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AUTISM FIRST STEPS
AUTISM DAILY NEWSLETTER
Monday January 7, 2002
SPECIAL EDITION
INDEX:
* LAURA'S little miracles
******************************
LAURA'S
little miracles
By Colleen Mastony, Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Sunday, January 6, 2002
Laura Miller didn't know what autism was 10 years ago, when her first child was
born. By age 1, Anthony wasn't answering to his name. Laura could stand behind
him and yell, "Anthony!" But the boy wouldn't flinch. Anthony didn't
babble. He rarely even cried. Laura thought he was deaf. She took Anthony to
the doctor, but the doctor was perplexed. Tests showed that Anthony's hearing
was normal. Maybe he'll grow out of it, the doctor suggested. Months later, in
July of 1993, Laura went to a new physician. The doctor greeted her, took one
look at Anthony and said, "How long ago was your son diagnosed with
autism?" "What's autism?" Laura asked. She was 8 months
pregnant. Doctors assured Laura that her second child would be normal. They
didn't know preliminary studies indicated the disorder might be genetic. Laura
was thrilled when her second boy, Andrew, began saying his first words --
"Mama" and "Dada." Laura was sure the doctors were right.
Then, one afternoon in August of 1994, when Andrew was almost 1, Laura called
for him, but Andrew didn't answer. Laura found Andrew in his room, ignoring her
calls, hypnotically laying his blocks in a long line. He did not answer. He did
not look up. Laura telephoned her father. "Andrew is acting deaf,"
she said. "I think he's autistic too." Soon after, doctors confirmed
the early symptoms of Andrew's autism, and Laura started on shots of
Depo-Provera, a contraceptive. But by January, she was pregnant again, and her
husband, Howard, was furious. What if their third child was also autistic? The
doctors calmed Howard's fears. They had never heard of anyone having two
autistic children, much less three. Plus, autism is up to four times more
common in boys than girls. Their daughter would surely be normal, the doctors
said. Laura was overjoyed. She pictured frilly dresses, hair bows and ballet.
She imagined her daughter, Sarah, having tea parties with Anthony and Andrew.
She saw her little girl as a little teacher. In Laura's dreams, the little girl
would cure the boys. And for one full year after Sarah's birth, Laura had her
wish. Sarah was her perfect child. Then came Oct. 27, 1996, the day after
Sarah's first birthday. Laura was helping Sarah practice walking. Laura was on
one side of the living room, Sarah on the other. Sarah toddled across the room
into Laura's outstretched arms. Each time she crossed the room, Sarah would
say, "I love you!" Then, "Again! Again!" In Laura's memory,
Sarah seemed to be running that last time she crossed the room. "I love
you!" Sarah said. "Want to do it again?" Laura asked. Total
silence. "Sarah? Sarah!" It was as if something snapped, Laura would
later say. As if, at that moment, her child died in her arms. "It can't
be," the doctor later said. But it was. Autism. Again.
• • •
Laura Miller is now an expert. She can tell you that autism is a
lifelong neurological disorder that usually strikes in the first two years of
life, interfering with a child's ability to communicate and relate socially.
Laura knows the symptoms: the lack of eye contact (Andrew will turn his head
away and look at you sideways); the repetitive behavior (Sarah can spend hours
pouring water out of the pool with a small cup); the rigid need for routine (if
Laura takes her children to Wal-Mart, they immediately have to go to the video
section or Anthony will have a violent fit). What Laura won't mention is that
most autistic children will never marry, have a job or live independently. Half
never learn to speak. Laura Miller doesn't mention these things. On the front
door of her Port St. Lucie home, she has nailed a small plastic sign. It reads,
"Expect a Miracle." If you're lucky, you might get a miracle once in
your lifetime -- recovering from a debilitating illness or becoming
pregnant after you thought you never could. By Laura's estimate, she gets a
miracle a day. One morning, she didn't hear Anthony get up. She found him
sitting at the breakfast table. He had poured himself a bowl of cereal.
Miracle. The next weekend, Andrew was lying on his stomach on the back patio,
when Sarah jumped on top of him. "Andrew, get her!" Laura yelled.
Andrew rolled over and pushed Sarah off his back. For a second, they tussled on
the ground. And if you didn't know differently, you'd think they were a pair of
regular kids. Miracle. Just the other night, Sarah was tugging on Laura's arm,
trying to get her attention. Laura said, "Sarah, just say 'Mama.' "
"Mama," Sarah said. It was the first time in five years. Miracle.
