Mothers of Autistic Children Like Combat Soldiers

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The Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders has found that being the mother of a child with autism carries about the same stress as being a combat soldier. We found it at the New York Times.

If you click the link to the article you'll find you have to pay for it, but in the free preview the people who did the study found that parents of Autistic children have a harder time than parents with children with Fragile X, Down Syndrome, Cerebral Palsy and other disorders. I dont know how they quantify that. I guess you'd have to get the report to see it's methodology.

I knew my wife was tough.........but like a combat soldier? Does it double for those of us with TWO autistic children?

Amoungst the findings:

"The levels of chronic stress experienced by the mothers were similar to those of combat soldiers. The greater the child’s behavior problems, the worse the mothers’ stress.

Mothers of those with autism reportedly spend at least two hours more each day caring for those children than a comparative group of mothers whose children were not autistic.

The mothers of the autistic children were interrupted at work an average of once every four days. For the other mothers, the frequency was fewer than one interruption every 10 days.

The autism mothers were three times as likely to report a stressful event on any given day, and twice as likely to be tired."

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I am hoping to have a new blog up and running in the next few days, maybe before Eid. Here is wishing everyone an early Eid Mubarak.

A few things. Sinan got his hair cut last night and did a bang up job on it. For the first time he was able sit in the chair by himself whilst it was being cut. Manal stood by reinforcing his good behavior with candy. It might not seem like much to other people, but for parents of a child with Autism even little things like this are milestones.

He has also started signing for candy and will say "dan-dee". That is something, he'll also make a sign for potato chips. These are positive developments. We had to stop the one hour of speech therapy a week we were getting because we couldnt afford it, but he does get like 1/2 hour a week in school.

Our insurance is fighting the speech therapy saying it isnt "medically necessary" so we are working on that. I guess on the grounds that Autism isnt a "medical issue"? I dont know.

Anyway, Eid is coming up and I hope people will think about contributing to Sinan and his therapy. We are slowly getting there. We initially had a couple of donors who gave large donations but when the issue with PayPal happened and the donations were returned they didnt come back, so we are hoping they will do so now and others will step up.

Once we get enough for the first month we have been thinking about how we are going to keep it going. ABA therapy isnt something you can do for one month, take a few months off, and start again. It needs to be done consistantly building upon every previous gain.

We are hoping that with a new website, videos of his therapy, more regular blogging and gains that he has made, will start a momentum that will allow us to keep him in the therapy.

Anyway, again, Eid Mubarak and Happy Thanksgiving everyone. Thanks to all of you who have helped and are following us and for those of you who are thinking about it.

Mailing Address

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Despite all of us being sick, Alhamdulillah, I have still managed to get some stuff done. High on the list was a PO Box for Sinan's project. A few people contacted us worried about providing bank details online and to PayPal, other people didnt want to have even a small percentage of their donation go to the PayPal fees, so they wanted a way to send stuff to us in the mail.

Below you'll find our mailing address. We have also had a volunteer to work on a new blog for us. As one dear person pointed out, having a nice looking and up to date blog might help our project out soon.

Sinan took a really good picture for his yearbook this time. Sometimes he just really seems spaced out and not paying attention. This one was so cute, Masha'Allah, that his teacher sent home a note saying that the other teachers who saw it got tears in their eyes. When we get them we'll post it and you'll see where they were coming from.

When we get 100% from our bout of sickness I'll write up a few posts. One thing which weighs heavily on our mind is the affect of Autism, for that matter any disability, on other "typically" developing children in the family. We have an interesting story to tell about Sayf, Sinan's brother who is just ten months younger than he is.

I also want to do one that involves the physical looks of children with Autism. It is both a drawback and an advantange that most children with Autism have no defining physical features that indicate that they are anything but a typically developing child.

Anyway, our e-mail address is below. Thank you for all of your hope. God willing we'll have enough here soon to start his first month.

M. Springer
PO Box 230413
CENTREVILLE VA 20120

PS, I have added a group on Facebook. Anyone interested e-mail me at abusinan@maktoob.com and I can add you to Facebook and you can become part of the group. Thanks.

Third Time's a Charm?

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Dealing with PayPal has not been fun so we are hoping the third time is a charm. The fact that I tried to change Sinan's account to me caused a problem when I tried to open one for myself.

We have set up the account this time in Manal's name. God willing everyone that has helped us up to this point will do so again. I will be sending an e-mail to you all soon. This time next month hopefully Sinan will be starting his first months therapy. We have been wanting this for Sinan for so long that the recent complications have been heartbreaking. At one point we had about half the money needed for the initial evaluation and first month, only to have to refund it all back. Heart breaking!

I appreciate everyone's help and thank you all for your understanding. Once this gets going we are thinking about setting up with PayPal a reoccuring system where people can donate for a set amount every month. As an e-mailer pointed out to me, it wouldnt take that many people with small donations to help us out.

