CrazedPhotoMom

April is upon us once again thus so is Autism Awareness Month! For those of you unfamiliar with us, we have an almost 5 year old son on the autism spectrum. He was diagnosed around the age of 2 and has received therapy (until he was 3) and is now in school pretty much full-time. Nate has made ENORMOUS strides in the last year and half! He's talking up a storm these days and is answering questions appropriately and even asking some questions! He recently started going into the kindergarten classroom at school and loves it. The teachers/therapists wanted to see how he was going to adjust to a new classroom and a new teacher. The transition was remarkable. He had no issues with the change in schedule and talks about Mrs. Miller and her classroom every day!

Socially, the teachers/therapists tell us that Nate does really well at saying hello/goodbye to his friends at school and even tries to initiate play with them. Unfortunately due to his delayed speech, it hinders the other kids' ability to understand what he wants or what he's saying. We're hoping that as his speech continues to grow, so will his social skills. Nate's pre-school teacher told me yesterday that they're working with him right now on getting him to ask other kids questions - "What are you drawing?" , "What book are you reading?" , etc. He's a very smart kid so I'm sure he'll learn quickly!

If you find some free time today, check out http://www.cnn.com/ (or channel 202 on DirecTV) today. They're dedicating a good portion of their reporting today on Autism. Also tonight at 9pm on CNN, Larry King Live is going to talk with Jenny McCarthy, an actress who has a child with autism.

Within the last year, they have changed the statistics of how many children are afflicted with autism from 1 in 166 to 1 in 150. Here's OUR 1 in 150....