This is what I have typed up to submit as my presentation for my co-workers about our personal journey with Tyler so far....
April is Autism Awareness Month
I am gathering you all here today to talk to you about a very special cause that is near and dear to my heart. I know most of you know, but for those that don't, my 6 year old son Tyler has autism. We knew that something wasn't quite right with him when he was a little over a year old. He hit all of his milestones, including walking, not even crawling at 7 1/2 months! We thought for sure we had a genius on our hands. When he was over a year old, we took him to speech therapy. I thought he was just delayed and he could catch up. No big deal. He was my first child, so I just chalked it up to me needing to brush up on parenting 101.
He was in speech therapy for a year and a half. Even during that time, he made very little progress. I was wondering what would come next. He was now turning 3 and would be heading off to pre-school. Before he started pre-school, we took him to the pre-school readiness specialists. They did some tests on him and when they gave us their final report, they suspected he was developmentally delayed.
We took him to a new pediatrician who immediately gave us the number of a pediatric neurologist. We set up the appointment and got a battery of tests done on Tyler to find out what was wrong with our little guy. We finally found out on November 8, 2005 (a day I will NEVER forget), that our son was autistic. His "true" diagnosis is PDD-NOS, which is the milder form of autism. I felt crushed. My hopes and dreams had died. How could I deal with this, who could help me.
The neurologist that we saw recommended a new speech therapy facility for Tyler because we told her we were getting absolutely no where with our current one. We started the new facility in July of 2006. The therapist we worked with was awesome! She actually got my son to speak his first words. Even though I wish he would have done it for me, I am glad she got him to speak. To hear those few words from him was amazing. I literally broke down crying during his session. I could see that all was not lost and my son just may be ok.
Tyler is currently enrolled in a special autistic classroom in Davenport. He has been in the new setting since this past October and it has done wonders for him. He is talking more, spelling his first and last name, counting to 50, singing, reading a little and learning something new every day. He still will have struggles along the way, but I cannot tell you all how much it means to me that my son is learning and is even able communicate simple things to us. Our biggest obstacle is still the dreaded potty training. Tyler is slowly getting it though. Hopefully soon my house will be totally pull up free!!!
I wanted to let everyone know that April is Autism Awareness Month. I know that Build-A-Bear is selling purple satin hearts for $1.00. All of the proceeds will go directly to Autism Speaks. Autism Speaks is an organization that works with families, educators, specialists. They send out emails to let people know of upcoming seminars, walks, etc. Toys R Us also does various fund raising events throughout the year.
The biggest obstacle families face is not being able to get health care coverage for their child with autism. A lot of health care providers won't take on families with autistic children because of the expense that comes along with it. A bill was just put through to the senate to provide health care coverage for children with autism. This bill, once approved, will enable autistic children to be covered for any kind of therapies they need, including ABA therapy. ABA therapy is the most expensive kind of therapy there is. One session could run you $100!
I am including some more information about autism so you can all better understand what life is like every day for families like mine.
