Hi! My name is James. I was diagnosed with autism just one week before my 4th birthday. Do you know what autism looks like? It looks like me. Some people say that I am shy, but I am not. Others say that I need a spanking, but I don't. Autism is something that you can't see but it always makes itself known.

When I was born I developed normally meeting all of my well baby targets. I rolled over on time, crawled on time, stood up on time and walked on time. I even spoke my first words on time. My parents were so proud! Something happened to me between my first and second birthday though; I went from a very sweet, compliant baby to a very fussy and distant little guy. You know the things that little kids do and their mommies slap thier hands to make them stop? Well, I had to have my hands slapped over and over and over again because I was VERY tenacious. When my mommy made me mad, I would scrunch up my face and close my eyes real tight as if to make her dissappear. She thought it was odd, but cute. Then, I stopped using some of the words that I once said and I refused to eat some of the foods that I once liked. I started playing by myself a lot, in fact, I preferred to be alone. I would find odd things fascinating and watch them intently, for a long time. I was fixated on them. I started covering my ears when I became distressed, and then the tantrums started and each one was progressively worse and lasted longer than the one before. My mommy would discipline me but it didn't help. At night time, although my body was very tired it was hard for me to fall asleep so I started staying up later and later and then when I did fall asleep I would snore VERY loudly and wake up in a pool of sweat. It wasn't uncommon for me to sleep just a few hours and then wake up in the middle of the night laughing. Mommy asked daddy if he thought that my laugh was odd, or maybe even a little scary. My parents were worried about me and they started trying to figure out what was wrong. They said they were sure I didn't have ADD because I could watch movies from beginning to end without loosing interest. I was so lost in those movies that when they called my name I wouldn't notice. Thats when they suspected a hearing problem. When I stopped speaking entirely, they taught me sign language. One of the first signs I learned was for milk. I drank a lot of milk and only ate packaged foods but I refused to eat anything that was broken or out of it's wrapper. I didn't look at my mommy or daddy, I just looked through them. Every once in a while they would hear me talking and then they found out that I was saying the exact same thing that I heard off of the television and in the exact same way. I would only repeat what I heard from the television, I couldn't answer any questions or even ask for the things I wanted. I would grab mommy's hand and take her to what I wanted and just stand there and hope she would get it for me. When we saw the doctor, he mentioned that I might have "a little PDD" but that most likely I would grow out of it. My mommy and daddy didn't know what that meant but they trusted this kind man and since he didn't seem alarmed, they didn't think they should worry about it either. Later that year my doctor told my daddy that I looked pale, he ran a test for iron and found that I was very low so he prescribed iron drops. He said that soon I would be "a lot happier little boy -- a lot less fussy". My mommy and daddy sure felt relieved, now that they knew what the problem was. They gave me the iron drops and waited for the changes to show but that never happened. Things only got worse, everything had to be my way or I would melt down, screaming, crying and throwing myself on the ground. It was such a problem that complete strangers were commenting on my behavior and blaming my parents. My parents tried everything they could think of: yelling, putting me in time-outs, even spanking me but nothing worked. I lined things up in a row, turned the light switch off and on, and watched T.V. out of the corner of my eye. I didn't talk to anybody, play with anybody, or even look at anybody. One day a family member mentioned autism. My mommy checked it out on the internet, the first site she pulled up said that autism was a disease you could indentify from birth and that most babies with autism couldn't stand to be held by their parents. They would arch their backs and cry out as if in agony. I wasn't like that at all so my mommy decided that it must be something else. My parents kept bugging my doctor for a diagnosis so they would know how to help me. Finally, my doctor agreed and gave me a referral for a psychological evaluation. We saw 5 different specialists, each of them tested me, asked my parents a lot of questions and then sent me on to the next specialist. When they were all done they called my mommy and daddy into this room and asked them to sit down, then they told them that I had autism. They said that they knew from the moment I walked through the door but that they had to follow a protocol. They said there was no cure and no treatment. Nothing they could do would help me and some parents have had to place their children into institutions when they couldn't handle them any longer. They warned my parents about "quacks" and told them not to harbor "false hope". Then they offered my parents a counselling session after a one month adjustment period. Mommy and daddy were really upset and my mommy cried a lot. When grandma asked mommy what autism was like, mommy would say that it was "like someone had taken his soul". My daddy decided to take mommy to the bookstore to try to understand autism better. They bought a couple of books, Unraveling the Mystery of Autism and Pervasive Developmental Disorder by Karyn Seroussi and Facing Autism by Lynn M. Hamilton. Both books gave my parents a lot of hope for recovery but they really needed to talk to someone who had expirience with autism. Didn't the doctors say that recovery wasn't possible? The specialists gave my parents some information about the ARC, so my daddy called and talked to a lady named Danielle. She told him that she had a son who had autism but she put him on a special diet and now he is all better, then she invited both of them to a support group. This is just the beginning of my battle against autism.

Since then, we have been to A LOT of different doctors, did A LOT of different tests, tried A LOT of different things. Some helped, some didn't but after 3 and 1/2 years I am A LOT better. You should see me now, I look directly at my mommy and daddy when I talk to them and I play with my sister and brother. I go to school and I sleep through the night. I still have issues but we aren't giving up. Not until you can't even tell the difference between me and my non-autistic peers. God has begun a good work in me and He is able to complete it!