I am writing about a topic near and dear to my heart - children with Autism and their families. Did you know that parents of these children can lose the other children in their home because of the Autistic child??!! It is true and I know it to be true as it has happened to me!
Fact: Although there are methods of working with children with a Pervasive Developmental Disorder, MANY professionals are at a loss when it comes to these kids and what to do with them. They need to be kept updated, be required to be kept updated, as without such they cause more harm than good due to the mishandling of treatment with these kids!
Fact: It is difficult, if not impossible to obtain appropriate treatment for these kids because of the former fact.
Fact: As it in nearly impossible for both parents to work in a home with an Autistic child, most of us are flat broke with no hope on the horizon. SSI helps, but does not nearly cover the costs of dealing with these children.
Fact: Families of these kids are ruled by their needs. As social skills are not their forte, we are forced to live in secrecy, away from society. We have no privacy and conversations are controlled by their twistting of our words and spewing them out embarrassingly. There are no boundaries with these kids and parents have no privacy with them.
Ideally, parents of these kids will no longer be punished for having them in ANY way! There will be no custody issues of our "normal" children. We will be given the help that we need, via an aide in the home. If our children had health problems, we would be afforded nurses, qualified nurses, yet we get minimal help and are forced to live in a prison of our children's minds. We NEED help, a qualified aid, so that we can have a true family life, so that our divorce rate isn't so scary, so that we don't have to live like we are lepers. Our children need qualified help to insure their futures and they should have it without fighting from their parents. This country is neglecting the needs of these children. We, the families of them are sick of hearing "we don't know", when there is information out there. We are sick of having to search out agencies that DO know what they are doing with these kids because most don't. We are sick of watching our children disintigrate with the latter of these agencies! We are sick of being condemned to our lives when we KNOW there is help out there!
We, the families of the Autistic, invite you to live our lives for 1 month, and strongly feel that all agencies, government officials, involved with the funding of programs that DO help these children should live in our shoes for at least one month, so that they know what they are limiting, how they affect our lives! If you know whereof I speak, I strongly, strongly encourage you to open up your mouth and SCREAM!
