Mafe Maria: A Creative Playground by Maria Q. Stultz
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(8 entries)
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 [...]
I’ve always believed in this: If you do everything you are supposed to do; if you work hard; if you really work hard at getting something, there’s no way that the universe will not compensate you for your efforts. This used to be my motto throughout my five years at college… While my boyfriend would [...]
Funny. Just a few hours after posting that I’m on my way to become a force of nature, a soft wind blows and I’m all out of balance feeling like a victim, hoping that I never find out that it was a FREAKING VACCINE what triggered Joaquin’s autism. Because, yes, he’s always had social challenges, [...]
The “Romper Room” is Joaquin’s Son-Rise playroom. I still remember how hard it was to do focused therapy throughout the house before having this room ready… Exhausting! Constantly losing Joaquin to the 1000 distractions that the whole house offers to a little boy with a short attention span, and then having to follow him everywhere [...]
I’ve just received my rental car for the week. After placing my bag in the trunk and contemplating all the little ways how this cheap rental is not as nice as our family car, I pull out the map package I’ve printed earlier charting the route to the Option Institute. The number of steps is [...]
First of all, I am so thankful and touched by all the thoughtful and warm messages I’ve received since my last post. I also appreciate so much your explicit request to keep writing and share our journey and experiences. I’m happy you asked, because I realize that the road we’ve taken is surprisingly not very [...]
You can’t imagine how many times I’ve sat down to write this first post during all these weeks of silence. Some times I’ve failed because there’s so much to tell. Other times I’ve failed because I’m in the wrong mood to write it. The rest of the times I’ve failed because I’m afraid of labeling [...]
When you first find out that your child is (or may be) autistic, it breaks you in two. But then you realize that ASD is not a death sentence. It can actually be a very special gift, if you choose to see it that way. As a parent, you make that choice every day.
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