By Emily J. Minor, Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Saturday, June 15, 2002
 

There's nothing else like it. Renee Villano will tell you that right off.

You talk to your daughter and she sits there and she stares.

Or she finds a spot on the wall and pokes at it. For a very long time.

"My daughter," she says, "was catatonic."

Villano's daughter is autistic, diagnosed before her second birthday. Autism is a diagnosis every bit as tricky as it is heartbreaking. No one knows for certain what causes the lifelong condition -- which, simply speaking, is a miswiring in the brain.

An autistic child might be able to count in Swahili, but unable to ask for a glass of milk. The emotional stress of raising an autistic child is wearing.

The smallest victories are tucked away and kept for a lifetime -- a full sentence, a kiss, a touch. An argument with an older sibling.

For months now, Renee Villano has watched the changes in her 3-year-old daughter, Antonia, after she began attending St. Mary's Preschool for Children with Autism.

"She laughs now," says Villano.

The preschool opened six years ago and quickly earned a glowing reputation for its work with autistic children. All three classrooms have one teacher and three aides. There's a full-time speech pathologist. Occupational and physical therapy are given as needed. Subsidized by the Palm Beach County School District under a charter-school agreement, the preschool's annual budget is about $300,000.

Now, Villano and other parents of the some 30 children who attend are looking for ways to run the school on their own. Tenet Healthcare, which bought St. Mary's and Good Samaritan medical centers in West Palm Beach last year, is shutting down the program at the end of the 2003 school year.

End of discussion.

Don Chester, associate administrator at St. Mary's, said it's hard to make these decisions, "especially when they involve children."

"But we have to look at where our expertise is, and we're an acute care hospital," Chester says.

Baloney, says Neil Kaufman, a local chiropractor and the father of a 5-year-old autistic son, Harrison.

"The medical treatment for autism is education," Kaufman says simply.

Villano, Kaufman and other "panicked parents" began organizing when they heard in February, through the grapevine, one worried whisper at a time, that Tenet was closing them. Parents are learning about tax ID numbers and nonprofit classifications. They're teaching themselves grant-writing. They're dreaming up charity events.

They're praying for a miracle.

Like the one Renee Villano found at St. Mary's Preschool for Children with Autism.

"There's no place like this within a thousand miles," she says. "There's no where else to go."

For information about the parents' new nonprofit group, write Autistic Center of the Palm Beaches, P.O. Box 222443, West Palm Beach, FL 33422.