There Are No Coincidences

I recently posted about looking into a speech generating device for Aidan, which I am now in the process of setting up.  It may be a few months until we get him an appt., but at least the ball is rolling.  First we have to set up an eval with a SLP (speech language pathologist) to determine his needs and which device will be the best match.  I am told that our insurance typically covers this, and therefore shouldn't be an issue. We are so excited to try this!!!
As fate would have it, as I was channel surfing the other night I happened to see a documentary on HBO called  A Mother's Courage: Talking Back To Autism, which is SO amazing, about a mum in Iceland  who has a severely autistic son.  The services in their country are very limited, so she traveled here to America to look into treatments for her son.  She talks to Dr Temple Grandin, who gets a lot of screen time and, as always, gives incredible insight into autism.  She also visits a school in Sacramento that specializes in  ABA, and looks like a great program (ABA is quite effective, Aidan gets 2 hours/day at school). Most notable, however, was a program called HALO (Helping Autism through Learning &  Outreach) located in Austin, TX.  It is a program created by the mother of an autistic son who teaches autistic kids to communicate using what is called RPM, or Rapid Prompting Method.  She designed it for her son, who is completely nonverbal and was also diagnosed with mental retardation.  He is still nonverbal, but writes beautiful poetry and has been published.  Oh, and his IQ is 185!!!  When you have a nonverbal child it is so frustrating to know how intelligent s/he is but there is no way to formally test them, and most also carry a dx of mental retardation as well.  To be able to get inside their minds and have proof of what you know is there would be such a gift, and a lot of parents find out things they never knew about their children whom they live with and see every day.  The boy in the documentary told the instructor and his mum that he wanted to take piano lessons, that he'd been making music in his head since he was little.  Watching this documentary, I couldn't stop crying because it was the first time I felt such hope that I could truly get to know Aidan, and maybe others will too.  I know he is so much more than his autism lets us see, and it's my dream to pursue this for him.  I feel as though maybe there is a light at the end of the tunnel, I just have to clear a path...

A voice for Aidan?

I have read about autistic people who are able to use communication devices to help them speak, and dreamed that one day Aidan would be able to speak or to use something like that. However, the only ones I knew about required typing, and he's unable to use letters. Recently I found out about Dynavoxtech, a company that makes these devices using Mayer Johnson images, and I'm really excited (he is already familiar with Mayer Johnson images because they use that system at school). Another thing that I didn't know is that sometimes insurance covers it, and the company will help submit the paperwork. I hope that this will be the case, because communication has been such a struggle for him.
I'm trying not to get my hopes up too high, but if we are able to get him to use this I think it will make all the difference in his life. There are so many times when he couldn't communicate that were so emotionally difficult for him, and as a parent it is such a helpless feeling. He has so much personality, and I so often wonder what he's thinking about. He's showing more and more interest in communication and is so wanting to be a part of things that I will never give up hope that one day he'll have a voice.