Taekwondo and Autism: The Unsung Hero

It was during Taylor's third grade year that he finally found his words to really express himself. 

His sentence were still broken and not perfect, but he was finally able to articulate what was causing him happiness, curiosity and even more importantly, distress.

It was around this time that I decided to place him in karate. I had been talking to friend of mine who's son was taking Taekwondo and she spoke of how great the instructor was and that she really it thought would be really good for Taylor.

Well, I have to admit, I was very reluctant at first. I took Taekwondo when I was kid and I knew how it went. Those instructors are serious and do not take lightly to disrespect or kids that can’t pay attention. The instructors yell loudly, whether it is during a kick, a punch or just to get the kids to stand at attention. The students also yell so there was that, too. 

A classroom of people yelling? This was my biggest concern.

Don’t get me wrong, I loved it when I took it, but was this for Taylor?

Gymnastic sure as hell didn’t work for him, so why not? Let’s try this out.

My first step, as you may have already guessed, was to sit down with the owner and instructor of the school, Mr. Smith. I sat in his office and explained to him that Taylor had high functioning autism and was just beginning to talk in full sentences. Basically, I was trying to say, without saying it, “Please be nice to him.”

I told Mr. Smith that Taylor may only last a month, and asked if he would allow him to do just a trial run before signing on for longer. When we tried gymnastics, Taylor only lasted for a total of 5 classes. UHG! I was really hoping for him to make it at least a month, maybe two?

I explained to Mr. Smith that I did not care if Taylor ever made it past a white belt because that wasn’t the reason I was signing him up. My goal for Taylor was to learn to listen to people. To take verbal instructions. I also believed Taekwondo would help him with his fine and gross motor skills as well.

At this point in Taylor’s life, he was still struggling with handling too many things at once. If you talked to him, he could not look at you. In fact, he had to walk around while you talked to him so he could fully process what you were saying. He simply could not do both at the same time. Cute when he was four, not so much when he was nine.

 “If you can teach that kid to stand still while someone is talking to him, it is worth every dime,” I told Mr. Smith.

He assured me that he could do that for Taylor and so began Taekwondo.

It wasn’t long before my middle son, Brendan, wanted to join Taylor on the karate floor. At first I was hesitant. Brendan was in ALL the sports and I wanted Taylor to have his “thing”, but I saw that Brendan watched and studied every class that his brother went to. I finally relented and let Brendan do the free class one night with Taylor. When Brendan proceeded to shout out all the tenets and already knew half the form, I couldn’t say no.

I think Brendan doing Taekwondo with Taylor was huge in keeping Taylor focused and involved. Taylor is the older brother and he wanted to show Brendan what he knew. Brendan also helped keep Taylor focused in class and out of trouble.

One particular day I noticed that Mr. Smith was really having a time trying to get Taylor to pay attention. “TAYLOR!, TAYLOR!” was all I heard during most of the class. As I watched, I noticed that Taylor kept looking upwards at the ceiling.

Mr. Smith yelled again, “TAYLOR!” and then Taylor snapped back to attention only to look upwards again a few short minutes later. He was clearly not paying attention. I looked up at the ceiling to try and determine what was so interesting and realized what the problem was.

White Noise.

After class, I pulled Mr. Smith aside and told him what I thought the problem was that day with Taylor. It was the overhead fluorescent lights.

The next class, Taylor was standing on the front row at the beginning of class, once again looking up at the ceiling.

This time, instead of trying to get his attention, Mr. Smith asked “Taylor, what is it? Do you have a question?”

Taylor answered, “What is that noise?”

Mr. Smith explained to him that the lights overhead made a buzzing sound.

Yes! And that was that. Taylor no longer looked up. The distraction was no longer a distraction. Taylor still heard it, but now he knew what it was. Just one question and Taylor’s world made sense again.

We adults learned a great lesson that day, too. What may seem like a behavior problem, could really be something else entirely and the solution may be as simple as observing the child. Really watch and see. Are they clearly ignoring you or could it be something else? 

