Getting Started

So I thought I would give blogging a try.  I'm no good at writing in a journal, or maybe it's that I never have a pen and paper handy.  I always have my phone and/or computer, and I really wanted to document more about Dana.

Dana is my beautiful 3 year old daughter.  She is smart and sweet, funny and fantastic.  She also happens to be on the autism spectrum.  Dana has always been different, and at the same time very normal.  Our biggest hurdle has been communication.

Dana does not have good spontaneous conversational skills.  She also has a very hard time with abstract ideas.  Most of her "conversations" are made by repeating phrases that she has been conditioned to, reciting scenes out of movies, reciting books, or singing songs. 

Dana is in preschool and has started on first grade readers.  She can write her name, count to 50, and count to 10 in Spanish.  She can read digital clocks and calendars, and she somewhat understands what they mean. 

If you ask her if she is hurt, scared, sick, or happy; she doesn't know how to answer.  If it's not tangible, she doesn't understand. 

Dana is funny though.  She understands humor, mostly of the physical kind, like making faces and tickling.  Conversational humor is pretty much lost on her.  But she is always laughing and smiling at something.

Dana loves movies, Dora, Bob the Builder, Sesame Street, and Baby Einstein--just like all other kids her age.  But Dana memorizes everything she watches.  She also calls things by odd names which can be a mystery to us until we make the connection.  If she wants "bouncing in the trees," that is her Dora game.  If she wants "Baby Einstein Cats," that is really "Wordsworth."  "Pigs" is "Babe,"  and if she asks for "NemNems," she wants M&M's. 

Along with the memorization came an unbelievable gift.  Dana listens to every part of a movie.  This became evident one night when the end of a movie came and we let it roll during the credits.  The score was playing rather than than a song, and she was reciting the dialogue in the right places according to the music.  How many adults even pay that much attention to the background music?

So this blog will be about our obstacles and advances, and will hopefully educate those who don't understand and help those who see some of the same qualities in their own children.

I look forward to documenting our lives here, and thanks for reading.

Krishelle