I have a grandson with autism, he is a non-verbal eight-year-old boy. He was about two years old when he was diagnosed with autism. I never had the opportunity to be closely around people with autism, until my grandson was born.
I have a much older nephew with autism, but I never thought much about it, mostly because I was seldom around him, I live about one hundred eighty miles away from him. I was in a world of my own back then, not giving any serious thought about anything.
My daughter (his mother) was saddened with his diagnose, her only purpose in life was to get him healed. My daughter and I both started learning about autism around the same time, there is a lot of information out there on autism, you just have to make a decision on which information is best for your situation.
There is some information out there that claims autism can be cured, although most Autism Doctors say it cannot be cured, I don’t know if it can be cured or not. I know God can heal autistic people, but the thing here is, will he? It sure won’t hurt to pray to God to heal someone with autism.
And be weary of some of these establishments that provide treatment for autistic children, they will take your money but give little or no results. They took my daughter for what little money she did have. This article is mostly about being black and poor, with an autistic loved one.
My grandson had Texas Medicaid insurance, which is state insurance for poor people. Most autism doctors and autism treatment facilities in and around the Dallas area would not accept Texas Medicaid insurance for payment. Some of these autism treatment facilities would take all of the information on my grandson, but they never contacted us again by phone or mail.
Most of the people we know who have loved ones with autism did not have much money or regular insurance either. They have just given up hope on trying to find some help for their autistic loved ones. We have not given up on him, we learned what we could do to help him at home, it gets hard sometimes but he deserves all the help he can get.
My daughter finally got him potty trained around seven years old, I don’ know how she did it, but I will ask her and put that in the next post. She took him out of public school and is homeschooling him, he is catching on, but very slowly. Does anyone out there know what will make him focus more on reading and writing?
He loves playing with smartphones and tablets. He still cannot talk, but he knows some sign languages. I think he needs some autistic friends on his level, but I don’t know any who live near-by, we live in the 75217 area.
He also likes to play with blocks and puzzles, sometimes he will arrange them, so they fit together, and sometimes he wants someone to do the arranging for him. When he was younger, I bought him a small toy truck, he would not push it around, he wanted me to push it around for him.
I don’t know if he will be able to live on his own when he is grown, because he is so far behind when it comes to coping skills. I have learned to never say what he can and cannot do because he has surprised me by doing things, I thought he could not do.
It is getting late (11:48 pm) so I will end this post for now, but there is more I want to tell you about my grandson in his struggle with autism. I will do another post on this issue soon. Meanwhile, if any of you know something we should try, please email me and let me know.
by: Me
