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Marianne's BLOG
Marianne Bryant
There are six of us in our family, and Caity our youngest child has autism. She has one older brother, Charlie, and two older sisters, Holly, and Cara, as well as her Dad and I. We also have a new addition to the family, Gibbs our puppy, (and yes, he was named for “Gibbs” on the TV show, NCIS).
I would like to write about some of our current experiences with autism as well as going down memory lane with others. These are tales of how we dealt with autism, sometimes with much laughter, as well as tears, and in many cases, tears of joy. I would like to share our experiences, so that you will have a better idea of our family’s perspective on autism, as well as life through Caity’s eyes. Caity is now fourteen, so we have been dealing with autism for quite awhile now and I have many tales to tell.
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Caity meets the Power of her Mind
Marianne Bryant
Sometimes as I have mentioned before, I am absolutely amazed by some of the things that Caity can do. I recently experienced something that has caused me to . . .
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Caity Meets her Own Recipe
Marianne Bryant
Caity loves to cook and in particular to bake chocolate chip cookies, and recently asked if she could make a batch. Since we all love chocolate chip cookies, this did . . .
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Caity's First Argument
Marianne Bryant
I was the mother of two teenagers and a ten year old at the time. I would not have thought that an argument with a basically non verbal three year old would bring tears of joy to my eyes, but it did. . . .
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Caity Meets Her Countdown Visual
Marianne Bryant
I'm sure you will all know what I am talking about when I re-tell this next story. Your child finally gets invited to a birthday party and then you begin to get nervous. There is this little tiny part of you that almost wishes it hadn't happened because of all the anxiety that you, the mom, will go through. I used to always worry about how Caity would . . .
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Caity's Mom Experiences Separation Anxiety
Marianne Bryant
I am writing this now to prevent myself from sitting down and eating an entire container of Blue Belle Ice-Cream at 10:00 a.m. I just left Caity at the high school for the big trip to the University of South Florida and the yearbook workshop. She will be there for . . .
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Caity Meets a Budget
Marianne Bryant
I don't know about you, but I love online banking. I can check my account and have an update in seconds. I can also move money around from one account to the next again in a matter of seconds. I decided that it was high-time Caity began learning about a budget because she, as most teenagers do, think that money grows on trees. . . .
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Caity meets the Elevator
Marianne Bryant
Sometimes it is absolutely amazing when I think of how far we have come. I was going through some old photos and found a paper in the midst of the memories. The paper was from when Caity was three and it was a bulleted list of issues we had with her. It was written to her therapist at the time. I looked at the list and immediately began having flashbacks . . .
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A Sad, Serious, but Necessary Story
Marianne Bryant
I hate to address this issue, but this is something that happened in my neighborhood recently. It made me focus on this problem. As my daughter grows up and becomes a young woman, I realize that there are evil people in this world who could take advantage of her because of her autism. It is something I have been thinking about for a long time. . . .
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Caity Meets "The Faces"
Marianne Bryant
When Caity was about seven-years-old, she developed an interest in school yearbooks. Her older brother and sisters had purchased their elementary school yearbooks each year and they were sitting on a shelf in the living room. One afternoon I found her surrounded by yearbooks, just scanning the pages . . .
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Caity Meets a Broken Arm and the Hospital
Marianne Bryant
I was going through old files on my computer and was madly deleting everything when I found this file. I came across this brief glimpse of Caity at age eight and her experience with breaking her arm and going to the hospital. I have to be honest. It's been almost eight years since this happened and I do remember trying to deal with Caity without visuals. It was a lot harder than it sounds in these accounts. The worst part was . . .
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Caity Meets "The Oreo Cookie"
Marianne Bryant
It is absolutely amazing how much joy the little things in life can bring to your family. Autism doesn't really have a very good reputation for conjuring up good thoughts of a calm, happy, stress-free environment, so when any little thing happens that can help change that reputation by bringing in a little joy, then I'm all for it. . . .
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Caity meets South Carolina & Mom meets the high school parking lot
When Caity asked if she could go on the field trip from Florida to South Carolina with the yearbook staff, I thought that she would be my biggest worry. That was not the case. The biggest worry was to survive the high school parking and to get home safely in one piece, after dropping her off. We arrived at school at 7:15 a.m. and passed by the usual drop off point for parents. I was heading into the "no man's land" of the dreaded high school parking lot . . .
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Caity meets Facebook
Marianne Bryant
Caity has had a Facebook page for at least 3 years now and before that she had a "My Space". At first I was deathly afraid of the idea. I had visions of her sneaking out of the house to meet a "friend" in the middle of the night at the corner. She wasn't allowed to get . . .
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Caity Meets Softened Butter
Marianne Bryant
Caity loves to eat sweets. There is no way of getting around that fact. She just does. She has now discovered that if she can bake cookies, it opens up a whole new world of eating that involves the spatula, and the mixing bowl. Caity's Dad . . .
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