Laura Miller, 33, is a full-time single mom who cannot count on regular child
support. Sometimes Howard has the money to send a check, and sometimes he
doesn't. So Laura feeds the kids, pays the rent and keeps the car and all the
major household appliances running on $1,431 a month -- the children's
disability payments from the government. When the washing machine broke, Laura
was on her hands and knees, pulling at belts and extracting lost toys, until
the machine rumbled backed to life. If something breaks that she can't fix,
like the air conditioning in the minivan, it just stays broken. But none of
that matters to Laura. "We're having miracles everyday. Who has that? If
you could add up the value of all those miracles, then we would be the richest
people in the world."
• • •
Autism affects as many as 1 in 500 children. It is more common
than Down syndrome, multiple sclerosis or deafness. And the numbers seem to be
increasing dramatically. The reported number of autistic children has doubled
in the U.S. over the past six years. Locally, numbers have quadrupled since
1996. Some suspect that environmental toxins or childhood vaccines are causing
the increase. Others believe that children previously labeled with different
disabilities -- or missed altogether -- are only now being correctly diagnosed
as autistic. The three key characteristics -- impaired social interaction, impaired
communication and repetitive behaviors -- can range from mild to severe. One
autistic child might sit in a corner, rocking and banging his head; another
might have an above-average IQ; and some have savant abilities, like Dustin
Hoffman's character in Rain Man. But the central characteristic of autism is
what child psychologist Leo Kanner called "extreme autistic
aloneness." As human beings, we gravitate toward one another. We need
friends and relationships. But this piece of us, so central to our humanity, is
what the Miller children do not understand. They disregard, shut out, ignore.
What we gravitate toward, they retreat from. And if, by chance, something
breaches the walls of their inner worlds, the Miller children become
overwhelmed. The sound of a plane in the distance, the feel of the breeze, the
glare of the sun can set off a tantrum. Though not widely accepted at the time
of Laura's pregnancies, the working theory points to 10 genes that must
interact to trigger the disorder. If one child in a set of identical twins is
autistic, there is an 80 percent chance the twin will be autistic, too. That's
proof that the disorder is genetic -- but also that genes are not everything.
There are other families like the Millers. A wealthy couple with three autistic
children in New York recently donated millions to scientists at the State
University of New York at Stony Brook. But generally, after autistic symptoms
appear in one child, parents stop having children. Doctors now tell women who
have given birth to an autistic child that, in the case of a second pregnancy,
they have up to a 1 in 20 chance of having a autistic child. No one knows the
odds of having a third.
• • •
Laura slipped into a deep depression after Sarah's diagnosis.
The children couldn't dress themselves. They couldn't feed themselves. They
didn't sleep more than a few hours at a time. "It was almost like I was
taken out of this world and put into the Twilight Zone," Laura says.
"I could look into their eyes, and it was like they were looking through
me. I would talk to them, and it was almost like talking to the wall. Every
time I looked at them, I thought, `There's no hope. This is going to be my life
forever. I'm going to be taking care of infants for the rest of my life, except
they are going to get bigger and stronger.' " At night, Laura would rock
Sarah and whisper: "Come on, Sarah. I know you're in there. Fight
it." "When the boys would go to school, I would put Sarah in front of
the TV and watch show after show." When the boys got home, Laura couldn't
remember the hours since they left. She lost whole days. "I didn't want to
go out. I was almost embarrassed. I didn't want to see people that knew me or
my kids. The big question was, 'If she had one, why did she have more?' I don't
know how many times I had someone ask me what I did during my pregnancy. Did I
do drugs? Did I drink? "I kept thinking, 'Why me?' I was always a good
kid. I was great in school. I never got into trouble. "My father said,
'What's the matter?' I remember yelling at my dad: 'You have no idea what it's
like. You had five normal children. I have three autistic children. I lost
Sarah. Sarah's gone.' " Laura looked forward to death. "I would never
have to cry again," she thought. Then, on a clear night in April 1997,
hope arrived on the chords of a song playing on the car stereo. "It was a
night I was losing my mind," she remembers. Laura had put the children in
the minivan and was driving around the county, desperately trying to get them
to fall asleep. She played a religious song -- Sunday School Rock -- over and
over, because Anthony screamed whenever it ended. It was after midnight by the
time she pulled into the driveway. She began to turn down the music, praying
for silence. Then she heard something. She clicked off the stereo. It was
Anthony. "I thought: 'That's not him. He doesn't talk.' " But it was.