Taylor and Brendan continued Taekwondo for the next three years and became black belts. While Taylor would never hurt a thing, the discipline he learned, the ability to “listen and do” simultaneously, far exceeded any medal he would win in a tournament. Taekwondo, for Taylor, went above and beyond all my expectations and I am forever grateful to Mr. Smith, Mrs. Duke and the other instructors that pushed Taylor and believed that he was capable.  

There are many stories I could tell of just this experience, some hilarious and some mortifying (for me mostly) but the bottom line is that Taekwondo would be one experience in a long line of life experiences that would help progress Taylor to where he is today.

"Happy Birthday" is the worst!

As Taylor continued through elementary school, we learned more about what sensory sensitivity was really about and how difficult it can be to find the source of the discomfort.

Some things that I thought would bother him wouldn’t faze him at all. Loud music? Taylor LOVES loud music with heavy metal being his favorite. Even today, if a song comes on that he likes, we have to turn it up, while he simultaneously listens to a completely different song through his phone. With one headphone in, he would listen to both songs together.

Personally, this is where MY sensory sensitivity hits. It drives me nuts! How he handles that all at once, I may never know. It gives me a horrible headache, but he seems to be able to separate out both songs as he listens and enjoy both of them.

Commercials? That’s a big “No”! It doesn’t matter if it is on the radio or the TV, if a commercial comes on, no matter where he is in the house, he will run into the room, almost at a panic, and turn it down while holding his ears.Taylor even learned how to hold both ears closed using only one hand. He will shrug one shoulder up to it cover his ear while using his left hand to cover the other ear. This way, he still has his right hand free to continue doing whatever it is that he is doing. He has done this since I can remember.

Why don't all loud sounds bother him? Great question. Excellent in fact.

I have no idea. This is one of those mysteries I have yet to solve.

One thing that has made his life better are the headphones. He has them with him at all times and it has helped him deal with environments that otherwise may be a sensory overload. If a place is too loud or has a noise that bothers him, he just puts on his headphones and listens to his favorite songs or videos.

When he was still little, one thing that was guaranteed to send him into a full blown panic attack was the singing of the “Happy Birthday” song. We learned this the hard way when Taylor was 18 months old.

The whole family had all gotten together one evening that just so happened to also be my mother-in-law’s (MeeMaw) birthday. When we arrived at Mike's uncle and aunts house, MeeMaw met us in the driveway and got Taylor out of his car seat to carry him inside. As soon as MeeMaw walked into the house holding Taylor, Mike's uncle broke out into the loudest, most off key song of “Happy Birthday.” It was hilarious…to everyone but Taylor.

Taylor started crying and we could not get him to calm down. Mike's uncle felt so bad, but Mike and I told him that Taylor was just tired that evening. I don’t think it was the loud singing that made Taylor cry, I think it was because everyone joined in and also started singing together. No less than ten people were singing. Not one person was singing in key. No one singing in sync. 

Think about it. 

How many times have you listened to people sing “Happy Birthday”? Now try and think how many times it sounded GOOD. You’re struggling for an answer right now. I'm right, aren't I?

When Taylor was three, we went to one of his friend’s birthday parties. As we all began to sing "Happy Birthday" to her, I saw Taylor run out the back door. I ran after him and found him hiding under the back deck, holding his ears tight, curled up in a ball, crying his eyes out.

Okay. This was real. For whatever reason, Taylor couldn’t handle this song. He was completely inconsolable. I ended up sitting under the deck with him for almost thirty minutes trying to redirect him so he could move on from this song.

At Taylor’s fifth birthday party, I made sure to tell everyone not to sing “Happy Birthday” to him. They waited until he left the room and sang it anyways, leaving me wondering "who is this party really for?"

That was Taylor's last birthday party. Every birthday after that, we went somewhere special and had a much happier birthday boy.

One thing I know for certain is that I cannot change the world for Taylor. People will continue to sing “Happy Birthday” in Taylor’s presence. 

