Having a child makes you realize the importance of life - narcissism goes out the window. Heaven on earth is looking at my little boy. The minute he was born, I knew if I never did anything other than being a mom, I'd be fine.
We can either continue to collectively stand on the sidelines and debate what is causing autism and if it is an epidemic or we can get on the field and start addressing the real problem - a generation of children with autism. We are not focusing enough on prevention, treatments and support services.
I know children regress after vaccination because it happened to my own son. Why aren't there any tests out there on the safety of how vaccines are administered in the real world, six at a time? Why have only two of the 36 shots our kids receive been looked at for their relationship to autism?
It's absolutely imperative for the parents and the typical kids to have time by themselves, to go out to dinner or even go on vacation while someone else cares for the autistic child.
Google is one of the most incredible breakthroughs that we have today. Yes, it can scare a lot of patients, thinking we're all dying because we look up something on Google. But there's also a lot of anecdotal information from parents, firsthand accounts of what they did for their own child.
Parents of recovered children, and I've met hundreds, all share the same experience of doubters and deniers telling us our child must have never even had autism or that the recovery was simply nature's course. We all know better, and frankly we're too busy helping other parents to really care.
If you ask 99.9 percent of parents who have children with autism if we'd rather have the measles versus autism, we'd sign up for the measles.
What is missing from today's dialogue is the effect autism is having on families, our society and what the unknown factors are. The 300lb. gorilla in the room is that our children with autism today will soon become adults with autism.
At one point, my house was a school for autistic children. I opened up my doors to about 30 kids and their families at the time. I was turning into Mary Poppins because I had to do something for these kids who have nowhere to go. So my house was the school for two years.