Anthony was singing the chorus: "I love Jesus, yes I do." They were
his first words. He was 6. It was the first miracle.
• • •
"Good morning," Laura says to each of the kids as they
pad into the kitchen. It is shortly after 7 a.m., the start of a day in the
Miller house. There's a lot of pointing and gesturing. "What do you want?
You want this?" Laura pulls food from the refrigerator and
cabinets. Doritos? Little Debbies? Frozen lasagna? Nutrition went out the
window a long time ago. Laura hands a can of Pringles to Andrew, a chocolate
cupcake to Sarah, then reaches for an aspirin for herself. Sarah sucks the
frosting, then drops the cake on the floor. Woof, the dog, lunges. Laura rolls
her eyes, sighs and scoops up crumbs. Kids bolt in different directions. There
are two loads of laundry a day -- at the least -- depending on wet pants or wet
beds. Floors are mopped every day, and bedrooms are vacuumed every other. If
she's lucky, Laura eats a meal a day, "just so I don't have to worry about
eating again," maybe a frozen dinner zapped in the microwave around
lunchtime. Someone's always coming or going at the Miller house. Laura
qualifies for 60 hours of state-funded child care. One program gives her more
hours than any other parent in the state. She has hired from an agency, but one
worker started abusing drugs and another stole money, Laura says. So
Laura hires her sister, her mother and friends -- who else can you trust with
children who cannot speak? And for $8.50 an hour, they bring home-cooked meals,
coffee or just their company, really. None is a specialist in autism, but they
are ready to change a diaper, chase a child or just listen to Laura cry.
"Sometimes, I just think that I'm a vessel for the kids to get something
to eat or to drink. Like they don't care who's standing in the kitchen,"
Laura says, about the kids. "Like they're just going to use me to get what
they need." By evening, Laura is exhausted. Dinner is a glass of Dr
Pepper. She collapses into bed. "I put a stuffed animal against my back
and pretend it's somebody. Then I hug the crap out of the pillow," she
says. This is not exactly the life Laura Saliba had planned. She wanted to be an
accountant. She liked the decisiveness of numbers, the neat columns, the clear
answers. Her father had worked as a corporate financial officer in Manhattan
before he moved the family to Florida and opened a video store in Fort Pierce.
Laura graduated from Fort Pierce Central and then took classes at Indian River
Community College. She met Howard Miller, fell in love and got married. Then
came Anthony. Then the autism. Then Andrew. And autism. Finally Sarah. And
autism. Now this is her life -- three children she adores, three children with
autism.
•• •
Laura met Howard in 1986 at Dipper Dan's Ice Cream Shop, a
little place off Midway Road, long gone now. Howard had the most beautiful blue
eyes. They dated for four years and spent every second together -- meeting for
dinner, watching movies, taking a romantic trip to the Bahamas. They married in
1990. Anthony was born a year later. But Howard liked to drink, and
there were other women, he acknowledges. After Anthony's diagnosis, Howard
started drinking more and coming home less. "We heard it's rare for a
second child. Maybe at first we worried, `Maybe we'll have another autistic
kid.' But they say it's so rare," he says. "Three just kind of blows
your mind. "I started drinking, trying to forget about it, trying to accept
it. I kept hoping it would get better. It never did. I drank more. I kind of
got out of control." There were a series of separations. A few days before
Christmas 1997, Howard slammed Laura's head into a wall, according to the
police report. The children were in the same room. They didn't even wince. The
police came, arrested Howard. Laura filed for divorce the following year. So
Laura is a single mom. Howard lives in Georgia with his mother and works at a
screen-door factory. He says he's coming back. "I'm kind of missing them.
I'm always going to love her. I love the kids." This makes Laura furious.
"Did you ask him why he didn't call on Andrew's birthday? Why did he do
all the things he did? He's just looking for sympathy. The only sympathy I have
for him is that he is missing miracles every day. He's missing three beautiful
children grow up. They are going to grow up and be independent, and they are
not even going to know him."
•• •
Laura hasn't made many friends over the years. There are the
child-care workers who sometimes become friends, but those never seem to last.
