learning, it's that he lost what he had. That's different. Where did it go? It was alarming and he's never recovered. He was so much better before he was 15.
Speaker 1:I started researching, of course. What is going on? What is going on? What is going on? I found only two or three reports, honestly, but they all said the same thing that it's apparently a known fact from research Once a child with severe autism, I guess, turns 15, they regress and lose their speech and lose their skills. No one ever told me that. I never found that in any of the research in previous years that I was doing, and granted, it wasn't, like you know, ask Jeeves or whatever why does my son not know how to talk anymore? But you would think it would come up, no matter what, because I was always searching the same subject, which was my son and his autism, but it never came up. This completely caught us by surprise and we've never recovered.
Speaker 1:He's never recovered and I just want you to know this If your child is under 15 years old, good luck. Once 15 comes, hopefully you can do something. I don't know, maybe if we work on more vitamins I don't know what fish oil, d3 and K2, something I don't know, something to help the brain, I don't know. But if your child loses their skills, I mean not just language skills, everything that they ever learned in their life, if your child loses that and they have just turned 15, it's normal, believe it or not, unfortunately, that's what is going to happen to a lot of our children. Do you know how much time I put into this kid and all of the professionals that worked with him when they gave a shit and didn't abuse him in school? Everything that was put into this child to help him advance and learn and grow gone Everything. He lost everything, and it was because he had a freaking birthday. I don't know.
Speaker 1:I don't know what to say, but I want you to know that is the most alarming thing that happened when all these behaviors started coming up. So he, you know, his behavior started getting crazy, his voices started getting crazy, everything started getting a little bit weird and all of a sudden, boom, nothing, nothing at all, and then definitely shuffling our feet and staring at the floor in the corner of the room and that's life. So, uh, yeah, that was fucking terrible. My heart dropped out when I woke up one day and the normal jac not there anymore. Whether he was negative or happy, it didn't matter. That kid was gone, completely different kid, and it was just devastating.
Speaker 1:So I'm still taking him to the non-profit. I start taking him there more often. I also start taking him to a park that's nearby. There's a lake there. I'm trying to I don't know nature it out of him and get him to do something or respond, you know. Again, here's this maybe autism, catatonia, I don't know what happened. So I'm taking him to the CP center more often. I still didn't have services for him yet. All of this is either insurance or grants or out of pocket. I'm taking him over to the lake all the time.
Speaker 1:He won't swim unless I go swim, and I didn't even have a bathing suit that I was willing to wear at the time, so that wasn't any fun. I thought, oh, he can play in the water and I can read a book and relax. No, absolutely not. That's not what it was. It was just I'm going to stand in front of you and whine in a high-pitched tone and make you look at me, and then I'm going to laugh and I'm going to make you look at me and I'm going to jump and I'm going to whine and I'm going to laugh and I'm going to jump until you get tired and take me home. He swam the first time and that was it. And he did it for like 10 minutes before he realized that I wasn't coming in the water. So he's the one that wants to swim. He's the one that loves water.
Speaker 1:I don't go to his swim class and swim with him. It just sucked. I used to also go to Aldi before we would go to the swim class, and that was like on Wednesdays. So one Wednesday a month I would take him with me to Aldi before we went to the swim class. Let me start with this. He used to go to cashiers and stick out his hand he learned this in school and introduce himself Hi, I'm Jacob, who's your name? That's gone.
Speaker 1:Now I start taking him to Aldi and instead of trying to hit on the, instead of trying to get in good with the cashiers with words, now he just is going after every woman in Aldi and going up to them and saying I love you, I love you, and then trying to hug and kiss them, and a couple people were like, oh, you're so cute. But most women are like, uh, don't what, get away from me, you know. And I'm like, oh, my gosh, what are you doing? So now I can't even stand in line. I have to hold on to him, you know, and it was just, sometimes it was sad and offensive and sometimes it was just embarrassing.
Speaker 1:He's 15 and he's trying to go up and mack on women, you know, even though he's not a sexual person. Most people at Aldi are women shopping, and that's just the way it was. And he would just go and try to tell everyone that he loved him and give everyone a kiss and a hug. That replaced his entire vocabulary. I couldn't control him hardly, you know. So then I start having to be super diligent. With every time he even looked at somebody, I would say, no, leave them alone. No, no. And then he would say I love you. I'm like, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, no, you don't love, you, don't know her. Jacob, you, you can't love her. You don't know her. You know? Oh, it's okay. No, it's not, because for most other women it's not.
