Thanks everyone for your posts. We do struggle to pay the bills (I stay at home and my husband is a police officer - and you know they make nothing...) I just felt like it was my son's money and using it on rent, clothes, food, etc. felt weird like we should be paying for those things..My husband and I have really been struggling with this. I bought him some therapy equipment and about near died when the total came to $800.00 and put some money towards medical bills our son had incurred. I guess that I am ambivelent about the money. I know we could really use it, but I hate using it to buy essential things I know we should be providing for him. When we made the decision for me to leave my job as a Marketing Director to stay at home with both boys (our youngest has a speech delay and a sensory disorder) that it would be difficult but we have always scraped by. I guess that we feel like it is his money and trying to figure out how it would best serve him has been tough. As for the computer, he has difficulty writing (most autistic children do) and he types much easier, we figures that with the computer, he would be able to do his homework and communicate easier. We didn't mean to give the impression that we were trying to be extravagant, the computer has been a great tool at home and at school for him.
Thanks again for everyone posting.