Then there's Melissa Collison, 38. She was a friend first. Five days a week,
Melissa leaves her own sons, who are 8 and 15, to come help take care of
Anthony, Andrew and Sarah. "You have your kids getting on each other's
nerves, and it drives you nuts," Melissa says. "Then you come to
Laura's house. I would complain about my boys fighting. Laura would just say,
`You don't know how lucky you are. I wish my kids would interact.' " When Melissa
mentions Laura in conversations with other women, she starts, "My friend
Laura," then it automatically follows, because you can't leave it out:
"She has three autistic children." Talk about opening the floodgates.
"The question that most people ask me is, `Why in the world did she have
three?' They just automatically put the blame on her," Melissa says.
"They all want to know if it's genetic, and why she kept the kids, and why
isn't the dad in the picture?" So, Laura hasn't had many girlfriends.
•• •
Laura has gone for genetic testing. "We went back as far as
my great-grandmother. The only thing we found was Down syndrome in one of my
mother's cousins. No mental retardation. No type of learning disability.
Nothing," she says. "We can't trace it anywhere." Except that
Laura can't go to sleep until she checks the locks three times. On the day the
Social Security checks come in, she'll call the bank three times, just to make
sure the money's there. If she touches an ashtray, she has to wash her hands --
three times. A few years ago, she started seeing the same thing in Andrew.
"He would have to touch everything in order. Like a tile on the floor,
he'd run up to touch it. He'd have to touch it like 10 times before he could
walk away." The doctor explained obsessive compulsive disorder. "I
thought, at first, it was my fault, that these traits were from me," Laura
says. "I never connected it to the autism." Then, there's Howard. He
has trouble making eye contact -- "just like the kids," he says.
Laura likes to think that Howard's genes caused the autism. "If the
scientists or the doctors were to come back and say, 'Laura you have an autism
gene, you caused them to be autistic' -- that would be like . . . I can't even
find the words . . ." She pauses, covers her mouth with her hands:
"I'm not going to cry. I'm not going to cry. I'm too tired for that."
Then continues: "It would be more devastating than even the autism is to
me. I look at their faces and to think that I could put them into that world. I
couldn't live."
•• •
Anthony is 10 now. Today, he is on the patio blowing bubbles,
mesmerized as they float away. His blue eyes stare from beneath barely visible
eyebrows. His high cheekbones and pointy chin give him the impish look of Peter
Pan. You walk up, absently pop a bubble. Then it happens. Anthony turns and
looks at you. After spending whole days together, he has never looked at you.
You pop another bubble, then another. He is belly-laughing now. You are jumping
up and down, whooping as you pop bubbles, laughing -- ecstatic for the
connection and desperate to keep his attention. The moment lasts for only
seconds and then, like a soap bubble, is gone. Minutes later, Anthony is
walking back and forth along a section of the fence in a corner of the yard. He
moves with the grace of a dancer, his body loose in an arm-swinging, lolloping
gait. He is walking on his toes, absently flapping his hand next to his face,
clicking his tongue and staring into space. You follow, call his name, splash
water from the pool. He does not look at you. Playfully, you reach out, try to
tickle him. He moves away. He makes a sweeping arc with his arm. A conductor to
a silent symphony. He holds his hand aloft, slightly angled, then adjusts the
angle, watching. He makes the gesture dozens of times a day. Lost in the sweep
of his arm, the light on his upraised palm, the color of skin against sky --
this is Anthony's world. Like most 10-year-olds, Laura's oldest can spend hours
in front of the television set. But when Anthony watches one of his hundreds of
Sesame Street or Fraggle Rock videos, he focuses on a 2-second segment, playing
it again and again, his finger on the rewind button. He stands inches from the
television, whispering the dialogue along with the characters. Anthony is the
only one of Laura's children who speaks. He can recite biblical passages, his
ABCs, Hamlet's soliloquy. In school, he can write his name in light, shaky
letters, and he can read sentences like: "Mother sees the flowers on the
trees." But when he tries to tell his mother that he wants his grandmother
or a drink, all that comes out is "Gama" or "Dr Pepper."
Laura sometimes thinks Anthony is trying to say something else, but the wrong
words keep coming out. If she asks: "Do you want pizza?" Anthony
echoes: "Do you want pizza?" Other times, the words don't come at
all. Then Anthony throws his head back, opens his mouth wide and lets out a
wail. He digs his chin into his fist and bites down on his hand. He punches
himself, leaving a black eye. But the words won't come. So intuition and
long-standing codes have replaced the English language in the Miller household.
