Life with Lachlan

I have been told that I should be blogging about being the parent of a child with ASD, therefore, here I am. Instead of starting a new blog I thought I'd continue with this one that I started years ago. If you go back there are some posts about Lachlan when he was a toddler.
So. Where do I start? First of all for those reading who don't know what ASD is let me explain. ASD is Autism Spectrum Disorder. The spectrum is wide and most people picture Rain Man when they hear autism. Lachlan is the opposite of non-verbal and is near the higher end of the autism spectrum (some people call it High Functioning Autism or Asperger Syndrome). My son is an Aspie and he is amazing. Every person with autism is different. There are no two alike in symptoms and traits. He also has ADHD (which most of the time overshadows the autism), DCD (Developmental Coordination Disorder) - he has low core muscle tone and has trouble with some gross and fine motor skills, also Sensory Integration Disorder (which is part of the autism but he is overly sensitive to certain sounds, sights, smells and textures).

One of the latest obsessions is The Lion King. We had Lion King 1 1/2 and Lion King 2 on DVD and he watched them over and over. For grading this year we bought him The Lion King (he calls it The Original Lion King'). He watches it no less than 6 times per week. In "Stewiacke" (what Lachlan calls our lowest basement level in the house), I found my old Lion King Soundtrack CD. I haven't decided if this was a mistake or not because although listening to it over and over being blasted all over the house constantly isn't enough, at least he entertains us with his rendition of the songs with the occasional dance move a la broadway. Yesterday morning he must have done 50 laps around the kitchen island repeating the lyrics "In the jungle, the mighty jungle, the lion sleeps tonight", over and over and over. Mike and I laughed because we knew that the poor daycare teachers were in for it but figured they'd be happy that it wasn't another 'Hakuna Matata' day.