Letter
From a Woman to Her Sister
~This is a fictitious letter written from a mother of an
autisitic son to her sister. This letter ties all of my genres
together. ~
Sarah,
Hey, Sis! How have you been doing? I have not talked to you for awhile on the phone, now. I miss seeing you everyday. It has been tough on me since you have moved away. I enjoyed our long talks when you would come to visit us. And I especially miss getting your advice everyday about Lucas. He still has his good days and his bad days. He misses you too. He has always loved his Aunt Sarah. I know he especially misses your chocolate chip cookies that are out of this world! Well you are probably wondering why I am writing you this letter and not just calling you up on the phone. Lucas is out with Jeff right now running a few errands, so I have some free time since neither one of my boys are here. I thought I would have a little “me time” and fill you in on some things that have been going on around here.
I cannot remember if I have told you about the incident at Wal-Mart with Lucas. This happened awhile ago, so I may have told you. Anyways, to make a long story short, Lucas did not want to leave when it was time to go home. He threw a fit and started kicking and screaming. I did not know what to do! I finally got him calmed down enough to get him out of the store. When I got home I wrote an e-mail about the situation to a woman I have met who also has a son with autism. We write each other often to give advice and to just have someone to talk to who understands. She gave me some good advice on how to prevent that from happening again.
Lucas
is now seeing
a speech-language pathologist twice a week for some therapy. Her
name is Shari Nutter. The first time we went
to see Shari, she was so helpful to us. She gave Jeff and me
so much information because she wanted us to be as best educated on
Lucas’ disorder as we could. Before we left our first session
with her she gave us a few pamphlets on autism. I have
enclosed a pamphlet with
this letter. It gives some basic information on the
disorder. I thought you may like to take a look at it. At
our next session with her, she showed us this great PowerPoint
slideshow. This was just a different way for her to give us
more
information. The presentation focused more on peer interaction
skills. This was important to us because she is trying to work on
improving these skills with Lucas. I really like Shari! She
seems very interested in Lucas and genuinely concerned with helping
him. She even gave us this really neat website to
visit. It gave us some
information on her interests and information about speech-language
pathology in general, which I thought was pretty cool.
During
the sessions, Shari helps Lucas with making his social
skills better. Lucas absolutely loves her! She has helped
him accomplish so much in just the short amount of time since he as
been seeing her. Can you believe it, but Shari actually got Lucas
to write a poem
about how he feels when he is at school! She helped him write
it,
but I was so proud of him! Shari has also helped me out
some. She told me that I could ease some of my emotions by
keeping a journal.
I have only written in it a couple of times, but it really helps me to
get
everything out that I am feeling. I just write about little
things that happen throughout the day.
Well, I am expecting Jeff and Lucas home anytime now. I had better wrap this thing up. When are you planning on coming back to visit? I hope it's soon---I miss my little sis! Well you can write back if you want to or just give me a call. I know you don't have much free time either. Well like I have said already, I miss you a lot and cannot wait to see you again. Hope to hear from you soon!
Lots of Love,
Jane