AUTISM AWARENESS MONTH

April is Autism Awareness Month. It seems like people only get involved in an issue if it directly affects their lives and I don't see how this particular post refutes that hypothesis. I have a daughter who was diagnosed with PDD-NOS (Pervasive Developmental Disorder Not Otherwise Specified). From what I can gather the diagnosis is similar to when someone says their baby is colic. From having a colicie baby myself, the cause could be from a number of different reasons; stomach aches, acid reflux, etc. The only problem is that babies don't talk and can't let us know what's bothering them. PDD-NOS works in a similar way. My child has different symptoms of Autism, Asperger syndrom and other diagnosis that would fall under the Autism spectrum. The only problem is that this particular diagnosis is so complicated that not one case is the same. There are too few children that would fall under the exact same category as my daughter with the same tendencies, communication fall backs, sensory issues, etc. that it is impossible for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to give an exact diagnosis for her. So rather than throwing their hands up and saying "We don't know" they instead came up with PDD-NOS.

As a parent the only desires you have are to help your children grow up, learn, become self sufficient and functioning members of society. I can't say that I know for a fact that my daughter will ever get that chance. I hope and pray that she does, but this experience has helped me grow as a man and look at every situation in my life differently. My wife and I have grown so much since learning of our daughter's obstacles and there are so many different ways that I can take this post (I'm starting to realize that it's going to take more than just writing about it now to really say what I want to say). I remember helping a client purchase a home a few years back and she had a son with Autism. I met him a couple of times, nice kid, high functioning, but I will never forget something she told me. Mind you this is right around the time when we were starting to see different signs of my daughter's delays, but I remember her saying that her son was really into animals and that's what made him tick. Being with animals made him calm and he could progress differently when animals/pets were involved in his life, so she made it a part of hers. Upon meeting with her more often, looking for the perfect house to buy, she had mentioned that her son was her life. She had given up so much to make sure that her son had every chance possible to grow and function in society. That is a true sacrifice!

I'm not looking for an award or any recognition, if anything I want to let parents with children who have special needs know that they're not the only ones going through it. Over the past couple of months, my wife's parents (more so my wife's mother) have been taking more of an interest in our daughter and trying to understand what it is that we are going through. She wrote a beautiful letter to the family. In the letter she wrote out our schedule and how busy we are in getting our daughter to school, speech and occupational therapy, ABA therapy, training, etc. I was tired after reading it. I guess I didn't realize just how much we had committed our lives to our child in order to give her the best chance of progressing. This is also something that we are going to live with for the rest of our lives, but I wouldn't have it any other way. She is teaching our family so much! Her younger and older brothers are better people, learning to not judge others and treat everyone the same. She was brought to this earth to make our lives better and is accomplishing that goal. She may never read this, but I just want to say that I love you Elle!