Just Jared

04/09/2026

Jared has always loved animals, especially dogs. He has had several of them over the years. He seems to talk to his dogs more than people a lot of the time! The first picture is his first dog, Chewie, and the last is his current dog and official emotional support animal, Liccy. They adore each other and enjoy taking long walks through our apartment complex.

04/09/2026

When Jared was young, his speech therapist was working with him on introducing himself to others. He was supposed to say, "Hi, my name is Jared." Instead, he would say, "Did you know Godzilla is over 400 feet tall?" until we prompted him otherwise. In his mind, Godzilla was far more important than any silly introduction phrase!

04/01/2026

04/01/2026

This will be a lengthy post!

Tomorrow is World Autism Awareness/Acceptance Day so I thought I'd share a few pictures of Jared at different ages and tell how he came to be diagnosed with Autism. You see, when he was little, there was very little known about autism and it was never even mentioned to me as a potential diagnosis. I was flying blind most of his life and just went with my gut as to what I felt was best for him.

I ran an in-home daycare and had years of experience with children so I knew there was something "off" with Jared, especially since he wasn't talking except for a handful of words (hi, bye, yeah, no, mine, mama, dada basically.) He had frequent ear infections and his pediatrician kept blaming it on that and that boys often just develop slower. He despised loud noises and would run to his room to hide under his bed whenever it was music or dance time for my daycare kiddos. He couldn't stand to have a messy face or hands which would result in tears every time. Another odd behavior was that he would line his toy cars along one side of him and his toy dinosaurs along the other as he sat in the floor in his room to watch TV. Heaven forbid if you moved an item from one line to the other as he would become frantic trying to get everything back in order!

When Jared was 3, luckily his pediatrician went on maternity leave and a new one was covering her patients when his dad took him in for yet another earache. They came home from that appointment with referrals to an ENT doc, allergist, and speech/language therapist! Suddenly, we had direction!

Jared truly hated going to speech therapy and the therapist thought it was separation anxiety since he had mostly been in his home environment so I enrolled him in a local preschool two mornings a week. The staff quickly noticed that Jared was a sweet child who had an extremely difficult time dealing with any change in their routine. They called me in for a meeting and suggested that they have Jared be switched between the three different classrooms each day to help teach him to accommodate change and I agreed. Boy, did Jared hate going to preschool for a while after that but within 2-3 months, he was quite happy there and I think their plan is one of the reasons he does so well with change today!

To prepare for kindergarten, I asked the school system to do a comprehensive evaluation of Jared so that the school staff could be fully aware of his educational strengths and weaknesses. He had known his colors, numbers, shapes, and letters for years by this point but when we had our meeting to review the results, they said they saw no evidence of that and, in fact, that Jared had Mental Retardation. This was like a slap in the face to me and my gut told me it was the wrong diagnosis. This was on a Thursday and they said they would like to place him in a "special classroom for severely re****ed and handicapped students" with me visiting the classroom on Friday and Jared starting on Monday. I kept saying "NO!" I finally got up and walked out of the room without signing anything.

Once I had time to think and process, I decided to send a letter to the state department because Jared had documented hearing loss at that time and I didn't understand how they could consider results valid where he was asked verbal questions. The state department agreed and Jared's diagnosis became "Developmentally Delayed."

Because of my negative encounter with the school system at that meeting, I chose to send Jared to a private Montessori kindergarten which only had 6 students (but they did interact with the preschool students during the day as well.) Jared learned a lot of independence skills as well as socialization skills in this setting that he wouldn't have in public school so I am thankful to have chosen this route even though it made life a bit difficult at the time. The next year, he repeated Kindergarten in public school and our journey there began.

It was when Jared was in 3rd grade and I was in a School Psychology graduate school program that I learned about autism in a course I was taking. As we were walking out of class, I asked my friend, Kathy, if that reminded her of anyone and she responded "I didn't want to offend you, but that sounds just like Jared!"

I ended up seeking out the diagnosis on my own, and his wonderful 3rd/4th grade teacher was a tremendous help! She even went to the neurologist appointment with me (that's how autism was diagnosed back then.) I was grateful to finally have a diagnosis that made sense!

03/31/2026

Jared LOVES playing Miracle League Baseball! On this occasion, he stole all of the bases!

03/30/2026

Welcome to Jared's story! This will be a work in progress but with Autism Acceptance/Awareness month coming up in April, I thought it was a great time to create a space to share stories about his life (with his permission, of course!)

The first story I would like to share is about how Jared's sister, Zelle, came to be. You see, I was under the impression I could no longer have children and Jared was terrified of babies plus he required a lot of extra attention since he had medical and educational needs. I was in the school psychology program with a friend, Kathy, who wanted to do an intervention with him for one of her classes to teach Jared to tolerate babies. She did so well that he asked for a baby sister for his 10th birthday!

I told him that was not possible, that birthday gifts had to be something you could buy at the store but he was quite insistent that he was getting a baby sister for his birthday. I kid you not, on his 10th birthday, I woke up with a high fever and a terrible pain in my side. I could barely stand! His father and our housemate took me to the doctor and they sent me straight on to the ER where I was told, "You have a bladder infection and you are pregnant." I retorted, "You are in the wrong room." But they were in the correct room!

Here's a pic of Jared holding Zelle at the hospital. He regretted his wish later because that little stinker tortured him for years! They are good now but when Zelle was little? OK, that's a story for another post! Welcome to our page! 😊