Last week my sons started asking lots of questions about the 4th of July. No, not the questions about how we would celebrate or if we would go visit family or if we would have a cook out. No, their questions were about fireworks, specifically, would they have to hear any?  If you have a child with autism, you may experience the extreme anguish your children feel when they hear the loud popping noises of fireworks. I don't particularly care for loud noises either, but my kids absolutely obsess about this noise. They start worrying about a few weeks ahead of time.  Do we live in the city limits?  Can people shoot off fireworks in our neighborhood, and so on.

One morning last week, Nick said, "I wish we could just skip the month of July." I said, "oh, you want to go straight from June to August since that is your birthday month!"  "NO," he shouted at me. "I don't want to have the 4th of July."  By Thursday, the boys had made sure they knew where their earphones were and had them at the ready. We've used noise reduction earphones for a long time for loud music, loud movies, etc. We were supposed to go to Missouri for the 4th of July weekend and visit my brothers and my mother.  However, on Wednesday and Thursday when we discussed this in our family and the boys realized that there would be no avoiding fireworks, they refused to go. My brother lives in a rural area and there were definitely going to be fireworks there. I've learned to at least avoid exposing people I love to the meltdowns that something as simple as fireworks can spawn.

On Thursday evening, a neighbor set off a few fireworks a block or so away.  Nick and Will became frantic. Nick had on his earphones and was carrying the telephone around. He wanted to call 911.  I told him that fireworks were not an emergency and that he could not call 911.  He dialed the neighbor's phone number repeatedly. They did not answer (thankfully).  He left wild messages for them to stop shooting off fireworks.

Friday night was a repeat of Thursday night and it wasn't even the 4th of July yet. On Saturday, I got out ear plugs to go under the earphones. The boys had them in by 6:00, just to be ready. At the first sound of fireworks nearby, they jumped in bed and threw the covers over their heads.  They slept all night long with the ear plugs and earphones securely in their ears. Just for good measure, a gigantic storm, complete with thunder and lightning followed the fireworks.

This morning, there were smiles all around.  "No more fireworks, right Mom?" they asked in unison.  I smiled, hugged them tight and thanked God that another 4th of July had passed.  

I have a son who was diagnosed with Autism in 2006 at the age of 2.5. "B" was a not your typical happy baby. He often was colicky and at a young age developed many health issues, such as peanut allergies, milk allergies, asthma, colic, sleep issues. As the months went by he changed even more and in pictures he became so "dark" looking as if he had no spirit in him anymore.

Family visits would be torture. He would scream for hours on end and would often put me in a position as if I were losing my mind. My husband works 24 days out of a month away from home and the stress of raising this little boy became so much I honestly thought I was not going to make it. My doctor diagnosed my son and we started on some small therapy. About 6 months later, he became worse. He would literally beat me so bad it was like a 200 lb man had hurt me. I remember one day it was July 1st 2007, we had been out at the lake celebrating Canada Day. He was exhausted and I had decided that he would sleep with me as he was having an off night, My husband was gone to work. I woke up to someone beating on me, hitting, slapping, biting. I was in such a daze I had no clue who it was. Tto my sadness, it was my 3 year old son. He had totally lost it and to this day I feel he was not even aware of his surroundings. He continued to beat me for 20 minutes and a normal person would think "oh my, how could you not control him??" I swear to you that my son when he is that upset is like holding off a 250lb person. I continued to be beaten for 30 minutes while crying for him to please stop. Finally, he stopped and "crashed" back to sleep.

I called my husband and I told him I was beaten up. To this day, he will say he thought someone broke into our home and abused me. He could not believe that our 3 year old son had done this. A few weeks later my husband was home and FINALLY got to see all what I was crying and screaming about for all these months. My son was upset over not getting a certain kind of chips. His temper tantrum turned into a 14 hour total melt down where he beat us, trashed our house and ended up with him being admitted in the hospital where the ER doctor said, "I've never seen a little boy ever be like this for this long." My husband and I were worn out.

 I felt so terrible and felt guilty for allowing this to happen. I cried so much that night , the nurses told us to go home and get some rest. I remember walking out of the room where this wonderful nurse held him and rocked him like she was me. I felt like I was a bad mom because I should be doing that but in all honesty...I couldn't do it -not that night. The next day my son's doctor decided it was best that he be put on some medications to help. I decided after a long inner battle it was time. Today my son is a different kid. He has had a lot of help with OT, speech, sensory diets, and an angency and worker who are amazing with him.

My battle is lfar from over. I'm continuing to work with my son on a day to day basis and constantly dealing with the government and agencies. I'm also starting over with my daughter who is 9 who was diagnosed with ADHD and the possibility of her being on the aspergers side of autism as well as my three year old daughter being aspergers as well.

I have never been so stressed out in my life but I wouldn't change it for the world. I can't believe how much my kids show me every day. I do hope we can find some more answers for all families and friends effected.