Today is the post that I read that led me to ask Andrea for permission to share Alex’s story here at Proven Path Ministries. If you follow this blog ministry you probably have realized I don’t have much of a “theme” here other than wanting to help people understand that no matter where you are in life… no matter how lost… no matter how hurt… no matter how confused… no matter age, gender, religious background, ethnicity, etc. The proven path is found on the one that is lit by the Light of the Word. There is hope in Him and a purpose for all things… we don’t have to understand the why to trust the WHO.

Now for Day 4…

Day 4 of Autism Awareness Month: A Parent’s Heartbreak

As I said on Day 3, Erik and I had figured out that Alex had Autism after seeing Jenny McCarthy on Oprah and after reading some related books. We made an appointment at Vanderbilt so we could get the official diagnosis. It was on October 29th, 2007. Alex was 3 1/2 years old.

I knew he had Autism, and I knew this was just going through the process so he could qualify for services in school, but when I heard the psychologist say, “Alex has Autism and Developmental Delay”, my heart was broken. We, as parents, have these dreams for our children – I think we always come up with the perfect scenario in our heads. I wanted my kids to first and foremost be healthy (poor Alex has had multiple blows in this department). I wanted them to do well in school, have lots of friends, play sports, go to college, meet that perfect mate (at about 30 years old), and live happily ever after and give me grandkids that I can enjoy while I am still senile (since we started a family so late – I was 34 when we adopted Alex).

When I heard those words, I felt like the dreams I had for Alex were shattered. I didn’t want him to be picked on by other kids because he was different. I didn’t want him to get frustrated because he didn’t understand society and because they didn’t understand him. I wanted to hear my son come up to me without me saying it first and tell me he loves me! I wanted him to desire cuddling with his mom – not push me away because he doesn’t have that desire and he doesn’t want me in his personal space. I wanted him to wave at me when he went to school or my parents’ house. I wanted him to actually miss me when he wasn’t around me!

So, yes, I was heartbroken. I still get sad and have bad days, but then I look at Alex and think, “life must be awesome through his eyes because he is always happy and things seem simple”. I often wonder what is going on inside his mind, but I will probably never really know. The “perfect” dreams I had in my head were shattered, but I realized life isn’t perfect. Life is what we make out of the situations (good or bad) that are thrown at us. I got out of the self-pity mode I was in and began researching diets, therapies, and anything else I could start doing to give Alex as great of a life as I could. To be continued…

We continue Alex’s story…

This is one day late – Day 3 of Autism Awareness Month:

On my previous post, I talked about some of the behaviors that we started noticing in Alex after Lincoln was born. I am sure a lot of you will think that I was naive to not know anything about Autism or consider it a possibility, but I didn’t. I was concentrating on the Fetal Alcohol Syndrome and what delays and issues we would be facing with it. I was researching about attachment disorders (common in Russian adoptions). And I was buying every children’s book I could find about adoption so we would know how to explain the adoption to Alex and how I would answer his questions as he got a little older. 

As the next 3 months went on, I knew something was going on with Alex. I would encourage mothers to always follow that “motherly instinct” – it has proved me right several critical times. However, all I would get from the pediatrician was “Alex is a special case”. And yes, he was a special case. When we adopted him at 13 months old, he only weighed 13 pounds. He couldn’t even sit up. He had spent 13 months alone in a crib and was rarely held.

It wasn’t until I was painting our home office one day and Erik came home early from work that we discovered exactly what Alex had. Jenny McCarthy was on Oprah, and she was talking about her son and his symptoms, and it was like she was describing everything about our sweet Alex. Erik and I looked at each other, and we knew. I immediately walked out of the house to go buy her book. I also went to search in our basement for a book that a friend’s mom had given us after we adopted Alex – “In the Eye of the Hurricane” by Juli C Liske (I had never read it). I poured through them, and I soon realized that Alex did indeed have Autism. Now it was time to get ready for that very long road ahead of us…

April is Autism Awareness Month. In honor of this month I am going to begin sharing the post of a family that lives in my community. I am a few days behind so I am just going to get straight to it. I will keep these post in a special category on my website. You will be able to find them and share them any time under the Autism Awareness category link.

This is the story of Alex Kallas… his parents are Andrea and Erik Kallas. His story is being told through the eyes and heart of his mother.

Today is Day #1 of Autism Awareness month, and I will be sharing various pictures/thoughts/facts throughout the month because honestly, Autism is a growing epidemic in our country! Today I am sharing a picture of our sweet Alex – this is when we noticed a HUGE change in Alex – he was 3 years old and Lincoln had just been born. 

This is a picture that a photographer took of him a couple of weeks after we started noticing the change in our sweet boy. A week after he had his first MMR shot along with a few others, Alex stopped making eye contact and was acting very different. Before that time, he had delays due to his Fetal AlcoholSyndrome and being in an orphanage for 13 months, but he was always happy and loved posing for the camera.

This was the only picture our photographer could get of Alex that day, and this photographer had done multiple photo shoots for us with Alex. His expression just looked blank, and he was no longer our happy boy. Alex officially got diagnosed with Autism in October 2007 at 3 1/2 years old, and that is when our first battle began – the battle to reach inside our precious son and help him learn to communicate with us.

More to come later….

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