About Stuart Duncan

My name is Stuart Duncan, creator of http://www.stuartduncan.name. My oldest son (Cameron) has Autism while my younger son (Tyler) does not. I am a work from home web developer with a background in radio. I do my very best to stay educated and do what ever is necessary to ensure my children have the tools they need to thrive. I share my stories and experiences in an effort to further grow and strengthen the online Autism community and to promote Autism Understanding and Acceptance.
Author Archive | Stuart Duncan

Let me tell you a little about celebrating Autism

By on February 13, 2011 in Autism

When I tell the average person that my son has Autism, they feel really bad for me. The fact is that there is a lot to celebrate.

Milestones are an achievement, not just an item on a list

When you have a child with Autism, you learn to appreciate the milestones, both big and small. Some would say that we celebrate a little too much for such little accomplishments but I’d argue that we celebrate accordingly, it’s other parents who take them for granted.

First words, learning to walk, swimming, riding a bike, reading, writing… all these things that make parents proud are far more than just steps along the way when your child has Autism… they’re cause for celebration.

Take nothing for granted

Along the same lines, but very different from milestones, is taking nothing for granted. Unless you have a child with Autism (or another disability like it), you’ll probably never know what it’s like to be lucky enough to be hugged one time a year.

Does your child look you in the eye? If your child has Autism, maybe not. Does your child give you a hug or kiss sometimes? If your child has Autism, maybe not.

You will never ever realize just how much the tiniest little things can be so extremely important until they’re not there.

Patience, more than you ever thought possible

The biggest problem with milestones is that everyone knows what they are and when they should happen so when your child is missing them, everyone says something. It’s hard, it’s oh so very hard.

After a while though, you develop a thicker skin… not just the patience required to take their “advice” a little better but also to have the patience and self confidence in knowing that if you never give up on your children, the milestones will come.

The beauty that is around us

The world around us moves pretty fast and can be so filled with sights and sounds that it turns into a bit of a blurry mess. Our mind makes it that way to keep us from becoming overwhelmed, crazy and tired. We filter through a lot of everything that goes on in our daily lives without really realizing it.

Many people, especially the children, with Autism don’t have the same filtering capabilities and often times do get overwhelmed by it all. This often results in meltdowns or even violence.

You, as the parent, become increasingly aware of the world around you because you have to, because you need to know what you are getting your child into. Loud restaurants, carnivals, movie theaters… many many places can be far too difficult for your child to be able to process and you need to be aware of that before the fact.

As you develop this ability over time, it forces you to slow down and truly appreciate the sights and smells and sounds that surround us every single day.

You go outside and there isn’t a car in the neighborhood… it’s so very peaceful. Before you likely never would have noticed, much less enjoyed that feeling of peace, because your mind builds that filter in place before you ever go out and so you don’t notice if there are cars or not.

Your child is perfect because of who they are

It isn’t until others see your child as flawed, and worse, until you start to see your own child as flawed, that you can learn what is truly important… not a disability, not a disorder, not even a gift… a child is who they are inside and who they are inside is exactly who they are supposed to be… your child.

It’s ok if no one will ever look at your child the same way you do, they’re not supposed to. Our children are amazing human beings with unlimited potential.

The difference

Celebrate the differences, not just in your child, but in yourself. For better or worse, you’ve become a better person for it, you’ve become a better parent.  Your child isn’t like other children… and that seems hard to take but honestly, before your child was born, and you saw how “other children” are on the news or in movies… is that really what you wished for when you imagined having a child? For them to be like all the others?

No, none of us want our children to have it harder than anyone else, and no we don’t want our children to suffer… but many of us recognize that we can have these thoughts and these feelings while still being able to recognize and celebrate the differences.

Your child is amazing. You are amazing. Celebrate it… you’ve earned it.

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The simple request my son made that I’ll never forget

By on February 9, 2011 in Autism

My son had a really rough night last night, and tough day today as well with the flu. I’ll spare you the gory details, let’s just say that we didn’t get much sleep and he didn’t eat anything today.

As the day unfolded, I continually went over in my head the next blog post that I would make about how he has never been the “sucky” type when sick, quite the contrary. He tends to just shut down, get mellow and do nothing all day. Sometimes we don’t even know he’s sick except that he’s not doing anything.

