Autism help on the way in Brandon,Valrico,Riverview,Florida

We do learn new things eveyday from interactions with our autistic children. Most autistic kids have a set schedule of what they do every day, and for the most part, are best served if we don’t deviate too much from what they have become accustomed to. As an example, our son is accustomed to going for a nice long walk after he gets home from school, so we try to get him a drink and take him for a walk while his dinner is being prepared. These last few days, he has been adamant about not wanting to take his walk, and we were left to wonder what the problem was. He refused to go for the walk, he would jump up and down a few times and make a loud noise, and we were perplexed until we let him go back into the house, and he went straight to the dinner table.

He was hungry and had no other way to communicate to us other than to express his anger. We thought how great it would be if only he could talk or point or something just to let us know that he was hungry.

We called his teacher the next day, and sure enough, our son had not been eating very well at lunch time the last few days. Now when he gets home, we just walk him in the house and let him go to the dinner table, and if he is hungry, we have him say food, as best he can, and we just go ahead and feed him right then.

Like I said, we learn something every day. These precious kids can’t just say ” mom I’m hungry” so we have to watch for the signs.

They really are good kids, we as parents just have to stay in tune with them so that they don’t have to have an outburst to get our attention. 

Autism help on the way in Brandon,Valrico,Riverview,Florida

Finally, help is on the way for parents of autistic children in eastern Hillsborough county, Florida. You may be very surprised to know that 1 out of every 150 children has some form of Autism, and the stats are even worse for boys, there are 1 out of every 40 boys diagnosed with some form of Autism. There is a  wide spectrum to Autism, from mild to severe.

In the most severe case of autism, children are very non social, often completely non verbal, and rely on communicating through pictures, like pointing to a picture of a soda can if they are thirsty, or pointing to a picture of a sandwich if they are hungry.

A real big issue here in Hillsborough county is getting proper education for these children. To this point if kids are more mildly affected, they can participate in a public school in a “regular” classroom atmosphere, but for the more severely affected kids, the choices for education become much slimmer.

As an example, I am a stepfather to a 14 year old autistic boy who falls in the severe range. He is nonverbal but he is aware of what’s going on around him, and he is really quite intelligent. He is transported on a bus about 20 miles to a school of “last resort”, which is what we’ve been told by school officials. He is put in a portable classroom with 4 other severely mentally handicapped children. None of the others are autistic, and the teacher is not familiar at all with Autism.

I have met a group of people recently and they call themselves CPOAC, which stands for Concerned Parents of Autistic Children. They are in the process of opening a therapy center for autistic children in Riverview, Florida.

Two of the concerned parents are also parents of Autistic kids themselves, and they have elected to take the kids out of the public schools due to the lack of real education being offered to them.

The center is going to be called the Riverview Academy for Autism, and should be up and running within a short time.

We at Keller Williams Realty have decided to support the academy this year as our charity of choice, and we are planning all sorts of fundraisers to support this very worthwhile cause.

This center will be a true godsend to parents 0f autistic children in this area.