 |
Why CureforAutism.org
was created:
This organization was formed by Scott Robbins, father of two
children in the Autism Spectrum. For those of you who have experienced Autism
first-hand because someone in your family has been stricken by it, you are well
aware of the pain that all associated with it feels. For those of you who do
not, this site is really created for you. The goal of this site is to
facilitate awareness of this epidemic, be a central point for donations to find
a cure and to create partnerships with corporate entities for fundraising and
charitable association with Autismspeaks.org in an effort to solve this terrible
disease which steals our children away from us.
When our oldest son, Jake (wearing the pirate costume on Halloween to the
left), was born in late 1999, he was very difficult. He never slept, he
would cry non-stop and as he got to be two and three years old and really up to about six years of age, he would
display violent behavior and would scream in anger as if you had cut his arms off over
virtually nothing. We didn't know much, if anything, about autism at the
time, but
were told to have him evaluated at the age of about 3 after a year and a half of
our pediatrician insisting there was nothing wrong. She would said "He's
just wired a little differently...".
When we were able to actually get him evaluated, he was diagnosed
with PDDNOS. Pervasive Developmental Disorder Not Otherwise Specific,
which basically means, he has some form of autism, but we really don't have
anything more to tell you and we don't know what to do to solve it or help you
much. As he got older, we fought, as many parents do but many more don't
know how to do, to get help in the public school systems to get Jake more help.
Today Jake is worlds better than we could ever have imagined five years ago.
But such is autism...you just never know. He is doing fairly
well in school, but has a lot of trouble socially and is very much focused on
doing things a certain way, at a certain time and that routine cannot be broken
or he may break down in tears or anger. I have tried so many times to sign him up
for baseball or bring him to a kids martial arts class forgetting about his
disability because he is relatively "normal" and time and time again, he ends up crying and quite frankly, so do
I.
When Jake was only two and we did not know about his diagnosis yet, Ben was
born. He appeared very "normal". He would look you in the eyes, he was
learning to speak and appeared in every way to be free and clear of being
autistic in any way. When he was about 18 months old, Heidi recognized
that he may have some challenges and we got him evaluated. At 18 months or
so, they said he was fine. Six months later, as he progressively got worse
in so many ways, he was diagnosed with Autism. He is now 6 1/2 years old
and barely communicates, eats only a handful of foods, goes to a special school,
is not toilet trained and cannot really eat on his own and has a horrible sleep
schedule. You cannot leave him alone for more than 10 minutes or so
because he will take off his clothes and go to the bathroom on the floor.
Because of the severity of his autism, he has also been diagnosed with mental
retardation. If Ben is sick or hurts himself, he cannot even tell us what
is wrong so we
need to guess at what is hurting him. He will most likely, unless a cure
is found to reverse the damage already done to his brain, never be able to function on his own.
This story, although very abbreviated, is not intended for you to feel bad
for us, but to share with you just on the surface the difficulty that a family
with autism goes through on a daily basis.
"1 out of every 150 children born are diagnosed with some level of
autism." ...YOU CAN HELP PUT AN END TO AUTISM!
|