In the kitchen, Anthony walks up to his grandmother, throws his hands in the
air and bellows, "Cookie!" Evelyn Saliba, 59, bellows
right back: "Cookie Monster!" She buries her face in his belly.
Anthony convulses with laughter. In between gasps, he whispers
"Cookie" and throws back his arms. To the experts, these moments of
connection are enough to classify the Miller children's autism as moderate. In
extreme cases, autistic children will scream if someone just enters the room.
But, looking at Anthony, Laura cannot call her children's autism anything but
severe. Laura has learned to savor small moments -- like feeling Anthony gently
touch her hair and drape his arm around her head. This, Laura likes to think,
is how Anthony says, "I love you." He lingers for a second, then
flits away. Sometimes Laura will call, "Anthony! Say `I love you.' "
And sometimes Anthony will echo: "I LOVE YOU!" But Laura has never
heard him utter those words on his own.
• • •
Andrew is the middle child. The shy one. The smallest one. At
the age of 8, he has a wiry build and deep, pleading brown eyes. His left front
tooth is broken off almost at the gum, and an adult-sized tooth -- too big for
his delicate features -- grows next to the gap. His favorite color is red,
Laura thinks, because he favors red gum balls. Andrew's greatest treasures,
above all else, are balls. Andrew Miller owns hundreds of balls. Balls of every
color, pattern and size are scattered through the house and back yard. Laura's
not sure exactly how many. Three hundred? She has bought all of the balls
carried by Wal-Mart and Kmart. She has a motorized ball that moves by itself --
Andrew is afraid of that one. And there's a bedtime ball that helps Andrew go
to sleep. If you bring a new ball to the house on Andrew's birthday, pull it
out of a shopping bag and set it on the kitchen table, in a second, Andrew
spots it. His tiny hand plucks the gift away. It's a plain blue playground
ball. Andrew has one just like it already, but that doesn't matter. He is
beaming. He carries it around all day and digs it out of a tub of old balls
after a grown-up has put it away. Every morning when he wakes up, Andrew points
to the back yard. Beyond the sliding glass door and through the screened porch,
there is a back yard like no other. A kind of kids' kingdom. Its castles: four
brightly colored playhouses. Its boundary: a chain-link fence. Inside: a
rusting swing set, a wooden tree-swing and an above-ground pool. Two dozen
balls dot the yard. Four trees stretch overhead. Long grass grows under the
shade of a huge trampoline. It is quiet except for the whisper of the breeze
and the tinkle of a chime. Andrew's yell comes like the first notes from an
unpracticed instrument -- uncontrolled, off-key. He grabs a ball from
the ground, crouches and flings the ball forward. He crisscrosses the yard. One
by one, he lobs balls into a plastic playhouse, wailing if a ball doesn't land
just right. Eventually, the house is jammed with dozens of balls. Andrew climbs
to the top, surveys his work, then begins tossing the balls back down.