Now, when we go to birthday parties, I give him a head’s up. I walk up to him and whisper in his ear, “Taylor, they are about to sing ‘Happy Birthday’. Taylor takes that moment to put on his headphones or leave the room and then comes back after it is over. We have learned how to handle it. More importantly, Taylor has learned how to handle it.

Your first thought may be, “Well, the answer is simple. Just don’t go to birthday parties.”

Okay. Let's think about this because that was my first answer, too. 

It didn't work.

How many times have you been out to dinner and the waiters and waitresses start suddenly singing happy birthday to someone in the restaurant?

How many times have you walked into church or maybe a soccer game or a lunchroom and everyone decides to sing happy birthday to someone?

I can tell you that it happens more than you know. If it doesn’t affect you, then you don't really think about it. When you have a child that has a meltdown when he hears it, believe me, you will remember every single time it has happened. Having a panic attack over the birthday song may sound silly until you see it happen. I can promise you, there is nothing “Happy” about it.

Then, Taylor discovered YouTube. He found new ways to sing “Happy Birthday” and would ask if he could play his videos at birthday gatherings instead. The irony is that most of the versions he found were far more obnoxious than the original, but Taylor loved it. They made him laugh, so they made us laugh, too.

He still does this today. I always ask if we can sing and what we usually get is “how ‘bout this instead?” and then he will show us a new version on YouTube. The video below is from his last birthday. He let us sing with his video, then he had to listen to the video without us singing.

We have fun with this now and it is no longer a traumatic experience. It took us a few years, many tears and trials and errors but we learned a way around it. Taylor learned a way to function with this discomfort and that is what Mike and I work so hard to help him do. 

Our goal is always to teach Taylor how to handle things that are stressful to him and handle himself well in this crazy world of ours.

The Reading Loft: A Safe Haven

Taylor on his very first train ride on a REAL train. 

In my last post I had begun the conversation about sensory sensitivity and how it affects the lives of autists and their families.

When your child is non-verbal or limited in their speech, it's especially hard to determine what may be causing your child distress. We parents become detectives trying to solve the mystery of “why is my child crying?”

It can be frustrating, to say the least, and sometimes the mystery is never solved and ended with me in tears along with Taylor.

When Taylor was four years old, my husband and I were finally able to determine that Taylor could not handle loud crowded rooms. It caused him so much distress and he would just scream. 

What was interesting to us is that Taylor didn’t seem to mind ALL things loud. For example, Taylor LOVED the sounds of trains. If we were ever stopped at a railroad track, he wanted us to roll down the window so he could hear the whistle blow and hear the clack of wheels on the tracks. He is now twenty years old and he still loves this. As soon as the railroad crossings go down, so do the car windows.

Put Taylor in a crowded cafeteria when he was in kindergarten though, and he would be gone OUT THE DOOR! He was fast, too! We called him a “bolter” as in “a bolt of lightning". With my husband and I finally realizing how awful crowd noises were to Taylor, we were able to put this in his I.E.P when he started Kindergarten and the school made adjustments to his schedule to help with this.

The biggest concern was lunch period. If you are a parent, then you know how loud a lunchroom full of elementary kids can be. The solution was to place Taylor in the first group of children to go to the lunchroom. It’s a simple thing, but oh my goodness what a difference that made for Taylor. Going to the first lunch period meant that the noise of the lunchroom would be a gradual increase around him. Taylor would be able to adjust to the increase of the noise instead of dealing with the shock to his senses of walking from a quiet hallway into a loud lunch room. It worked like magic.

We still had a lot of bumps and sharp turns in the road to work through, though. His kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Gibbs, was amazing and she stayed in contact with me on a weekly basis. One of the first (and biggest) problems we encountered with Taylor was his tendency to run out of the classroom. Unlike all the other teachers on the hall, Mrs. Gibbs had to keep her classroom door shut at all times so if Taylor chose to bolt, he would at least be slowed down when he went to open the door.

