Just Jared

06/20/2026

Jared went swimming this morning for the first time in about 20 years! Ever since his colon was removed, he's refused to go because he was convinced his ostomy bag would leak and the contents would spill into the pool. This year, I found waterproof adhesive covers! He tried them a couple times in the shower before he was comfortable enough to go to the pool but when he finally did, he had a grand time! He said that swimming is much more fun exercise than riding his trike, which is high praise! 😊

05/21/2026

My pregnancy with Jared was rough! I had morning sickness throughout the pregnancy. If I ever smelled ground beef cooking, I would immediately suffer waves of nausea! Ironically, I also craved Burger King burgers because they were flame grilled.

Jared was born 2.5 weeks late by induced labor. The two weeks late mark fell on a Friday so the obstetrician chose to wait until Monday to induce labor. They started the pitocin around 7am and I had labor pains all day but very little progress. The doctor decided around 6pm to stop the medication and let me rest and that we would try again the next day. Well, that day, I again labored all day. By 8pm, the doctor finally started talking about doing a C-section but things suddenly started progressing. However, Jared got stuck partially through the birth canal. One of the nurses mashed on my abdomen while the doctor used forceps to pull Jared out. Once he was out, we could see what the issue was - the umbilical cord had been tightly wrapped around his midsection. Everyone was worried and scurrying about but he immediately started breathing and screaming!

Today, Jared has mild hypotonic cerebral palsy which causes him to have low muscle tone plus weak fine motor skills. Handwriting is very difficult, slow and laborious for him so he was able to use electronic devices to do schoolwork per his IEP starting around third grade. He has excellent keyboarding skills and loves to research his favorite topics on the computer! However, he is unable to tie his shoes despite extreme persistence in his attempts to learn. His hands just don't work in the way Jared needs them to so we use elastic laces.

My sweet father thinks that all of Jared's problems are due to the doctor not doing a C-section that first day I was in labor. However, genetic testing has been done and it showed that Jared has XQ13 Duplication Syndrome and males with it have autism and are prone to a litany of other conditions, many of which Jared has. The cerebral palsy, yes, I believe is due to oxygen deprivation during the birth process. Nothing can be changed now, though, and I've always worked with Jared where he is and I don't try to hold him back. I hope that the stories I post about him can be an encouragement to others!

Oh, and his father was very active in his life when he was younger and was present at his birth but we split up in 2009 and he has not responded to requests I've made asking permission to use pictures of him and Jared on this page so I didn't include any of them.

05/21/2026

When Jared was born, his Mamaw Wiggins got him several cute little baseball outfits and hoped that he would someday play the game. She would be thrilled to see him at his Miracle League games!

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! 😊