A Day Out with Thomas

In a rare twist, I am taking you back to 2005!  The heart and purpose of this blog is to honestly share our daily life to help parents of young kids, especially parents of kids with special needs, to feel more connected and encouraged.  Most of the blog shares our life exactly one decade after it happened, using Mikey’s journals from that time.

As one does, I was recently clearing out our front hall closet, an area of our home that I use as a place to shove every random thing when people are coming over. I found some great stuff! LOL.  Amongst the chaos, I came across a ticket from our Day out with Thomas, November 6, 2005. 

So, here we are and I get to share a moment with you from before Mikey was diagnosed. Why is this so important? Because once we received the diagnosis of autism, I panicked. I read everything I could get my hands on. Dave and I worked with our Birth to Three Coordinator (CT’s early intervention program) to figure out what we would do moving forward in terms of therapy. We crafted a therapy plan and contacted our local school district about starting Michael there when he turned three.  But nothing I read could tell me what our day to day life would look like.  How would we make this work? I was overwhelmed with a heavy anxiety about our future.

When I look back at this day, I realize, much of our life going forward would be exactly as it already was. We were already using our kids’ interests to plan fun days with them. We were already loving them and being silly with them and helping them address problems as they arose.

At this stage of life, both of our boys loved Thomas and we saw that the Essex Steam Train offered this experience. We got to ride on a real life Thomas train, do train activities and the train yard even had a petting zoo set up for the kids. As time went on, Will outgrew Thomas, as all typical kids do. Mikey still loves Thomas and watches the TV show sometimes as s comfort while he is falling asleep.

When Michael did get diagnosed, I wish I had known that all of the things we had been doing would still be a part of our lives. I want to reach out to all the moms and dads who are worrying now and let them know that they already know all the important things about their child. A diagnosis will help you get them the services they need to learn and grow.  Your daily life will still be (as it is now and always has been) a product of the unique, fun, wonderful members of your family. The happy memories will keep growing by the day and when your special kiddo is almost 20 (wow) like mine, you will look back and the memories you made will warm your heart.