This became a daily problem. Mrs. Gibbs was having to chase my son down the hall on a regular basis. This needed to stop. My husband and I sat down with Mrs. Gibbs to figure out a solution but first we had to solve the mystery. Why was Taylor trying to escape the classroom?

After asking Mrs. Gibbs several questions about how a typical day for Taylor looked like, the problem began to reveal itself…and the solution.

Most of the instances where Taylor wanted out of the classroom was when the classroom became louder than usual or they broke into different groups, all doing different things. I think the commotion of all the students getting out of their desks at once was too much. Basically, when Taylor became over stimulated, he needed to get out. It didn’t help that the little girls wanted to “help” Taylor. They were sweet as ever and just wanted to be little mommies, but this meant constantly pulling on him, wanting to hold his hand or sit next to him as he worked on his computer. This really annoyed Taylor, Mrs. Gibbs was certain of that. This would lead to more problems, but for now we had to solve the first problem. Why was Taylor running out of the classroom and how could we make him stop?

I stayed up all night thinking about this. Trying to put myself in Taylor's shoes and I feel like I began to understand what was happening. During our meeting the next morning, I said to Mrs. Gibbs “Imagine you are in a crowded party trying to work a hard math problem or just read a book. People keep jostling you, pushing you, pinching you. They keep yelling in your ear. Some people keep coming up to you and try to squeeze you really hard. Maybe they have the music cranked way, way up. You become very stressed out. What do you want to do?”

Immediately she says, “I would want to leave.”

YES!

While no one was pinching or screaming at Taylor, for him the stimulus was the same. Every sense was on extreme alert and he was completely stressed out. With no ability yet to use his words correctly to tell people to stop touching him or be quiet, he did the only thing he could think of. He ran away. Fight or Flight? Most of the time it was Flight, although some of those little girls experienced that Taylor could bite hard. Those were the Fight days. Those were the worst days.

The conclusion? Taylor was highly stressed out. He was essentially having panic attacks, multiple times on a daily basis.

The solution?

Mrs. Gibbs had a reading loft in her classroom. It was like a top bunk bed with books all around. Taylor loved this area. When the class would break off into reading time, this is where Taylor wanted to be.

So Mrs. Gibbs had the suggestion of giving Taylor this option as opposed to running away.

This would also be a fantastic way to get Taylor to start using his words.

The next time Taylor was in the class and tried to escape, Mrs. Gibbs said to him, “If you need a break, use your words. Say ‘I need a timeout’.” She then told him that if he used his words, he could take a timeout in the reading loft until he felt better.

It took a couple of times but Taylor got it. At this point in his life he was learning to talk by learning complete phrases since he was still unable to create his own sentences yet. This helped him so much. When he became stressed or overwhelmed, he would go to Mrs. Gibbs and say “I need a break”.  The first few times, he just tried to go straight to the loft instead of out the door, but Mrs. Gibbs insisted he use his words first. So, not only did Taylor get a chance to ‘reset’ after a stressful situation, he was also discovering the reward of using his words.

He never stayed up in the loft long. Just the time he needed to calm down and work through his panic. What we didn’t expect was how this would help him become less and less overwhelmed. The longer the school year went on, the less “Timeouts” Taylor needed. I think for Taylor, just knowing he had a place to go if he needed it, reduced his panic attacks significantly.

It was such a small little thing and yet it changed his whole year and made his life and the lives of his teacher and peers so much better as well.

Sometimes the solution to a big problem can be the simplest thing and I am so grateful for Mrs. Gibbs for working with us and helping Taylor have a great start in his school career.

What is Sensory Sensitivity?

I was having lunch with a couple of friends of mine the other day and the discussion of "Sensory Friendly" came up and how important this is for parents who have kids with special needs. 

What does "Sensory Friendly" mean and why is it necessary?

I don't want to do these children a disservice by just skimming over the surface of this topic. So, before I jump into this post, let me warn you, this may be long, but hopefully it will be helpful. For this reason, I will break this subject down into several small posts giving you my perspective and a glimpse into what our experience with sensory sensitivity has been with Taylor. 

