Progress

Middle Son turned 13 a few weeks ago.  It was the day before we moved, so MomC agreed to host a small birthday celebration at her house.  It was us, her and her local relatives, and Middle's two paid caregivers.

One of the caregivers, Angie, was Middle's aide at school years ago.  We got to talking about how things have changed.  When she first started working with Middle he was aggressive.  He was self-injurious and would sometimes try to hit the other kids in his class.

I remembered a conversation we had with his private ABA therapist around that time.  She said that on his current path (IIRC he was 6 at the time) he would need two on one supervision to keep him safe as an adolescent.  If that happened we wouldn't be able to keep him in our home.  We would have to put him in state care to keep him (and us) safe.

And that didn't happen.  We hit the right combination of therapy and medication, and now Middle is a good-tempered, easy going kid.

Until that conversation I had lost sight of just how far we have come in the last 7 years.