I’m going to take everyone’s advice I’ve received, this is very helpful. I’ve looked at a lot of online training programs and definitely like Lucy Walker! I like Andrew Berry as well, I have a membership with him. The first one I signed up for was London Jewellery Academy. I’m cancelling that membership, I’m very disappointed with it. They only teach how to work with premade sheet, wire, and metal clay. They don’t teach or encourage rolling mills, alloying, melting, or casting. I guess they wanted to make a program that would be “safe” for people at home. I don’t understand this at all, you can be safe with a torch, just don’t do anything stupid and make sure you read the manual first. So I’m cancelling my membership with them and opting for Andrew Berry and Lucy Walker. I like Andrew Berry because he talks really fast and pelts you with information and pretty much answers every question you think of as you think of it. I take really detailed notes. It also greatly helps that I have an eidetic memory, once I’ve seen or heard something (as long as I’m actually paying attention and not lost in my head somewhere) I pretty much remember it forever. But taking detailed notes cements it even more. I don’t usually have to refer back to the notes, the process of taking the notes is what helps. At any rate, I’ve got great notes lol.
I don’t know much about MS. I know some people who have it to varying degrees of severity, one is in a wheelchair and the other isn’t. I don’t know if my children will be able to ever do anything to tell you the truth. They’re both pretty much nonverbal. They do have some language, they can ask for favorite foods, toys, activities, but that’s about it. To be honest, I would settle for them just learning how to shower themselves. They’re 11 and 9, severely autistic, but I have no idea why or where it came from, though there are always theories and speculation. Mentally they’re like toddlers, just very sweet, innocent, pure, and loving. They’re everything that is good in humanity, completely without guile or malignancy, just completely and totally good and sweet. They’re both really smart, but there’s just this block on their ability to actually utilize or express their intelligence in any sort of functional way I guess you could say. My youngest son has an eidetic memory. His eidetic memory is better than mine ever was, it’s really a sliding scale of how good your eidetic memory is. Mine is decent. But his is absolutely phenomenal. That boy can see an 8 syllable word once, you tell him what it says, and he remembers it forever more. Yet he has absolutely no interest in reading even though he reads with ease lol. They both also have apraxia so their speech is very difficult for others to understand, it sounds very garbled and odd. I can understand them, but others have a difficult time learning the way they talk. They seem to understand each other, though. They’ll be standing there doing their own thing and the little one will suddenly say some complete gibberish and his brother will jump up and go turn the light off or something. And I’m standing there like, ok, what just happened? Lol. So I’m not sure how much they would be able to do. I explain and show them things constantly, and they seem to understand a lot of what I say, but being able to actually use that information and do it themselves is a different story. People with severe autism have an average life span of 36 years. Even if they make it to 50, I’m sure I can live that long and just take care of them their whole lives. Ideally, that’s what I want, desperately. I don’t trust anyone else to do this job, I want it to just be me and them to be taken care of and enjoy their lives in whatever way that suits them best. I really feel like I won the jackpot with my children, I think they’re the two greatest kids the world has ever seen.