But as I prepared my boys for bed, something trumped all of that. The hours and hours I had been writing and rewriting in my head were gone in an instant and replaced with what I am writing right now. I was that surprised by it.

I am one of the very fortunate parents that does get regular hugs and kisses from his children, even though one of them has Autism. Rather than what you would call a “regular” hug and kiss though, I get them in patterns. I wrote about it here. This has become a part of our nightly routine… get them a small glass of chocolate soy milk, read a story or watch a later episode of Cat in the Hat and then off to bed, hugs, kisses and goodnight.

Tonight, because Cameron has the flu, I had to say no. Cameron stood up in his bed and said “don’t forget hugs and kisses!” and I had to say no.. not tonight. It’s most likely that he’s shared it with the family already but it’s still not wise to take the chance so I had to tell him that being sick means getting no hugs and kisses.

His arms dropped to his sides and he said “can I touch you? please? hold my hand?”

At that moment, anything else I had planned to write faded away. I had to write about this. But I never did come up with adequate words to express exactly how hearing those words made me feel.

Honestly… I had no idea just how important that was to him. For all the parents out there that seldom or even never get that kind of physical contact, here was my son pleading with me to not be denied it.

I took his hand, told him make sure he doesn’t breath on me… and pulled him up for a giant sized bear hug.

Flu or not. I’ll never deny him a hug again.

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This is how my son shows compassion in an Autistic way

By on February 6, 2011 in Autism

When Cameron was 1, we took him to McDonalds because that’s just what parents do… children love that place, right? Well, it proved to be a complete fail. We didn’t even know he had Autism then but he knew it… he refused to eat anything they had and refused to join in with the other children in the Play Place. He enjoyed watching the other children play but didn’t really get in there.

We didn’t take him back for a long time after that… until his younger brother was old enough.

Fast forward a few years, Cameron is now 5 and his little brother (Tyler) is 3 and we felt it would be a good time to give it another try. Suffice to say, this time it went far better. We brought food for Cameron, Tyler will eat just about anything there. And they both played in the Play Place. They had a blast!

Yesterday we went again and while they played, I noticed a boy back inside the restaurant with his mom… his name is Jack. He was in Cameron’s class last year but not this year. He was also the one boy that Cameron identified with most last year.

Jack is almost double Cameron’s age, and quite a bright child but also what you would consider lower functioning. I was unsure whether or not they’d even allow it but I went back into the restaurant to say hi and mention that Cameron would love it if Jack would come play with him in the Play Place.

They got up and came in with us… Cameron was so very happy to see him. But they were so awkward looking… like they didn’t even know how to say hi to each other.

It was very obvious that the loud, echo filled, brightly coloured, children filled room was too much for Jack as he paced back and forth on his tip toes and flapping his arms… his mother was not concerned. I asked if he’s ok as he passed by, he said yes and kept going…

What impressed me most was that Cameron stopped going into the slides to play… he stayed with Jack. He didn’t talk to Jack, he didn’t pace… he just sort of hung around and waited.

When Jack felt ready, he approached Cameron and together they both when inside and popped out at the bottom of a slide together. Jack went straight back to stimming… Cameron went right back to waiting.

I was so very proud of my boy. He didn’t ask if he was ok, or try to console him, he didn’t even approach him… but he waited.

Again, Jack was ready and off they went and appeared down the slide once again. This time Jack had a great smile on his face as he went back to stimming.

Tyler went with them when they went but he didn’t stick around to wait. He was up and down those slides while Cameron waited.

Boys in a bubble

Boys in a bubble

All 3 of them ended up at the end of one of the tunnels at one point, together. I got a picture but all you can see is Jack’s red sweater.

As it came time to go, I left feeling very proud of Cameron. He was extremely shy about me approaching Jack, he was extremely shy about saying hi and he was extremely shy about talking to Jack when Jack was clearly needing to take some time to himself.

But he was patient and he was there for him. He didn’t leave Jack behind, he didn’t give up on him.

Cameron talked about Jack the rest of the day. He was just so very happy that Jack was there. Even though it meant only going back into the thing 3 times when he could have done so much more… he was just so happy to have a friend with him.

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The follow through. When disciplining, stick to your guns

By on February 3, 2011 in Autism

One of the more challenging things to do is discipline your children… book stores and libraries could fill entire sections just with books on the subject, there’s just so many opinions, methods, taboos and other topics to be aware of.

