There's a new "campaign" going on in the facebook world.
"NOT born with it."
Parents from all over the world are sharing photos of their children with a little bit of a story. A lot of parents are choosing to share photos of their child before their regression and following diagnosis.
Here is my 1 in 88. NOT born with it.
At five months old.
Hamming it up for the camera.
Loving his Halloween costume.
Cooing and babbling to the photographer and anyone who came into the studio.
Loving attention.
I got dozens of shots from this shoot with this engaging little monkey.
In fact I have hundreds of similar shots from his first year of life like this.
He was not autistic. He was not born with autism.
This is my precious boy at 7 years old.
Photo shoots result in dozens of shots of this vacant expression and low tone mouth gaping open.
Photo shoots result in crying and tantrums.
He won't respond or look at the photographer.
The smiling shot is a rare treasure among hundreds of photos like this one.
He now has autism.
Something happened to my boy and to thousands of other children.
My boy was not born with autism.
It's Autism Awareness Month.
Start becoming aware that many children with autism were not born with it.
Start becoming aware that the government seems not to care.
Please visit the Autism Action Coalition and write a letter to your representatives urging them to recognize autism as the national health emergency that it is.
3 comments:
I personally know parents whose children have regressed...I have seen it...it's heartbreaking. I don't know with K, b/c we had issues from the start, but I am not sure if it was always Autism, or just other issues (she wouldn't feed, screamed 24/7 for the whole first year/never babbled, etc). All I know is she ended up with Autism, and, yeah, 1:88...I mean, WTH?!
Hey Heather - wow. That adds a whole new dimension for me. When we got Ted at 20 months, we we there was something significant going on. We knew that as early as 14 months he was exhibiting extreme meltdowns and SIBs. We don't know much earlier than that other than he was Failure to Thrive. When he came to us he had only 5 words. We ramped him up to 75 words in three months.
And then he stopped talking altogether. This was in October He didn't speak again until January/February. And it was like starting from square one. That's when the doctors finally started listening t me
Heather - this is something you and I have in common. My daughter began regressing at 19 months of age, until she was no longer speaking and seemed lost in her own world. I wrote our story on today's blog post - would love for you to read. I think you'll be able to relate some. Thanks for sharing about our kids who were not born this way. I'll do my part by visiting the coalition you recommended.
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