Hi, first of all, thanks for the invite! I am honored to be asked to be part of this crew!

I am a mother of 3 boys. My youngest is a child with Autism. He wasn’t born with Autism, I hinestly believe is was vaccine induced!

Hunter will be 10 at the end of May. He had very limited speech until about the age of 4-ish. About 4-5 months before his speech blossomed I started giving him Omega 3 Essential Fatty Acids. I don’t know if it was a fluke that his speech took off after starting the fatty acids or if it just happened. We will never really know the real answer.

Hunter is great a math. When I sit down with him when it is time to do his math homework. He can figure stuff in his head faster than I can, you know, with double and triple addition and subtraction, also, multiplication and division, he doesn’t have to show the process of carry this number over here and there, etc., while I have to actually see the process on paper to figure it out, or use the calulator, quite embarrassing! LOL! I will add that he hates solving story problem.

At 5 years old he shocked us by saying his, ABC’s BACKWARDS!!! This is a great example of “THINKING IN PICTURES”, a book by Temple Grandin. Hunter could visualize in his head the ABC’s on the wall in his classroom. Or maybe I should say he has a photographic memory.

He doesn’t really have any friends, other than my middle son, and he knows that. I used to go school a lot during his recess times so he would have sometime to play with. Days that I didn’t go, I would ask him who he played with at recess and he would tell me “I don’t have any friends”, very heartbreaking. I had to stop going to school during recess because after recess he would beg me to let him come home with me. It got to be to much for me to handle.

I am very thankful for my middle son. He is 11 (they are 20 months apart) and understands Hunter like no one else. He is truly his best friend. He looks out for Hunter and involves him in just about everything he does. I don’t tell him to do this, he just does this on his own. He always says that when he is out of college (yes, he is 11 and talks about going to college all the time, I might add he is a straight “A” student! YIPPEE!), anyway… he says that he is going to have Hunter live with him so Hunter doesn’t have to be alone. How sweet is that?

Hunter does stim, hum, and he doesn’t flap his hands to much any more but he does do some goofy things with them. Certain noises bother him. When he gets home from school, immediately he takes all of his clothes off except his underware, thank goodness he keeps those on!

He loves playing video games and is really good at them.

He hates to lose at anything. He thinks he needs to win everytime. Or he has to be first. That does cause problems at home and in school. We are still working on trying to solve that, haven’t found a solution yet!

If you tell him something that he doesn’t agree with or doesn’t want to hear, he shoots back with a piercing scream, and he yells his answer or comment back to you. Very embarrassing in public. You know, people staring at you like “control your brat of a child”, it hard because people don’t know about the Autism, they can’t see that by looking at him. At times when we go out in public I will wear a “Autism Awareness” shirt of some sort or I will have him wear one in hopes that they will see it and be understanding and stop staring. I am sure most of you go through this and you know how hard it really is.

I put a couple of picture in the picture section of this crew. I hope that is okay.

Sorry I rambled on and on, trust me, I could continue, but I figure whom ever is reading this either fell asleep by now or stopped reading by now because of the length of it. Again, thanks for the invite to this crew!!

Susan