Okay. Let's start with the "what".

The sensory friendly initiative also known as the sensory movement allows individuals with autism and other sensory needs the ability to see and experience all the things the world has to offer, without being overwhelmed by everything. (You can learn more about what our friends at KultureCity are doing with this here.)

There are many ways business owners can create a sensory friendly environment to their businesses. One way is by offering head phones if their environment is very loud. Having quiet areas or picture signs are also ways to create a sensory friendly environment.

However, the most important thing a business owner can do is educate the staff about sensory sensitivity and the best tools they can use to help if a situation were to occur.

Why is this necessary?

The short answer? Acceptance.

If you have a child on the spectrum, I am sure you already know what it means to be sensory sensitive, but let me give you some examples that I have experienced with Taylor over the years.

When Taylor was 18 months old, my dad became an ordained minister. I was so proud of my dad and I wouldn't have missed the service for anything. My husband and I took Taylor with us to this large church where the ceremony was taking place.  After the service, I picked up Taylor from the baby room and then met my husband and my dad outside of the fellowship hall where they were waiting for us so we could all go in together. 

Taylor was so happy to see his Pop and wanted to go to him. My dad took Taylor from me and then opened the door to the fellowship hall to go inside. My dad didn't make it a foot in the door before Taylor was suddenly screaming. I don't mean crying, I mean, we thought he was hurt! My dad thought he had accidentally pinched Taylor or something and quickly stepped back into the hallway and handed Taylor back to me. 

As soon as the doors were shut again, Taylor's cries ceased. 

"Okay," we thought, "Let's try this again." My dad opens the door and Taylor starts screaming immediately but this time, I was holding Taylor. I knew I didn't pinch that baby! 

We finally figured out it was the noise of the people inside the fellowship hall. Since we were the last ones in, all the other attendees were already inside the fellowship hall, eating, talking and laughing. It was very loud in that room and Taylor was having none of it. Going from the quiet hallway into a room with several hundred people talking at once was a complete sensory overload for Taylor. 

He WAS hurting. The sound was literally hurting his ears and maybe his head. Remember, Taylor wasn't talking at this age so this was like a mystery we were trying to solve. It's only hind sight that we knew what was going on then. This was before he was diagnosed, so on this night we just chalked it up to Taylor being a very tired baby.

During those toddler years, we seemed to always have a very tired baby when it came to going out in a public place. We could no longer go to restaurants. I mean, we certainly tried to, but it was such a miserable experience...for all of us! We would put Taylor in the high chair and he would scream the entire time. We tried bringing Taylor's favorite foods with us for him to eat. It didn't matter. What I did know was that Taylor wanted out of that highchair. We couldn't do that, of course. If we took him out of the high chair, he would have headed straight for the door, and fast! We didn't understand at that time what was going on. Taylor wanted to escape that atmosphere. It was just too much for him. My family and I just thought we were experiencing the "terrible twos". The thought of a sensory sensitivity issue hadn't even entered into our vocabulary yet. So, we just didn't go out to dinner much for about 2 years.

Take-out it was.

One time, I remember in particular, was also when was Taylor was around 18 months old. We wanted to visit a new restaurant that we thought would work for Taylor. This restaurant sat right on a creek next to a railroad track in our home town. Taylor LOVED trains, so my husband and I thought this would be perfect! Taylor would be able to sit and watch the trains while we adults had a great dinner. 

We didn't last 15 minutes! When we walked in the door, the first thing Taylor saw was an enormous moose head mounted on the wall above the hostess desk. It was HUGE!

Taylor balked! To his defense, it was ginormous, so we took Taylor out to the front porch of the restaurant to wait. When our name was called, I had to go the long way around the hostess desk with Taylor so that he wouldn't be traumatized again by the giant moose. Once we got to our table, I sat Taylor down in his chair and prayed for a train to come by. I sat down and looked over at Taylor and saw that  his eyes were huge, looking up at the walls all around him with his little lip was quivering. He was terrified! All around us were mounted animal heads! Deer, bears, wildcats, fish, you name it and my child was about to go into a full blown melt down.

