My name isn’t important.  This blog isn’t so much about me, per se, as it is about my son, my family, and the intersection between what you want and what you get in life.

My son has Autism.

Four words, simple in construction and easily read.  And even after having taken this long to be able to say them, to write them, it’s still hard to come to grips with what those words actually mean.

A recent Time magazine cover asked readers if they were ‘Mom Enough’ for attachment parenting.  I scoff at the cover.

Mom enough for attachment parenting? Try being dad enough to raise a child with Autism.  Then we can talk.

So a quick primer:

The Monster is our eldest son, the one with Autism.  Monster is now twelve years old, and is a sweet-natured child who’s significantly delayed compared to his peers.  (As every report from school seems to start: “[The Monster] is a sweet, delightful, compliant child.”)  This blog started when the Monster was four.  We’ve called him “The Monster” since he was two days old, due to his size – he was 8 pounds and 10 ounces at birth, a “monster” sized child to us – and it stuck.  (He actually answers to that, among one or two other nicknames.)  Bear in mind that, to him, a “monster” is something that you see on Sesame Street – lovable, cuddly, cute and inquisitive.  If your biggest issue is the Monster’s nickname… you really need to find some new advocacy projects for yourself.

“R” is our second child, the Monster’s younger brother.  (You’ll find that I refer to most folks by initials in here.)  R is nine, going on six-feet-under, and otherwise settling into what can pass for a neurotypical child, albeit a scarily intelligent one.  R reads, plays Roblox and Minecraft, and is a general pain in the posterior, as most nine year olds should be.

My wife is a stay-at-home mother, so she’s the one who frequently goes with the Monster to his therapies and deals with doctors while I’m at the office.  She’s also the one who, more often than not, keeps me honest when I tell a whopper as part of a story around here.

I’m the designated bull-in-a-china-shop, who appears when needed to drop the hammer on folks.  When I’m not raising hell on the Monster’s behalf, I work as a manager to software engineers, as my way of paying the bills and keeping insurance coverage to pay for the Monster’s therapies.

And this, folks, is our life in a nutshell…

Important site caveat:  All opinions on this blog are mine, and mine alone.  I can never guarantee that my wife agrees with anything that I post within these pages, much less any organization with whom I may be affiliated.