I would like to say I hope you don’t know anyone who has autism. But you do know one. Me. I don’t personally have autism, but my two year old son does. When your kid has autism, so do you.
When your kid can’t talk to anyone, can cause a scene, you have to explain to people what they are, it is stressful. Dealing with uninformed people’s opinions. None of it is any fun. My wife found a place where we can buy “Autism Cards”, where you can hand them out to people who are giving you weird looks, or make remarks if your kids are acting up in public. Check ’em out.
Those are the kinds of things you have to go through when you have an autistic child. God bless my wife for having the strength not to abandon her mothering instincts (which I’ve read some women do). God bless my daughter for having such a great heart to not reject her brother because he has a problem. She adores her brother, and has since before he was born. She is a perfect big sister for David It’s difficult having a son who will be three next month, who has no real language, still has not said “Ma-ma” or Mommy to my wife. But he’s bloody adorable, and he’s a lot of fun to play with when he’s engaged. Won’t lose any of my feelings for him just because his autism has kept him from reaching goals that I, as his father, have had for him. I pray that some day I’ll be able to teach him about baseball. While I adore my daughter, and wouldn’t trade her for anything in the world – even making my son “normal”… There’s always something about a guy and his son and baseball. Here’s a picture of my little guy – his name is David.
Why am I writing about this on a baseball site? Well, it’s because a good friend of mine also has a son with autism, and his website is a huge baseball site. I speak of Maury Brown of bizofbaseball.com. Maury has a seven year old son who has autism, and has written about it extensively online at his personal blog. Maury has also for several years now run a campaign on bizofbaseball called the “Autism Awareness Challenge“. This is up and running again for 2012, and I urge you to head on over and check it out.
Maury & his wife are going through the same kind of stuff that my wife and I are. Although Maury’s been at it longer. Nobody ever sets out to have a child WANTING this to happen to them. But this is the child we’ve been given by God, and there must be a reason for it. I will NOT let his condition stop him from getting the love I know some kids with the same condition do not, or didn’t in the past. Lynn and I love our David, and we pray for him every day.
It’s not easy (or cheap) paying for special medicines, treatments, etc… But we do, because we love him. God bless our little David. And God bless Travis, too.