Idea's Welcome

As we work on planning out 2012 groups we thought it would be nice to get ideas from everyone! What topics would you like to talk about? Guest speaker ideas? Shoot us an email and we will work on adding them to our schedule!!

utaheasy2love@gmail.com

Hope everyone has a wonderful Holiday Season.

See you next year!

Lindsay

Newsletter

Hey Everyone! In January we will be sending out our FIRST Quarterly Newsletter! Make sure to subscribe on the top right hand corner of the blog or on the left side of our facebook page!

The Easy to Love Newsletters will include interviews, up and coming group information, community information and more!

Lindsay

Facebook Subscription Page HERE

Christmas Social Story

The Holidays are a struggle for Miss Emma... she has struggled with all the chaos and change since her first Christmas.

The decorations, smells, outings, family gatherings leading up to Christmas are very overwhelming and have often led to melt downs. The week of Christmas is insanity and there is not really a way to get out of a lot of it. The 23rd is always her Christmas with her dad (we separated before her first Christmas) & a big change this year is that she will be doing an overnight 23-24th, 24th is the family Christmas dinner and all the Santa shenanigans, Christmas day is a whirl wind and then the 26th is her birthday. It's A TON packed into days. We are changing things this year to accommodate Emma and her struggles. Less 'get togethers' and group things etc.

Last year when I felt she had gotten to an age she could understand more, we started talking things through to prepare her for certain events. It did seem to help some of the anxiety.

I decided to take the Christmas a little further and create a social story. After pricing them (OUCH!) I decided to do my own and tailor it to our families traditions. It worked really well... it did not take away all of her anxiety but she was at least prepared for what was to come.

These pictures are from last years... I have tweaked a few things for this year, but it is still similar.

**I picked a few of the pages to give a general idea**

Lindsay

Getting New Test Results for Hudson

Well, It's not like I am in denial that my son is autistic. I have spent the past year in services to help him in every way possible, OT, Speech Therapy, Play therapy, therapy preschool and even swimming. As I reflect on the last year since his diagnosis last October, I have gone through every stage of the grief process - denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance (this is when I am my most powerful) and after yesterdays test results, I am right back where I was before. It is so baffling to me. Only, I am now realizing, I was maybe in a bit of denial and now I am depressed. I think we (me and my husband) keep thinking that he is going to be just fine and fit right into a regular-ed setting, because we have seen so much growth in him this past year, but we still have far to go. His psychologist had the ADOS test administered. Which apparently, is the "gold standard" of autism tests. The good news is he is by no means the most severe on the spectrum but definitely scores at or just above the cut-off. With this test and his scores we can get him in the public special -ed system no problem, but I was hoping for more. By more I mean, where he just gets to be a regular kid in a regular class, with other regular kids. So, waaah! I know, I am whining. I just get weary. Don't you?

Happy Holidays!

Happy Holidays Everyone!! We are really looking forward to our holiday socials coming up! It is a casual open house type event. Come visit and snack with parents who "get it"!
We will work on keeping the blog posted with new information and posts as much as possible. As I am sure all of you know this is an INSANE time of year, so bear with us through December!

Watch for a post this week, I am posting our Christmas Social story that worked really well last year!!

December 7th - Davis County
7-9pm
Davis Behavioral Health
934 S. Main St. Layton

December 14th - Salt Lake
7-9pm
The Sharing Place
1695 E. 3300 S. Salt Lake

Remember to 'Like' us on Facebook and Sign up for our Newsletter on the top right hand of the blog! The first newsletter will go out the first week of January!

Lindsay