We left before the waitress could even bring us our water.

So, okay, this may not have been as much of a "sensory thing" per say, but many years later we would revisit this restaurant when Taylor was four years old. When we pulled in the parking lot, Taylor kept repeating one word and pointing at the front door. "Moose, moose, moose."

We were stunned! We had been to this place for literally 15 minutes when he was 18 months old and he REMEMBERED the giant moose! The difference is that THIS time, he was prepared . Taylor expected to see the animals on the wall and he was not scared this time. This is an example of how pic syms can help children on the spectrum in a place of business. 

Maybe if there had been something right outside the door with photos of the animals on the wall, Taylor would have looked forward to seeing them. Who knows?

Maybe not. Honestly, they bothered me, too.

It took us another two years for Mike and I to finally figure out that Taylor did not like loud crowd noises at all. As I mentioned in the post before this one, if there were more than a few people in the room talking at once, that was it. Meltdown.

The night it finally clicked with me was Christmas Eve when Taylor was four. We had just bought our new home and wanted to share it with our entire family, so I volunteered to host my mother-in-law's family for Christmas. There were about 15-20 people in our house that evening. As the night went on, we began to relax, catch up and laugh at family stories and the volume got louder and louder.

I heard it first. Crying. No, it was more like a yell-cry. My cousin looked at me and asked "is that Taylor?!"

I ran upstairs and laying on the bridge that overlooked our living room was Taylor. He was laying on the floor, curled up in a fetal position with his hands over his ears. This was very out of character for my quiet Taylor.

It was the saddest thing ever. I felt awful. Taylor couldn't deal. We had never had that many people in our new house before and he wasn't ready. Between the loud talking, unwrapping Christmas presents and other children running around the house, Taylor was in a total sensory overload.

I finally was able to calm him down and the evening turned out wonderful, but I had learned something very important about my son and it went a long way in helping him in future.

People with Autism are very sensory sensitive. It's like all five of their senses are on high volume all the time.  My family learned along with me that night what that looked like and what we could do to make Taylor's evening more enjoyable. We brought our voices down some. We sent the other kids to the playroom to play. We made sure Taylor knew he could leave the room if he needed to "get away" and most importantly, we paid closer attention to how he was handling the situation.

We became aware, accepted it and then we worked with him.

That is what sensory friendly is about it. I want to help educate people and encourage business owners to become more inclusive for those that have sensory issues. Hopefully, through this blog, I can do just that.

It's just not enough to be aware. Awareness is acknowledging there is a need. Acceptance is knowing there is a need and then moving to do something about it.

My next post will elaborate more on this subject for those that would like to learn more. Stay tuned...

The Big Day: Taylor Graduates!

"Hey, um, my name is Taylor Joseph South."

The big day was finally here. Taylor was graduating high school! Not only was he graduating, he was graduating with his class, his friends that he had grown up with all through school. He was also graduating with a Standard Diploma, something this boy worked his butt off for!

I was one very proud mom. He had worked so damn hard for this day. Taylor was just so happy because for him, this day meant "no more homework, forever."

This was a very happy day but it was also a very hard day...for me. I knew I would be an emotional basket case but I was completely unprepared for the feeling that would hit me as we went into the huge arena where their graduation would take place. This was a college arena and it was enormous!

We arrived early so we would have plenty of time to get Taylor where he needed to go and then find some really good seats for ourselves and our guests.

We walked around to the side entrance where the seniors were gathering. We began to walk in the door with Taylor but my husband and I were stopped by the teacher standing outside the door. She wouldn't let us go in with him.

What!?

Graduates only. Sorry parents.

"But wait! You don't understand, I have to be with him," I wanted to scream.

Taylor was already gone. Poof! Into the building with a mass of 18-year-olds.

All I could think of was "He needs me!! I have to be with him!"

My husband assured me Taylor would be okay as he led me to the main entrance.

