In my life, there was no light, only darkness. Once upon a time, there was joy. Now, there was only pain. My laughter had turned into sadness. Tears of happier times flowed into the river of despair. I was slowly drowning and falling into hopelessness. I cried out, “Dear God, why me?” and a quiet voice whispered back, “Why not you?”
Autism 2 Awesome:
I PROMISE.
I promise as a father, mother, sister, or brother
To love our children
Like no other
I promise as grandparents to lend a hand
As we help
Our grandchildren’s knowledge expands
I promise as a teacher to use the best teaching techniques
And guide our children
Who are special and unique
I promise as a friend to help with the struggle,
Because these children
Are our sisters and brothers
I promise to help as a neighbor
Whenever you ask me
for a favor
I promise to teach tolerance and respect
To other people
Who autism does not affect
I PROMISE
When our son Max was three years old, he was diagnosed with autism. Our primary physician at that time told us to give up on our son, because there was nothing we could do for him. He told us to prepare him for a group home and focus on having other children.
After hearing these words, I was stressed, depressed, and a total mess. The old me immediately shouted to the doctor, “How ignorant of you!” The new me would thank him if I ever saw him again. I actually said, “As my doctor, this is the best advice that you have about my son?” I informed him that our family no longer needed his services. He proved to me that people can only teach you what they know—and he didn’t know anything about autism, perseverance, attitude, and a host of other life strategies I’ve learned since that day.
That doctor’s pessimism and misinformation set me on a path of discovery that brought me face-to-face with my greatest fears and led me to overcome my greatest challenges.
During the writing of my journey, our son graduated with honors from high school. He was also accepted into the one university that he applied to and earned a scholarship to attend.
Allow me to start with my life’s greatest crisis because that is exactly what I was going through. That’s what I imagine we all go through when we hear those words for the very first time: “Your child has autism.”
His mom and I instinctively responded, “What is autism?”
If I were dying of thirst, where would I look for drinking water? Everywhere. After Max’s diagnosis, I was dying of thirst for knowledge about autism and answers about how to help our son. I didn’t understand what autism was or how it could happen to our family.
I asked myself, “If I don’t understand this diagnosis, how am I going to help Max?” Maybe you’ve had similar questions and searched for answers. As a family, we felt isolated, and as a father, I felt that I had let my child down. We were the abnormal family that people whispered about. Our world had changed forever.
I started to look under every stone for answers. The following is what I learned from my research (and the rest of this book is based on my years of experience as the father of an AWESOME little boy—who happens to have autism).
The information below was gathered from the website of the World Health Organization (WHO):
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) refers to a range of conditions characterized by some degree of impaired social behavior, communication and language, and a narrow range of interests and activities that are both unique to the individual and carried out repetitively. ASDs begin in childhood and tend to persist into adolescence and adulthood. In most cases the conditions are apparent during the first 5 years of life.
You can also find additional information regarding autism on the website of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC): www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/autism/facts.html.
When Max was about two and a half or three years old, we started to notice him displaying some curious behavior. We first became concerned when his normal vocabulary regressed to only two words. Then, he began having long, drawn-out meltdowns that occurred multiple times during the day. They seemed to last forever. We noticed he was very sensitive to loud sounds and developed an aversion to certain smells. He had serious trouble sleeping through the night. For some reason, he loved to crawl under the bed and into tight spaces, and he’d stare at his toys for as long as you would allow him to do so.
We also discovered the hard way that he was allergic to certain foods, which would cause irritability and hyperactivity, and he only wanted to eat certain foods. He was fixated on his routines, and disrupting them led to many of the well-dramatized meltdowns. All of these realizations were scary, but we forged ahead and helped him meet many milestones. Now, many years later, I know we are better people today than we were before the journey began.
Before our own child receives a diagnosis, we think autism is something that happens to other families. When the disorder doesn’t personally affect us, it’s easy to think something must be wrong with the parents, that all the child really needs is some good discipline, or that their mother didn’t show them love. What a total misconception.
Another misconception among parents whose children don’t have special needs relates to the degree of difficulty. As parents raising a child with special needs, we all have self-doubt and wonder if we’re making the right choices. We feel emotional stress and ask, “Why my child?” We worry ourselves sick about whether they will ever make any friends or be invited to a birthday party. And when our child has a birthday party and no classmates show up, all we can do is cry, because the world seems so unfair.
If your child has special needs, most of your days are likely filled with driving to doctor visits and pursuing therapies, hoping to find a flicker of light at the end of the tunnel. The experience is extremely difficult and painful. Facing the financial burden of paying for additional testing or purchasing special food and supplements, we wonder to ourselves whether we’ll make it to another day. It is an unimaginably stressful life, and that, my friend, is no misconception.
