Before I get to the point(s) of this post I figure I ought to introduce myself. My name is Dave Brodbeck, I live in Sault Ste. Marie, ON Canada where I work as a professor of psychology at Algoma University (go Thunderbirds!) Much more importantly, I have an awesome family, I am married and I have two kids, one is 15 and one is 7, the 7 year old boy has autism, which, segues nicely into the actual point of this post.

We found out that our son has autism when he was about 3 years old. Now, there were suspicions, and I think most of those suspicions came from my wife, not from the guy in the family that has a PhD in psychology. Our son seemed so different from our daughter. He was not talking. He was not looking us in the eyes, he was loving, but in a different way. He seemed less interested in hugs and such. Of course the standard reaction is “well, of course they are different, one is a girl, and one is a boy”. This resonated with me, as I know there are developmental differences between boys and girls, especially in language. Looking back, the biggest signs were his repetitive behavior (things such as flapping his arms) his covering of his ears when he got upset, and his love of patterns. He would watch videos, but would much rather look at the credits over and over than the content of the movie. I have this great picture of him lining up chess pieces at the age of two, from tallest to shortest. Now these things individually seem maybe a little odd, and frankly kind of cute, but taken together they should have raised more red flags in my mind. The repetitiveness, the lack of communication, the self stimulation (arm flapping) and the need for order are classic symptoms of autism.

Now we eventually got a diagnosis from a neurologist, which allowed us to get government support and allowed our son, once he started school, to have a full time educational assistant in the classroom. We found out later than I would have liked (you may be able to recognize these signs as early as 18 months) but finding out helped our boy a great deal. The support from the province pays for a once a week trip out with a few other autistic kids in town and a couple of great caregivers.

He is doing very well in school, he reads, writes, does his math addition and subtraction (with some coaxing) he has friends and gets on well with the kids in his class. Oh, and he loves his computer  that runs Ubuntu (I forgot to mention that his father is a bit of a geek..) and can beat his Dad at Halo 2… He is an amazing kid, and he is a hell of a challenge.

So, why am I telling you this? Well if you see signs like this, have your child checked out. The earlier you can get a diagnosis, the earlier you can get help, and get the appropriate therapy for your kid. I also want you to know that if you do have a kid with autism, it is not your fault. Parental behavior does not predict the occurrence of autism. In future posts I will talk about dealing with the diagnosis and about being an advocate for your child. However, I am starting to ramble, so I ought to wrap this one up.