A word of hope:\u00a0 the same kid who, at six, could still not stand the noise and confusion of a typical birthday party, may be able to attend the holiday party at his job and later gleefully announce “We had Chinese food for free!”<\/p>\n
There were a lot of years in between and a lot of work, but gradually, step by step, tolerance for noise and confusion and strangers led to where we are now:\u00a0 he likes parties.\u00a0 He likes parties here, he likes parties at friends’ houses, he likes parties at restaurants…parties with and without music (including music way too loud for me!)<\/p>\n
True, he needed assistance in buying a present for the office party (parent conference with supervisor over what would be best), and some assistance in obtaining\/wrapping\/presenting it, but he did it, and he’s happy about it, and so are we.<\/p>\n
I could grieve about all the parties he missed when he was little…but it seems more useful to be glad that he now thoroughly enjoys them.\u00a0\u00a0 The long-term goal trumps short-term disappointments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A word of hope:\u00a0 the same kid who, at six, could still not stand the noise and confusion of a typical birthday party, may be able to attend the holiday party at his job and later gleefully announce “We had Chinese food for free!” There were a lot of years in between and a lot […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,10],"tags":[22,8],"class_list":["post-36","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life-on-the-spectrum","category-socialization","tag-progress","tag-social-skills"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.speedofdark-thebook.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.speedofdark-thebook.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.speedofdark-thebook.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.speedofdark-thebook.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.speedofdark-thebook.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.speedofdark-thebook.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37,"href":"http:\/\/www.speedofdark-thebook.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36\/revisions\/37"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.speedofdark-thebook.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.speedofdark-thebook.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.speedofdark-thebook.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}