Judy Opar is a mom of three boys, the youngest of them is “N” – the star of this blog. Judy has a BA in Psychology from The Univesity of Western Ontario and a Master of Business Administration from Queen’s University in Kingston. She is also a Chartered Accountant. Judy articled for the CA designation at Ernst & Young, and subsequently spend almost 10 years in finance at Nortel Networks, where she held a variety of positions in statutory accounting, specialized accounting, manufacturing and cost accouting, and general ledger administration. She then left the world of business to raise her family.
While raising three young boys Judy attempted to remain sane by volunteering. Volunteering led to paid work which led to starting a small bookkeeping business.
Favorite things: nature conservation, environmental stewardship, gardening, horticulture, knitting and crochet, sitting on the couch watching tv with my dog Sky, jigsaw puzzles, drinking an excessive amount of wine, and lazy, quiet times in my living room in the light of a roaring fire and lots of candles.
lifewithautistickid 
Hi Judy
Your intro to your blog makes total sense — I am so unable to understand your trials, your daily life, your anything. But I did want to say how amazed and proud of you that I am. You write with so much humour and love that it is inspiring to read.
Found you and the blog by accident around Christmas14 (Facebook strikes!) — I don’t want to intrude, just wanted to wish you and your family well. Reading your stories really affected me – I had to wait a bit (ok, a year) before I could write, and it’s still over the top 🙂
Would like to add a witty and mood lightening anecdote here, but instead I’ll just sign off with good wishes — hope that my and my family’s good wishes find you and yours in a good place.
Happy Christmas,
Brian
Hi Brian – nice to hear from you and thanks for reaching out! Thank you also for reading my blog and for your kind words. Yes it has been quite a journey and still, it goes on. I am always amazed when my stories reach somebody unexpected and special. Writing for me is a kind of catharsis. It is not about going viral – in some ways I fear that. I do not want Children’s Aid knocking at my door (but if they do, I am prepared!). At the same time I think that there needs to be a greater understanding, particularly by those in a position to effect change, that some autistic kids are NOT going to “get better” with “integration”, the current political philosophy. They NEED their own programs that they can succeed at. Unfortunately I suspect that this audience will not read my blog because they would prefer to ignore this problem. Now I think I need to add something witty and mood lightening – hmm – perhaps I will simply echo warm Christmas wishes to you and your family! Cheers!
I applaud your desire to change the status quo — we need more people
that take their hard won knowledge and intelligently apply it. And fight
for their government to step up too. Funny, given the current climate,
I need to add – non-violently fight.
Your blog doesn’t come across as an attempt to go viral at all. Instead
it reads like a very personal account which, I would think, provides
insight and support to families in similar circumstances. And it should
be a useful account for professionals working with special needs kids and
adults too — your experiences, and thoughts, formed over years should be
listened to.
I’m really glad that writing helps you too. I think what floored me
about your writing was the difficulties – both for your son, and for you
and your family, and your methods of coping with them. If writing helps
you, it definitely helps other families, so we’ve got a win-win situation.
Anyway, rambling again. I’ve never learned how to write in social media
forums — I’ve always just written person to person. Even though I work
in computers, I only went on FB when my daughter was overseas at uni
for a year, and have since dropped out of it. I see that it can be very
good (like your blog) but I’ve seen some negative examples too. I’m mainly
stuck in email with google talk for my daughter (she’s living OS again).
How right I am — I found that replying to the email notification doesn’t work — it’s been sitting somewhere in the ether for a couple of days. Probably best if you send me an email if you would like to talk, that I know how to do. Wow less then 10 days until Christmas — hope that you guys have lots of joyous moments. And hope to hear from you when you have time. Take care.
I applaud your desire to change the status quo — we need more people
that take their hard won knowledge and intelligently apply it. And fight
for their government to step up too. Funny, given the current climate,
I need to add – non-violently fight.
Your blog doesn’t come across as an attempt to go viral at all. Instead
it reads like a very personal account which, I would think, provides
insight and support to families in similar circumstances. And it should
be a useful account for professionals working with special needs kids and
adults too — your experiences, and thoughts, formed over years should be
listened to.
I’m really glad that writing helps you too. I think what floored me
about your writing was the difficulties – both for your son, and for you
and your family, and your methods of coping with them. If writing helps
you, it definitely helps other families, so we’ve got a win-win situation.
Anyway, rambling again. I’ve never learned how to write in social media
forums — I’ve always just written person to person. Even though I work
in computers, I only went on FB when my daughter was overseas at uni
for a year, and have since dropped out of it. I see that it can be very
good (like your blog) but I’ve seen some negative examples too. I’m mainly
stuck in email with google talk for my daughter (she’s living OS again).
Case in point — I responded to the notification email and it got stuck in the ether. Probably best if you want to talk, and have the time, to email me — that I know how to do. Wow — 10 days until Christmas. Hope that you guys have lots of joyous moments and hope to hear from you when you have time. Take care.
Just wanted to let you know that in your post ‘Autism home for the holidays’ in the paragraph which starts ‘One child in particular took trampoline take-over it to another level. ‘ you’ve got ‘N’s name written out. Since you’re using his initial my guess is that you’re doing this to protect his identity so I thougt I’d drop you a note to let you know. Hope this helps. All the best!
Oooooh thank you I will fix that!!
You’re very welcome.