As it stands Sinan is still attending his speech therapy once a week and another therapist once a week. He has been interacting with his brother a lot more, which makes us very happy and sends his little brother over the moon.

They took pictures this year for school and Sinan's turned out amazing, we'll be sure to scan one here when we get them.

Thanks!

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Banging Our Heads Against the Wall

PayPal has done it to us again. This time they are blocking the account because of my association with the previous account. They tell me to resolve the issues with that account before they'll unblock this account. Question is............how do I unresolve an issue when the child wont be 18 for 13 more years?

As one person said today when they sent me an e-mail to let me know about the fact that they resent the donation that I had returned from the first account, God gives us all tests and trials. Now that we are going to have to close another account and reopen.........I guess it is round three for our trial?

I am going to return the donations made with this newest account, thanks everyone, and we are going to go ahead and open a new bank account, e-mail and PayPal account with my wife's name so there is no link other than address. What then..........people who live at the same house are guilty of "collective guilt"?

It will be a couple of days before we get this up and running. Sinan actually has a double ear infection and has stayed at home with a pretty bad cough and ear pains the last few days.

I appreciate everyone's patience as we struggle through these issues. I start to wonder if some of the issues arent because some of the donations are coming from outside the US from names of people from a Muslim background? Maybe we are getting an extra layer of scruntiny because of this?

Well, they say that the third time is a charm. We'll see in a few days. I cannot thank everyone enough for wanting to help Sinan, even with all of the loops we are having to jump through.

I am going to remove the donate buttons until we get new ones up. No need to donate money that we cannot access and will have to return.

Thanks again!

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Ahamdulillah. We had no luck with PayPal. We were given two options for the donations we had gotten already. One was to wait six months and the money could be transfered and the account shut. Second was to refund the money and then we'd send an e-mail to everyone who has donated money letting them know of the refund and requesting that when they receive the refund that they redonate the same funds to the new account.

Waiting the six months wasnt an option for us, every day counts with Sinan. In the week or so that PayPal allowed us to collect donations we got enough to cover about 1/3 of the initial evaluation and the first month's therapy. I have no doubt through the generosity of people out there, if we hadnt run into this issue with PayPal, we'd already have enough for the first month and already be working on month #2.

We have gotten funds from people from all over the world, people we know, and people we do not. Seeing things like this certainly helps us renew our belief in mankind! Thanks everyone!

We have added an updated PayPal link below and on the side bar here. We had to get a new bank account, new e-mail and new Paypal account.

We have gotten some tips from people and got some good ideas. We are going to be building a new website dedicated to Sinan, children with Autism and their families. I am not that savy at webpage building so I was wondering if anyone out there reading this might not be able to help out on this front. If so drop us a line.

Our new e-mail is aba4sinan@hotmail.com

Thanks for everything!

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Update:

As some might have seen we are having issues with PayPal. To try and keep things as transparent as possible we initially set up an e-mail account for Sinan, a bank account and his own PayPal account.

When we started getting donations PayPal requested Sinan's Social Security Number. He complied with the request but PayPal then came back with a request for an ID with a photo and a copy of a utility bill to prove his address.

We called PayPal to talk to them because of course Sinan being four years old didnt have a picture ID nor a utility bill that we could provide them. It was then that we were told that one must be 18 years old to have a PayPal account.

It would have been nice if they had made that clear when we signed up for the account, but they didnt. I then proceded to try and change the name on the account to mine. I sent them a photocopy of my Social Security card, Drivers Licenses and copy of a current utility bill in the mail allong with a signed copy attesting to the fact that the SSN was indeed mine and valid.

We got an e-mail back from PayPal today suspending our account indefinately. They said they are not allowed to change the names on accounts. Furthermore, as all of their accounts are stored by the number of the banking account associated with it, they could not open another account with the savings account I set up for Sinan at the begining of this month.

To make a long story short we are going to try and appeal this with PayPal. If they do not relent then we will be forced to actually get a new account in one of our names, as we are 18, and set up a new PayPal account. If it comes to this we will actually have to refund the money to everyone who donated and requested that they then make the same donation to the same account. It is either this or wait 6 months and then PayPal will make the payout. As therapy for Sinan is our goal, we want it started yesterday and certainly dont want to wait 6 months when every day counts.

I hope it doesnt come to this. We should know for sure either way by the end of the week and if so we'll have a new PayPal account set up and running byFriday.

I have delayed contacting those that donated to thank them until this is cleared up. We sincerely appreciate the help people have given and hope that if we have to refund donations to these generous people that they will remember the original thoughts of Sinan and again send that money to him.

Thanks again and I'll keep you updated. If you have any questions please do not hesistate to ask here or e-mail us.