Achieve Center

I'm sitting in my house, and its a wreck! Let me tell you, there are all the dishes from dinner (and of course we have friends over so there are twice as many dishes as normal!) still on counter, the carpets need to be vacuumed and swept, there are clothes (clean and dirty!) everywhere that need to be folded and put away. Do I even need to go into how the playroom looks? One of my biggest struggles as a mom is how my house looks. I feel like I am constantly apologizing for the mess and making one excuse or another for it. There are certainly days where dishes get done, laundry is put away, and I would eat off my floors. Having 2 kids and dog, however, these days are few and far between! My days are often full of diapers, wiping away tears, playing mediator, and cleaning up whatever mess I can get to. They are also full of games, make believe, exploring, and playing outside. There is a twist to my life though. It is also full of therapy appointments, evaluations, and meetings. I have a 2 year old with PDD-NOS, a form of autism. She also has a Sensory Processing Disorder. My daughter is beautiful and smart and incredibly fun and funny! Her older sister is amazingly smart and SO advanced for her age. Another part of my life is spent constantly looking at Grace and weighing whether what she is doing is normal 2 year old behavior, what is extreme, what do I need to interrupt, change, ignore, respond to. I also constantly struggle to NOT compare her to Emma. Emma was so far ahead of everything and is SO well adjusted and just a great and easy kid.

Ever since Grace got her diagnosis at 18 months my life has changed. I never questioned her diagnosis (although many around me have and still do!), and I did "all the right things" that I was supposed to do. I started the paperwork to apply for ABA therapy for her. That was my whole end all be all goal. I quit my job so that I could pursue therapy through them and put my whole dream career on hold. After months of waiting, a move across the state, and a new job for my husband (which promised initially to hold the opportunity to seek therapy through his new jobs insurance) and filling out all the paperwork and getting a second opinion, both of which strongly recommended ABA therapy..... we got turned down. Every avenue we have pursued has been turned down.

It is very hard to hear no, when you know that is the best option for your child. The thing I realized I was forgetting, was that it was SO important to me to get the best for my child, I forgot I already had the best. I have God. Who could possibly have a more vested in my child than the one who made her?!? One of the most quoted versus about children in the Bible is, "Jesus said, 'Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of Heaven belongs to such as these.'" Matthew 19:14 Also in Mark Jesus says, "Whoever welcomes one of these little children in my name welcomes me..." Mark 9:37. If the Heavenly Father whocreated my child is taking care of her, who cares if I get therapy or anything else for her! This has been something I have struggled with off and on the last year. And like always, when I finally let go and said "God I am putting this in YOUR hands and not mine" then a solution shows up!

Many of you know in February we will be getting a service dog for Grace. Its been an up and down roller coaster of emotions from excitement to fear about paying for it, back to excited about the effect it will have on Grace. Where do we go from there though? I have been thinking a lot about the long term for Grace. We all know what she is capable of, but how to get her there. Well today we got a taste of that answer!

Through a set of circumstances that were definitely led by God I finally managed to apply at the Achieve Center. I did this knowing nothing about it except that since we have moved I have been told over and over I should go there. Even after applying there I knew nothing about it! Yesterday we had our meeting with them to set up a treatment plan (I was certainly confused at first since they had never even met Grace!) We now have a plan with them where they will meet with her 2x a week and work on ABA therapy, play therapy, work on her social interactions, work on her emotions (mainly the aggression and anxiety) and even incorporate some sensory therapy into it (although they dont call it that). When I told them about the dog their first question was, can he come with her? I was ecstatic! Between the Achieve Center and what she is getting from school and Congo, she is getting more and better therapy than I had ever dreamed for! I was convinced the only answer was 20 hours intensive ABA therapy in my home, but once I let go of my plan and my control over it I got something WAY better than that! She is getting therapy is several different social settings that are going to focus specifically on those goals we havent yet met for her! PRAISE GOD! :)