The best lesson I learned from my son’s journey with autism is to trust  my “mother’s intuition” and to never let the experts dictate how we live as a family.  I allowed my son’s teachers and clinicians to influence my decisions for my son’s therapy because I thought they knew more.  I lost hope and settled for less.  I allowed the specialists to tell me I was shooting too high, and that my son’s abilities were not equal to my expectations. 

Year after year, it seemed that they were right. I saw Clark continue to regress and not progress.  After three years of constant therapy and changes in medication that never worked, I finally agreed with them and threw in the towel.  The experts kept telling me I was wrong until I finally agreed with them and accepted less from my son. 

In losing my confidence as a parent, and seeing my son continue to get worse no matter how much therapy he had, I lost hope and went into a deep depression.  My husband would not let me give up on Clark or myself.  He took on the fight when both Clark and I were at an all-time low in our lives.  He found the doctors and clinicians who took on Clark’s case and who really understood Clark’s issues. It turned out it was those issues which were interfering in Clark’s learning.  So, we threw out the old ways of doing therapy, our previous clinicians, and doctors and brought in the new experts who had the right insight into our son’s needs. 

In our hearts, my husband and I knew Clark was a highly capable learner.  Clark has proven us right.  In one year, Clark has gone from not reading at age 8 to reading at a third grade level by age 9.  This is attributed to finally finding the right clinicians who had the right tools to unlock Clark’s potential.   Don’t settle for a clinician or doctor who does not believe in your child.  There are plenty of clinicians and doctors out there.  Continue to search until you find ones who do agree with you.  Trust your parent’s intuition.  No one knows your child better than you do. You, the parent, are the expert on your child.