Mafe Maria: A Creative Playground by Maria Q. Stultz
Hello gray • View full piece
Have been going through a blah time all the way since around Thanksgiving. Been so bummed down by this mood since it’s such a long drop from the high I had reached by chance a month ago. I was doing so well… getting it so much, that I even thought I didn’t need any more [...]
Over the last month before turning three years old, Joaquin started writing numbers, drawing their outlines, spelling words and writing some, all by himself. His memory is amazing. His focus, passion, and control when drawing and writing is (I believe) extraordinary. All signs of a beautiful mind at work. And, as exciting and reassuring as [...]
This is an ode to Joaquin, and Joey, and Eliza, and me… To the amazing adventure we’ve lived during the last seven months after discovering Joaquin’s autism. It goes also to my Son-Rise family… Everybody at the Autism Treatment Center of America, and to all the “beacons of light”… The mothers and fathers, and volunteers [...]
Seeing how Joaquin is constantly developing in unexpected ways, I’m finally coming to understand the whole notion that he is in fact developing in a way that is comfortable and natural for him. Whether as parents we think his development is slow, or “different” in a bad way… that’s just our judgement based on comparing [...]
Compassion… What does it mean to you? On facebook, I asked this question to my friends. I’m interested in knowing what people mean when they say they feel compassion for somebody. I have my own understanding, and based on it — what I believe compassion means — I’ve found myself disliking the idea of a [...]
Oh boy… It’s going to be a challenge to write this story in 30 minutes (the time I have allotted to this particular activity today), but my life is lately all about smiling in the face of challenges, so here we go… As I previously said, we recently introduced “nice strangers” in Joaquin’s life and [...]
Last weekend we enjoyed the company of Katrina Kramlich, a lovely and experienced Son-Rise child facilitator who came to our home to play with Joaquin in his romper room. The experience was absolutely wonderful, especially because the universe conspired to fit everything in such a perfect way, that Eliza (our first volunteer), had a chance [...]
01. Help! Exhausted. Having to cook every meal every single day really drains me. Wish I could buy prepared food once in a while… And with all this cooking spilling over the weekends, I don’t have time to prepare games for therapy. By the end of each day I’m tired and can’t work (on games) [...]
In preparation for my coming trip back to Massachusetts to attend an advanced Son-Rise course, last week I had to fill out a long survey reporting all kinds of details about Joaquin’s current state. The survey was exactly the same I took back in May, just a few weeks after having become aware of Joaquin’s [...]
01. Giving SCD a Try a.k.a. Finding Joy in Cooking.During the few months after diagnosing Joaquin, I have resisted all the special diets and biomedical approaches collective wisdom recommends for autistic kids. Joaquin does not show signs of GI problems, but recently I decided to try SCD, the Specific Carbohydrate Diet, just in case that [...]
To give you a sense of what goes on in the romper room, I’ll share a few moments from a Son-Rise session Joaquin and I had this week. In the previous days, we had spent a lot of time around the blackboard and a piece of paper, writing down numbers he would dictate to me. [...]
During the few months after diagnosing Joaquin, I have resisted all the special diets and biomedical approaches collective wisdom recommends for autistic kids. The autism label seems to be attached to all kinds of conditions (low immune system, food allergies and intolerances, poor muscle tone, yeast overgrowth), and some people automatically assume that gastrointestinal problems [...]