The whole thing started innocently enough. “Daddy. I want… Blizzard Beach. Please!”

The mancub goes for months on end without ever mentioning a water park, and now in the middle of January he decides it’s time to throw on a swimsuit and hit the water slides? Insanity! Unfortunately, once Ben gets an idea he’s like a dog with a bone, worrying away at it non-stop until all sanity has fled the building. I knew that I was going to have to brave the chilly(ha!) Central Florida winter and take him on some water slides.

Last week I was out having dinner and drinks with some casual friends at a social get-together. These were people I had met several times before, but I really only know them socially and not as particularly close friends. One of them (I'll call him Eric. to protect his privacy) was a Disney fan so we were chatting about things happening currently in the parks, about the whole New Fantasyland expansion and such. At some point the discussion turned to potential changes coming with the Guest Assistance Card (GAC) due to rampant abuse. This is a topic that directly effects me because of Ben, and so I am particularly keen to know what kind of new restrictions or guidelines might be coming and how they might impact our family. It was at this point that Eric said something that stopped me cold.

"Well you know," he admonished, "your family is a big part of the problem."

How could I possibly be part of the problem? The GAC exists specifically for kids like my son...

Being the parent of an autistic child comes with its fair share of problems, and some of them are things that nobody ever warns you about. I'll warn you right up front that this post involves bodily fluids, and although it is not particularly graphic it does involve one of those problems that is a little bit gross. The happy news is that I am about to provide a practical, step-by-step guide on how I eliminated this issue, so if you aren't squicked out by photos of a (clean) toilet, then read on.

If you had asked me on the first of June, 2012, what Benjamin would look like standing in front of the construction walls surrounding the permanently-shuttered Snow White's Scary Adventures, I never would have imagined the answer would be this:

For several years now I have been aware of, and fascinated by, National Novel Writing Month. Because of my other website, JamesAxler.com I have gotten to know several published authors over the past fifteen years, and then there is my friend Michael Montoure who has been a writer for as long as I have known him (you should check out his website Bloodletters.com and also pick up his new book Permanent Damage, it's really good). I had never considered myself a writer -- I have the same issue as Spalding Gray, I don't know how to make anything up -- but over the course of my son's life I found myself first writing in a personal journal and then later actually writing these public blog posts about his entire Snow White experience. After the big final night of Snow White's Scary Adventures, and after I wrote the series of posts that gathered so much attention, I began telling people that I was working on a book about the whole thing.  It even had a title: "3,500: An Autistic Boy's Ten Year Romance With Snow White". But as much as I talked about writing the book, I never actually sat down and did it.

Finally as November was approaching I was reminded of #NaNoWriMo and decided that, dang it, I was actually going to take part in the challenge and write that book.

Lately Ben has had kind of a Fantasia thing going on. He has a large collection of Sorcerer's Apprentice books, as well as lots and lots of photos of Sorcerer Micky and his Enchanted Brooms. This past Friday when I got him from school, his first words to me were not the usual "Hi, daddy!" No, his first words were a very deliberate "Mickey. Broom." So I pretty much knew right away that we were going to have a Sorcerer's Apprentice weekend. I hand no idea, however, that it would be quite so photographic a weekend. Read on to hear more about it, and see a sampling of the photos that Ben himself took.

Being as how today is Halloween, I had originally intended to write about some of Ben's experiences at Mickey's Not-So-Scary Halloween Party - maybe include some cute pictures of Doctor Ben or Cowboy Ben. But then yesterday something happened at school: while out on a Community Inclusion field trip, Ben ran away from his group. They were supposed to be going to a Dollar Store to practice shopping from a list as well as money handling, but Ben wanted to go to the library next door instead. At his first opportunity he dashed away from his group so that he could go look for his favorite book (it's a Disney Golden Book of The Sorcerer's Apprentice). Had he not been so closely watched, he could have disappeared in a heartbeat. The sad fact is that among autistic children elopement is a very serious, and often times life threatening, problem.

It seems almost impossible to imagine, but Ben turned eighteen this past December. For any family this is an important milestone in the journey to adulthood. For families with special needs children, however, this is a particularly thorny milestone. Once your child turns eighteen they become an adult in the eyes of the law, with all of the rights and privileges associated. I am aware of cases where higher functioning young autistic adults have been coerced into doing things like purchasing a brand new car or signing contracts and leases, often by unscrupulous salesmen who are fully aware that the person they are speaking to is clearly not competent.  The more common issue, however, is that medical professionals are no longer required to discuss your child's healthcare with you -- in fact they may be prohibited from doing so by privacy laws. This is where Guardianship comes in.

It is no great secret that May 31st, 2012 was a very bittersweet night for my family. After a decade of visits, and 3,500 rides, my son had to say goodbye forever to Snow White's Scary Adventures. During the months that followed, the one possible ray of light was that there would be a new Little Mermaid ride opening by the end of the year and based on watching the videos from the California version it seemed like something that Ben would love. Unfortunately there was no way to really explain to him that it was coming, and so every visit to the Magic Kingdom for the next four months became primarily a depressing visit to The Graveyard of Snow White's Scary Adventures. If you read my post from last week then you will know that Ben has been having some significant GI issues recently. In order to resolve the immediate blockage we had to place him on significant doses of Miralax, taken every thirty minutes with 6-8 ounces of Gatorade. Over the course of six hours he would receive nearly a month's recommende ...

Any parent knows that having children means that you will spend a certain amount of time dealing frequently with all of the various liquids and solids that will erupt from your child's body, often without warning. You know it is coming, you prepare yourself, and you spend the first couple of years handling it as gracefully as possible until you can get your little bundle of joy potty trained.  It's an oogy couple of years, that gets offset by all of the magical milestones (and truth be told, also gets minimized by your near-perpetual sleep deprivation). So when Ben was born in 1993 I was completely aware that I would be spending the mid-90's dealing with a reasonable amount of poop. I never imagined that eighteen years later my son's poop would still be dominating my life.