The Journey of a Lifetime-Being Myers' Mom

I last wrote about something that happened in the present, but it's only fitting I should use one of my favorite literary techniques (for those that don't know, I'm an English teacher) and flash back to what happened after the diagnosis. As I mentioned before, we got the diagnosis at the end of June, 2022. That night, I called or emailed a number of ABA clinics (13 to be exact). I heard back from one person pretty quickly, and when we left our hotel in the upstate of South Carolina and drove to Washington D.C. for our summer vacation, I spent much of my time chatting with this one particular gentleman from a local clinic in Charleston. He was above and beyond. I don't know if he just REALLY wanted our business, or if he's really that passionate about ABA and wanted to steer us in the right direction. Quick sidebar, ABA stands for Applied Behavior Analysis. The doctor in Simpsonville said it's not the "end all be all," but she recommended it with a chan...

Lord have mercy. Today has been a doozy. It's Sunday, November 27. We had every intention of getting up and getting ready for church today. Around 9:30, I got a text from the bank asking if I'd made a $30 purchase. When I checked my account, there were 5 charges, all to the same place, and all for about $30. I spent the next half hour on the phone with the bank getting my card deactivated and discussing my next steps.  A little while later, I told Chance I wanted to go get our Christmas tree. I've wanted to decorate for a week now, but he's a "only after Thanksgiving" kind of guy and we haven't had any time this weekend. So, I walked out to the car, put Myers in, closed the doors, and that's when I heard it. The doors locked. With Myers inside. And my keys. And my phone. Panic. When we were traveling last week, I put both my key and my spare in my purse because the batteries were going low and I wanted to make sure we were ok driving. My phone will unl...

In my last post, I mentioned that my son, Myers, was three when we received a diagnosis for autism. The year prior, we had enrolled Myers in a private, bilingual school near our house. I was SO for this place. With my travel and love for languages, and with the proximity to our home, on top of the fact that the school was a Christian one, I was gung-ho. Chance and I toured the place, and although it was really outdated and very small, we were excited to enroll Myers. Chance had been keeping Myers during the day when I worked, then trying to run his business in the afternoons. He was happy to get some freedom and we wanted Myers to have the social experience of being at school. Covid kept us from church and friends much of the time, and Myers had never been to daycare, so we felt that attending school part time would be really good for him.  In August of 2021, Chance took Myers to school for the first time. I was already teaching downtown and I thought it would be best for Myers to ...

In June of 2022, Chance, Myers and I drove to Simpsonville, South Carolina. Why, you might ask? Where in the world is Simpsonville?  Well, let's back up a minute. Remember in my last post how I said Myers was born on March 5, 2019? I've skipped a lot of time taking you to 2022, so let's fill in some gaps. Myers was a great baby. He was so sweet and loving, and still very much is. He was delayed with his milestones, but nothing that worried me too much. We did go to the doctor for something small, and while visiting with the on call physician (who we had never met), we were told that Myers could potentially qualify for speech therapy. Keep in mind, he was still very little. I know boys are often delayed in speech, and I thought he'd be just fine, but I went ahead and looked into speech because, well if it's being offered and it's free, why not? We got Myers a speech therapist but then Covid hit. She was trying to do virtual speech lessons with a one year old. It ...

My name is Hannah, and my three year old just discovered this, so he's been saying it a lot. My son, Myers, is an incredibly bright child. I don't say this as a doting mother (although I absolutely am); I say this as an educator who is blown away by his abilities to recognize letters and their sounds and to read and spell words my fourth graders can't. His number sense is astonishing too, but we'll get into that another time. As briefly mentioned, I am an educator. I've been a teacher for nearly 20 years now, which sounds insane because I remember parts of my first year of teaching like they happened yesterday.  Here's my real brief bio. I was born and raised in Charleston, South Carolina (technically I lived in the small city just north, Hanahan, but I spent a lot of time in the Historic District with my family). I went to the College of Charleston after graduating high school and although I'd traveled, I had never lived anywhere outside of a maybe 30 mile ...