The cool, smooth roundness of a ball, its silent arc through the air, the
gentle thump, thump, thump it makes as it bounces across the grass or settles
into the plastic house -- this is Andrew's world. Andrew does not speak. He
uses an electronic board made up of 50-some pictures to communicate. Press a
picture; the board says the word. But it's hard to remember that you have a
board if you're only 8, and autistic. When Laura finds Andrew crying and
throwing himself down on his knees in the yard, she softly reminds him,
"Go get your board." A tiny finger presses pictures, and a stiff, computerized
voice -- sounding entirely too grown-up for such a small boy -- announces:
"I want . . . Soda . . . Please." Sometimes the pictures get pressed
in the wrong order. The words come out: "Please . . .Soda . . . I
want." This makes Andrew cry. He'll bounce up and down, let out a wail and
press his chin into his hand. Laura makes him do it again -- guiding his hand
with her own -- until the words come out right. Teachers think Andrew
may have apraxia, a condition where a person understands everything going on
around him, but faulty wiring in the brain prevents him from
communicating back. "He tries. He tries to make sounds. He'll be in tears
trying," says teacher Joanne Sweazey. So Andrew mostly points. He never
picked up sign language like Sarah, who can sign for , candy and open, but
mostly just signs for candy. Laura opens the refrigerator door and asks Andrew
what he wants. Andrew points to a pack of frozen lasagna. But when it's made
and on the table, he is back at the refrigerator. Someone has left the
refrigerator chain unlocked -- a risk around children who can empty the
contents onto the floor in seconds. Andrew opens the door and pulls out a
perfect plum. He holds it aloft, ducks his head slightly, raises his eyebrows
and, with pleading eyes, looks at Laura. She points to his untouched plate of
lasagna. Andrew flings the plum to the floor. He throws his head back,
straightens his body and jumps up and down, pogo-style. He lets out the
high-pitched and rhythmic cry of a monkey. But Laura insists. Andrew sits down,
picks at the lasagna for a second, then darts out the door. Laura sighs at
these moments and quickly moves on. They happen a hundred times a day. But
there are other rare moments when Andrew seems like a normal boy. Laura is in
the pool. A ring of rust warps the metal walls, water spills through the holes
in the liner. Andrew climbs a rickety ladder and leaps into the pool, arms
outstretched toward the sky, mouth wide in a smile. There is something about
the water that brings Andrew out. If you jump into the water with him, he makes
eye contact, laughs and bounds toward you, ready to play. "A lot of times
I feel angry," Laura says. "I see the little child he could be when
he's in the pool, and as soon as he steps out, it's over." Andrew laughs,
gets a mouthful of water and sends a spout arcing through the air at Laura.
Laura grabs a plastic football filled with water, stands and fires backs.
Andrew scampers up the ladder. A plane is passing overhead. Laura points to the
sky. "Andrew! Airplane!" Andrew points to the sky.
"Air-plane." It is his first word in seven years. "Yeah!"
Laura yells, throwing her head back, smiling heavenward. "You said a
wooorrrrdddd." She flings her arms wide and lets her body fall back into
the water. Andrew jumps in after her.
• • •
Sarah is nearly perfect. With her blue eyes, tiny baby teeth and
golden tangle of hair, this 6-year-old autistic girl could easily be a cherub
peeking over a cloud. Today, Sarah is next to the above-ground pool.
Barely tall enough to look over the edge, she reaches in and scoops water into
a plastic sherbet container. Her muscles tensed, she puts the edge of her
bucket to her right cheek, bends and lets the water run down her face. It
streams into a thousand sparkling pearls that splatter into a sunburst on the
ground. The cool water on her skin, the translucent ribbon twirling to the
ground -- this is Sarah's world. With a birdlike shriek, Sarah throws back her
head, shudders and smiles. Her arms are bent, wing-like. She has a few tiny
rocks clutched in one hand, a small toy wedged in the crook of her arm. She
pours from a standing, then a crouching, position. She runs a few feet and
pours again, letting the water slide down the side of a lawn chair or splatter
onto a rock, then looks up, shudders and smiles. Sarah does not speak. She is
learning to nod her head "yes," an effort that rocks her whole body
forward. She can make the sign for "open" by flattening her palms and
pulling them apart. But when she wants to go outside, the sign she has made a
hundred times before suddenly eludes her. She stands at the door making the
sign for "candy," twisting her finger into her cheek. She signs
candy, candy, candy, with one hand. Her body tense, her face contorted, she
clenches her other hand in frustration and pinches Laura's arm. "Say
`open,' Sarah. Ohhhh-pen," Laura pleads. Sarah lost all of her words --
Mama, Papa, An-do (for Andrew) -- on the day she became autistic. But listen
closely. In the constant stream of chirps and coos, sighs and squeals, you
might hear a word. Or think you do. They come in breathy whispers. Standing in
front of the sliding glass door, Sarah musters a body-trembling
"Ohh." For open? On the trampoline, someone hears "Jump!"
Laura points to a hole in Sarah's pants. "Sarah, you have a hole!"
Sarah looks up, wide-eyed: "I do?" Last year, Sarah was having
violent fits. On the bad days, teachers would count 60 pinching, biting or
kicking incidents before the last bell rang. Sweazey and teaching aide Loma Amore
push up their sleeves to show tiny scars on their forearms. "Sitting?
Forget it," Sweazey says. "You'd try to get her to sit, and she'd
yell." This year, Sarah can sit for five minutes at a time. Put a rubber
pegboard in front of her, and she'll start pushing the pegs in on her own.
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