My head was a mess. I was a mess. How could my husband be so calm?

What if Taylor had trouble with his robe?

What if he couldn't get his cap on right?

What if he didn't stand in the right line or got out of alphabetical order?

Was there someone back there to help him?

I was panicked. My husband continued to try and reassure me that Taylor would be fine, but as the time went by I just became more and more antsy.

There was nothing I could do. I finally went with our family and friends to find the spot where we could sit and see Taylor perfectly, and then we waited.

Taylor's school had more than 400 students graduating that day. With our last name being South, he would be one of the last to enter and would sit somewhere on the back rows.

Did I mention how big this place was and how many people were there? How were we going to find him afterwards. What if he got lost? What if it was too loud?

I was seriously struggling here, much to my friends and family's amusement.

As the students made their way into the arena and to their seats, I finally saw him all the way on the other side coming down the stairs. Taylor was holding a piece of paper that had his full name on it. He would hand this to the principal before he walked across the stage. When I saw that piece of paper my first thought was, "He will forget to take it up there and then he will panic."

"Please don't let him forget," I prayed.

It was also right after I took the picture above that Taylor began to veer off course. He started walking away to his right.

"OH MY GOD! Where is he going?!"

I could do nothing. I just watched helplessly from the other side of the arena as he walked off in the opposite direction from his group. Then I saw where he was going. He had seen a friend of his in the audience and he was running over there to quickly wave "hello" to her.

The sweetest moment ever!

Then he ran back to his spot and sat down.

He was fine. Whew!

I, on the other hand, was losing my mind. I turned to my friends Tara and Nicole and said "I hate this! I have absolutely no control. He is completely on his own. I can't help him. I know he is okay but, but what if he isn't?!"

Do you see where this is going?

Over the next hour, as the teachers and students stood up to give their speeches, my eyes stayed glued on Taylor. I watched him fidgit with the sleeves on his robe. I watched him rest his head in his hand, obviously bored and ready to go. I watched him play with the tassel on his hat. I watched him close his eyes and lean his head back like he was going to take a nap.

I watched him. As the students began to stand up as their row was called, I saw each of them grab their own little piece of paper with their names on it and carry it up to the stage with them.

"Please don't forget your paper, Taylor. Please don't forget!" is what I chanted in my head. I was so worried he would forget and then realize it as he stood up on the stage. Then, I imagined, he would suddenly run off the stage, back to his seat, bringing the ceremony to a halt to grab his piece of paper.

I saw this play out over and over in my head as the graduation went on.

After what seemed like the longest hour of my life, Taylor's row stood up and began to make their way up to the front of the arena.

Oh No!!! Taylor was walking in line towards the stage and he didn't have his paper!!!

About halfway up on his way to the stage, I see that he has realized his mistake.

He didn't panic. He didn't break away and run all the way back to his seat, holding up the ceremony.

He was obviously a bit concerned as he looked around at his other friends, but he held his spot.

He walked up the stairs and went right up to the principle. "Hey, um, my name is Taylor Joseph South."

I obviously couldn't hear this, but I imagine that this is exactly what he said.

The principle smiled at Taylor and then announced his name as Taylor walked across the stage to receive that diploma.

Taylor was ready to get off that stage but he looked so proud!

I was so proud of him!

He did it!

He didn't need my help. He was surrounded by over a thousand people and this kid, this kid who couldn't handle more than 7 people in a room talking when he was young, just walked across that stage like a boss,

As it turns out, it was me that had the struggle. I realized that this adult thing was going be harder for me than I had anticipated.

My husband and I are now a parents of a young adult with autism. This was the beginning a new chapter in our lives.

I was terrified during the weeks leading up to this day, but as I watched Taylor throw that cap in the air, I was filled with a new sense of hope.

He was going to be fine. We are going to be fine. I still understand that Taylor won't have it as easy as his peers. He will continue to have to work harder and he will always have Autism but I know Taylor is going to be okay. He may not need us to carry him as much anymore, but we will always be by his side ready, as we continue this journey together.