One of the biggest misconceptions is that our kids can’t learn. It’s a BIG misconception, because in fact, they can and do learn. They just do so in a different way, and we have to find out how they can best reach their full potential.
Life before Max was born—when I had only myself to care for—was so much simpler.
A year or two before he was born, I was living in Nicosia, Cyprus, and—as they say on the island—life was good. People come from all over the world to vacation there and enjoy the beautiful beaches, amazing food, and hospitality of the local people. I was fortunate enough to be selected to serve there as a United States diplomat. Life in Cyprus was a wonderful opportunity to experience a new culture, new people, different food, a new language, and different ideas. I quickly learned to embrace it all.
Oh, I was having a good time. Imagine a young man experiencing his first overseas assignment. I sat at the round table with the U.S. ambassador and other heads of agencies. I had the pleasure of meeting foreign dignitaries during my international career. Assignments to Lagos, Nigeria, and Guayaquil, Ecuador, would come later, with equal amounts of adventure.
I’ve learned life is full of adventures. Some you plan for, and the others are thrust upon you. Either way, they both consist of ups and downs that we can greet as a crisis or an opportunity.
Early one morning in November 2000, it was time; I was about to be a father. We rushed to the hospital, thinking Max would be delivered right away. About twelve hours later, he entered the world and I said to him in Greek, “Welcome to Cyprus,” but I can’t remember how to say it now. His birth reaffirmed to me the awesome power and goodness of God. I was amazed to be a part of something so beautiful. I knew I was blessed.
Little did I know that the greatest adventure of all was still to come.
I enjoyed being a new father, and I was learning a lot about caring for another person, including waking up all through the night to change diapers and feed him. It was crazy good. Then, I witnessed him take his first steps and heard him laugh out loud for the first time.
I remember the first time he had an ice cream cone. He took one lick, and while his brain was trying to process whether he liked it or not, his eyes danced around in his head, looking at the ice cream cone as if it were a new life form to study. I guess his brain said, “We don’t know what this is, but we like it.” I laughed over the bewilderment in his eyes as his brain communicated with his taste buds, “Yeah, we like this stuff. Send more, please.”
Since that day in 2003 when we first heard the diagnosis, I have been committed to helping improve the quality of Max’s life and helping him reach his full potential. When I thought about our son, I thought about his untapped qualities and as-yet-undeveloped abilities. I thought about the contribution he would one day make to the world. I thought about him living his true purpose and reaching his fulfillment.
Developing his fundamental skills was essential for him to reach his full potential.
It would be a hard-fought battle and one that I was not prepared for. I would see our financial savings dwindle in a few months’ time. There was very little me time or couple time because everything was about Max. The bills piled up higher and higher, but they had to be paid somehow.
Inspired by the journey with my son, I started a company called Autism 2 Awesome. Our life strategy is “We Train the World to Be First 2 Respond.”
Max inspired the name of the company during our journey together. I knew that autism was a label, but I also knew that this label would not determine his full potential. I urgently needed to shift the perspective of our entire family. I wanted our mindset to be one of awesome experiences, gratitude, and a total appreciation for the opportunity to be here. It was my purpose to help us travel from the mindset of Autism 2 Awesome. It has been a life-changing experience.
Based on my life experiences, I wanted to teach our son to respond to a crisis as opposed to reacting. Many times when we react to a crisis, we do so out of fear, without thought, in an impulsive, emotional, and illogical way.
On the other hand, we can respond to a crisis, with a well-planned, creative, thoughtful, unemotional, logical, and solution-oriented mindset.
Be First 2 Respond offers life strategies that teach you to rethink, reimagine, and recondition the misconceptions about autism. Our strategies are taught using our Special Intervention Training Techniques (SITT).
In fact, Be First 2 Respond is so important that each chapter of this book is one piece of our complete life-strategy training:
When you follow these fourteen strategies, you will find remarkable success.
In November 2018, Max turned eighteen years old—and he has a promising life ahead of him. He graduated with honors from the high school where he studied in Guayaquil, Ecuador. He participated in organized sports, plays a musical instrument, learned a second language, is an excellent swimmer, and completed physics and advanced math. At the writing of this book, Max has been accepted to a university in Arizona.
Fifteen years earlier, a doctor told us to give up on our child. That doctor was ignorant, and if anyone tells you to give up on your child, then they are also ignorant.
During our family journey, I learned a lot about myself, about other people, and about what it means to live with autism. When I started to look beyond the label of autism, I discovered the most beautiful smile my son would give me from time to time. I discovered his shining blue eyes. And I discovered a human being with a kind heart, compassion, and a beautiful spirit who makes a positive impact on the world.
If you have the courage to allow your greatest crisis to become your greatest miracle, then you’re ready to start your journey. Chapter 1 will show you how to be better than your best.