Speaker 1:So now I have to do this in public and let everyone see that I am trying to tell my kid how to behave. I'm trying to keep him out of your face. I'm doing the best that I can. I'm educating him right in front of you. You know, geez, all I want to do is get the freaking food and get out of here. And I have to make a public display of educating my kid because people look at me like can't you take care of your kid?
Speaker 1:And then the grandfather has a heart attack. He's down in Illinois, we're up in Wisconsin. We got to hurry up, pack up and come down to Illinois because he's having a quadruple bypass. So we're in the waiting room of the hospital. There was this man there. He was a slightly older man, he wasn't any part of our group and he was just sitting there for a long time. We were all there for hours and hours and Jacob keeps going up to him and now he doesn't stick out his hand for a handshake anymore, because he lost that skill.
Speaker 1:So now he just kind of flops the back of his hand out towards people and just leaves it like that, like the back of his hand, front of his hand, facing himself, and he just, you know, like what are you supposed to do with that as an as the other person? So he does that and he says I love you, I love you. And this other guy, I'm like no, we don't love strangers, you don't love him, jacob, you don't know him, stop it. The guy's like. At first he smiled and then Jacob did it again and I'm like no, and the guy, I think, said I love you too. And I said Jacob, we don't love strangers, you don't know him, stop saying that. He goes, oh, it's okay. I said no, it's really not okay, it's not okay, he doesn't know you.
Speaker 1:So now, yes, this is what I'm doing out in public, in a waiting room where, you know, I don't know, it could be a little bit of a sensitive place for people, you know, and I just, I don't want my kid kissing people and telling them, you know, I mean I don't trust people. I don't think that if someone, if someone, were to try to snatch him God forbid I really don't think they'd make it very far without just letting him go. But I don't want to think about it. You know what I mean. I don't know that people who would do that are very bad and I don't want to think about how they would let him go. But I just don't think that he's the type of person they want to steal. But I don't want to take the chance and have everyone think, oh, oh, this kid's easy, he loves me already. Yeah, okay, hey, you want some candy? So I'm constantly - He's 15 and I'm worried about him, like he's three and that's how I'm going to be for the rest of my life, because he does not understand anything and he's not afraid of anything. It just sucks, you know, and that is where I'm going to leave it Now.
Speaker 1:I did have something very upsetting happen with the nonprofit autism group, which I will tell you about another time. I just wanted to tell you this happened last night. I've been having a lot of trouble getting a closing happy story for these episodes lately. But Jacob helped me out last night. His dad was talking to him, somehow it came up...
Speaker 1:Usually Jacob will say something like I'm Batman, or I'm Spider-Man, or something like that, and he'll just change his identity daily and sometimes by the hour. So he said something of who he was to his dad and his dad said something to him and anyway it ends up being that his dad said or are you a tiger? Jacob kind of lit up when he said tiger. And then my spouse says Tony the tiger and Jacob says Tony the tiger. And then I said they're grrrreat! And Jacob, out of the blue, he goes, the best that he could... He said they're great.
Speaker 1:And then, you know, at the end of our commercials, when we were kids now I don't watch commercials anymore and I don't know if they still do it, but when we were kids I'm Gen X here, so my commercials would always have that voice, the same kind of voice that lists the side effects of drugs on commercials, that voice, but it would say something like part of a complete breakfast or something like that, and Jacob says they're great, and then you hear him go breakfast. It sounded just like the last line of the cereal commercials. It was hilarious and the funny thing is that we don't see those commercials anymore. He just pulled that out of the depths of him, you know. I mean, wow, right, it's really neat, because that was buried deep in there. We never see that, we never talk about that, nothing that I know of anyway and he just pulled it right out of his hat like it was just sitting on top. So breakfast. So that was cute and that's my cutest story.
Speaker 1:Now my next episode is definitely on topic, but I'm going to talk to you a little bit about the project I've been working on and I'm going to share some big information with you and then we'll get back into regular podcasting on the following episode. You hang in there, you're a superhero.