My Life Changing Experience Adapting to a New Family and Autistic Brother!

We have to add three more people to the family?!?!
OMG!!!

Some kids have a problem when their mom gets remarried. Not only do you have to share your mom with your new father but you now have to share it with two step-siblings, too. This actually happened to me. After my mom and biological father divorced when I was 10-years-old, I became so used to just my mom and I. I had never imaged anyone else joining our bond, but of course five years later, three new people joined our bond. At first I had a problem with it, especially me being the only child. The thought of me sharing my mom made me cringe. Surprisingly, it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be, and I actually wouldn’t change any of it.

Through this whole transitioning, the most amazing part was entering a new world by understanding my stepbrother, Joshua. Joshua is autistic. My stepdad said Joshua was diagnosed with Asperger's. When I first met him he was 10-years-old, and would not talk. Either he would write stuff down or his 7-year-old sister, Gabrielle, would talk for him. At the time I knew nothing about autism, so I was slightly confused by his behavior. After doing a little research, I finally understood Joshua and became extremely attached to him. Back then, he become obsessed with certain things. I thought maybe if I talked to him about his obsessions, he would talk. FAIL!!! He would just shake his head or write stuff down. My goal was to get Joshua to talk.

One day I was in my room and Joshua was in the shower next to my room. I wasn’t paying much attention to him, but eventually I tuned in and heard a voice. I was in shock that I didn’t know what to do. Joshua was singing! I ran to my parents telling them to come and listen. We were speechless! When he got out the shower, we told him we heard him singing. He looked kind of embarrassed, but we could tell he was happy we heard him. 

To this day at the age of 17, Joshua will not stop talking. He talks so much now, that sometimes we have to tell him to chill. Now that Joshua is talking, you really can’t tell that he’s autistic. He is super duper smart. Sometimes I believe he’s a genius. What kid do you know that can look at a state one time and draw all the counties in that state by memory? Joshua has done that before. People that meet him can’t tell that he's autistic. Only thing that seems autistic about him is sometimes he’ll talk to himself while looking into the air. You would just think he's a weird kid if you saw him talking to himself. But who is normal these days? I’m sure we all talk to ourselves behind closed doors if not in public.

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