Fri, April 14, 2006
State of Grace—12:12 PM
Almost a year and a half ago, I met Grace – the most adorable two-year-old you'll ever see. I was at her house for a play date with her parents: onebee readers and spiritual benefactors Brandon and Christi. You know them? From the comments section? They're wonderful people, and it's such a joy to know their daughter. Grace has the sweetest, most vibrant personality, and she is immediately welcoming and ready to play.
Shortly thereafter, Grace's doctors diagnosed her with autism, and life in her family underwent a big change. Her devoted and adoring parents have been working with doctors and other professionals to give Grace the best care and learn everything they can about autism. Grace is in great shape, and continues to improve. She will always be affected in some ways, but a deeper understanding of the causes and effective treatments of autism will only benefit her and every autistic child.
Next weekend, Brandon and Christi will continue their undying commitment by participating in WALK NOW, a fundraising walk on behalf of Cure Autism Now. For them, it's a way to increase autism's visibility and support new and ongoing research. For the rest of us, this is a great opportunity to support a worthy cause, and three even worthier individuals. If you're interested, Christi has set up a web page at WALK NOW's site where you can donate to Team Grace and help them reach their goal of $2000. They've already crossed the halfway mark – I'm sure if we pull together we can help them collect the rest. Please consider giving what you can, and pass the link along to anyone who might be interested.
Here it is in TinyURL form, for easy sharing: http://tinyurl.com/gepx5
Brandon — Sat, 4/15/06 3:55am
Thank you, Jameson, for the kind endorsement.
It's been a little over a year since Grace was first diagnosed, and she has made remarkable progress. She's very lucky in that her autism is very mild, and she falls on the high-functioning end of the spectrum.
The key for us was early intervention, some of it unintentional - before Grace was diagnosed and before the thought of autism crossed our minds, we had her do some speech therapy when she was about 15 months old because her speech was delayed. After her diagnosis, she did occupational therapy and more speech therapy, and for the last six months has been in a blended-inclusion special education public preschool (though it took a bit of a legal battle to get her placement there). Now she's four and will be ready to enter a regular kindergarten class in the fall of 2007, which was our goal from the beginning of this process. And Christi and I have learned a lot about autism and about Grace, and feel like we're equipped to help her with any bumps in the road along the way.