The one aspect that almost all agree on, and is also the most tricky to accomplish, is following through with your threats.

For example, my boys would not go to sleep once in bed… I can’t keep separating them, I can’t let them stay up late and make life harder for their teachers at school due to them being over tired… what do I do?

Well, I certainly can’t threaten them with much in the here and now… it’s bed time, they have pj’s on, they’re in bed. What can I take away? What kind of time out could I give them?

The most obvious thing to do is to threaten to take away something they like for the next day… in my boy’s case, television, video games, treats… it’s different for every child as every child has something different they really love.

What ever it is that you decide upon, you must follow through. It doesn’t matter if you threaten to take away their favourite hat or their will to live.. what ever it is, you better stand firm on that the next day and remind them what you said, what they did and why you have no choice but to take it away.

All children are smart, all children are clever… they will learn very quickly what an empty threat is if you make one. If you threaten to take away treats the next day, you better do it.. no matter what happens that next day.

In the case of a child with Autism, it’s doubly true because depending on how exactly Autism affects your child (everyone is different), there’s a good chance that the one time that you cave, will be the one and only time that is retained with any clarity. What I am trying to say is, they’ll forget the 6 times you held firm and remember the 1 time you didn’t.

As you can imagine, something like that would make all future threats of discipline a very futile task, and they’ll tell you that too. “Go to sleep or I’ll take away tv all day tomorrow.” will be met with “No! No taking away tv tomorrow! I will watch tv so there!”

You don’t have to be ruthless, you don’t have to threaten to take away much really… so long as you stick to your guns. If you say it, you had better mean it. Because if you have no intention on following through, you’ll only be making things harder for yourself from there on out.

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Dr. Paul Offit answered my question this week-end

By on January 31, 2011 in Autism, Autism vs Vaccines

Dr. Paul Offit did an interview with the fine folks over at the Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism this week-end. In preparation, they asked people on Twitter if they had any questions they’d like answered. I have lots, but one in particular that weighed on my mind, so I asked it… as did they… and he answered!

Earlier this month, I wrote a post making official my stance on the whole vaccine – autism thing going on that you may have heard of… in it, I made a very bold statement. In fact, I wrote it in bold.

The way I see it, if they can pump out a newer and better cell phone every 3 months, they can have new and better vaccines as well.

vaccinesI often read sites that list out the ingredients in vaccines, most don’t know what those ingredients really are… they just know that they sound like something else bad that they’ve heard of before and so… they must be bad too.

The one thing that struck me, however, was that the ingredients don’t seem to change from site to site… from writing to writing. Which got me to wondering whether or not they ever do change.

We all know that thimerosal was removed from most of the vaccines in 1991 (UK) and 1998 (US) but other than that, what else has been done?

If you’ve already clicked through to their site, as I’ve linked it above, you’ve probably already read it but for those that haven’t, here is my question along with his answer:

Are vaccines constantly upgraded and monitored for safety and efficacy?

Yes, like no other medical product, including all the drugs you put into your body and certainly more than anything you’d get at the General Nutrition Center. We have a very well-tested, well-worn vaccine schedule.

It’s not a huge answer nor is it very detailed… but I think it answers my question nicely and, with any luck, put some people’s concerns to rest.

I believe it’s very very important for parents to know that the vaccines that they introduced in 1940 are likely not the same vaccines they’re giving today. They’ve been modified, tested, modified, tested, remodified, tested and so on and so forth ensuring it’s as safe as they can possibly get it.

Because let’s be honest, if it was still the same ole same ole from 60 years ago, we’d all be even more scared than we already are.

Plus, he has a point. A drug that is released these days is released as is… with a laundry list of side effects. And so long as it’s up to code, even with those side effects, it never changes. It just continues to be used as it is. Perhaps an extra strength or new type will be released but that’s it.

Quite frankly, that scares me… their continual work on the vaccines is a comforting thought. So for what it’s worth to you, now you know, as do I.

Paul A. Offit, M.D., is an American pediatrician specializing in infectious diseases and an expert on vaccines, immunology, and virology. He is the co-inventor of a rotavirus vaccine that has been credited with saving hundreds of lives every day. Offit is the Maurice R. Hilleman Professor of Vaccinology, Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Pennsylvania, Chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases, and the Director of the Vaccine Education Center at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. He has been a member of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices.

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