Our Son-Rise Journey

In the spirit of the holiday, I thought this quote represented so much of our family’s journey with autism and specifically what Son-Rise has taught us about our life with our special child.  To see the beauty in our son and to celebrate him for who he is and what he brings to our life and the lives of those around us has been the most unexpected blessing of this whole journey.  It has enlightened us two-fold:  one in the overall beauty of our relationship with our child and two with the realization of the love and support we have from family and friends.

So point one:  The amount of weight lifted off of us when we were able to just breathe and realize that we COULD and SHOULD first and foremost just enjoy and celebrate our sweet boy was amazing.  Just that alone immediately enriched the quality of our time spent with him.  Instead of focusing so much energy and time into, “How do we fix this?”, we are able to see the beauty of him as he is.  As a result of just this realization, we have witnessed so much growth in our son and in turn our acceptance and love alone has enriched our closeness and bond with him as well.

Point two:  Opening ourselves up to needing others or even just admitting the need for other’s help was the most difficult part of this Son-Rise journey for us.  It’s a vulnerability that we really struggled with sharing.  The most beautiful part of allowing this to happen though was the fact that so many friends and family not only helped us financially, but we also received so many cards, beautiful encouraging notes, prayer and support in our journey with our son.  So many people have also shared with us countless stories of how Lucas has touched their lives (stories of which we would’ve been completely unaware of had we not taken this path).  It is also something else entirely to be able to see the beauty of your child through other people’s eyes.

So, above all, our sweet boy has taught us so much more about life, love and acceptance than I think we are ever going to be able to teach him. He has taught us how to see the world through love and to be thankful for each and every moment that love brings.  We are thankful for each one of you and for our volunteers who put their own valuable time into loving and accepting our child.  We couldn’t do it without all of you!

Our volunteers are now running full 2-hour sessions on their own!  They are doing fabulously, and there have been so many developments as a result of Lucas getting so much QUALITY time in the playroom.  I’m just going to talk about one of them today.

So regarding the picture above:

This is our daughter’s playroom.  Lucas has never had any interest in being in this room or any room like it…unless it had electronics of course (a wonderful way for our kids to tune out the outside world).  Lately, we keep finding him there exploring the toys.  Some pretext..Lucas has never had an interest in toys in general outside of chewing on them or lining them up.   Another challenge is that he has always seen an object for what it was…a block was a block, a chair was a chair, etc.  There was absolutely no imagination in what an object “could be.”

So I’m cleaning in the kitchen and I hear noise out of my daughter’s playroom and look to my right and my daughter is next to me.  Of course curious what Lucas is getting into now,  I walk toward the playroom and see him standing like he is in the picture.  He looks up at me so proud of himself and says, “I built a tower!”  Not only is he playing, of his own volition I might add, but using nonconventional items to build a tower.

I was in complete awe and disbelief.  In the Sonrise playroom, all the toys promote imagination, and “we” the team are the ones who make these toys so many different things to show Lucas that we can have so much fun with pretty much any object.  This is such a HUGE development that he is doing this on his own.  I don’t even know how to convey to you how big this is for our Lucas or any child on the spectrum for that matter.

I can’t tell you how many countless hours I spent in ABA the last 2 years trying to do this very same thing (create an interest in playing, using imagination, etc.) to no avail.  It was so robotic and scripted.  I want to remind you that we have been playing for only 2 months and we have social accomplishments coming at us left and right…..Things we aren’t even working on.  I can tell you from experience….this DOES NOT HAPPEN naturally with a child on the spectrum….at least not in our previous experiences.  IT IS happening though through the Sonrise program and for the first time it is fun and so effortless.  The awesome thing is that my son is connecting and loving being in that Sonrise room.  He asks to be in there.

So, I could write a book on all of our accomplishments this past week, but I really wanted to appropriately convey to you all what a difference this program is making in our lives and the life of our very special child.  These are huge changes that we are seeing and we just feel so blessed to have had all of your support!