1 Out Of 150 Children Suffer From This

When I was approached by Dr. Mike Woo-​​Ming about his lat­est endeavor, which is to help and cre­ate aware­ness for an impor­tant cause that’s also affect­ing him at a very per­sonal level, I wanted to do my part.

I could sim­ply write about it and tell you what’s going on. I cer­tainly couldn’t write about the issue specif­i­cally because, for­tu­nately, it doesn’t affect my family.

But I recently dis­cov­ered that this issue hits very close to home for one of my coach­ing stu­dents, Mila Sid­man. Mila is also a great writer. So rather than writ­ing a blog post myself on a topic I know lit­tle about, I decided to ask her to write today’s blog post as a guest blog­ger, instead.

You’ll soon real­ize why…

The lat­est sta­tis­tics show that 1 out of 150 chil­dren have autism (up from 1 out of 10,000 just two decades ago).

I believe there are many more that have mild cases of autism and remain undi­ag­nosed. Often times, they go through life being labeled as “strange” and in school they may be seen as trou­ble­mak­ers or “bad.”

For fam­i­lies liv­ing with autis­tic chil­dren there is a daily strug­gle to do even the sim­plest of tasks. Get­ting ready for school in the morn­ings or going out to din­ner can be an ordeal.

And rais­ing other “nor­mal” chil­dren in a house­hold with an autis­tic child means sib­lings often get pushed to the side or have to just deal with it, as the autis­tic child needs so much extra help and attention.

I know of these expe­ri­ences all too well.

My 9 year-​​old-​​son has Asperger’s Syn­drome also known as high-​​functioning autism.

Ever since he was a baby, I knew there was some­thing dif­fer­ent about my son. The tod­dler years in our house were filled with tur­moil, many every­day things like going to the super­mar­ket or park would send my son into an extreme cry­ing or scream­ing fit. At times he would hide and just rock and cry.

I felt help­less as a mother and thought I must be doing some­thing wrong because I couldn’t com­fort my child.

Around the age of 5 or 6 things got much worst.

School can be a scary place for an autis­tic child. Some of his teach­ers were lov­ing and under­stand­ing, but oth­ers weren’t. I’ll never for­get one sub­sti­tute teacher say­ing to me, “Your child acts like he’s pos­sessed, some­thing needs to be done to stop him or he will grow up to be a monster.”

You see my son started scream­ing because he couldn’t take the sen­sory stim­u­la­tion from an exper­i­ment they were doing in class (he can’t deal with loud noises).

At the age of 7 we had to pull him out of the pub­lic school sys­tem because he was hav­ing night ter­rors about going to school and was being bul­lied by his peers. He would cry and scream all the way to school and back. I had to drag him out of the car and leave him in a ter­ri­ble state. One day, I couldn’t face it any­more and didn’t send him back.

It was a strug­gle but I knew I needed to find another solution.

My son turns 10 in a few days and he’s slowly learn­ing to deal with many of his symp­toms. He can now con­trol his ‘stim­ming’ to a cer­tain extent. Autis­tic chil­dren tend to stim and flap their arms and hands at cer­tain times.

He’s also a very kind child and has learned to play the piano. He loves com­put­ers and enjoys play­ing with his younger brother and sister.

I do worry about the future. What will it be like when he’s a teenager? Chil­dren tend to become less accept­ing as they age and peer pres­sure kicks in. How will he cope when he has to live on his own? Will he ever go to uni­ver­sity or get a good job? Will he ever get mar­ried and have chil­dren of his own?

And if all that isn’t enough to worry about, par­ents of autis­tic chil­dren have other bat­tles to fight. To get the right edu­ca­tion and treat­ment for their child, they have to jump through what seems like an end­less array of hoops and red tape.

Most insur­ance com­pa­nies don’t cover impor­tant ther­a­pies autis­tic chil­dren need such as occu­pa­tional or speech ther­apy. In our case, we have to pay out of pocket for ALL expenses.

We have speech ther­apy costs, occu­pa­tional ther­apy, and school costs. The pub­lic edu­ca­tion sys­tem isn’t geared to give autis­tic chil­dren the help and sup­port they need, so the choices are find a spe­cial­ist pri­vate school or let your child pay the price in other ways.

Where other fam­i­lies are sav­ing for col­lege or fam­ily vaca­tions and retire­ment, all our money goes to get our son the extra help he needs… thou­sands and thou­sands of dol­lars just so that he can have a some­what nor­mal life and not fall through the cracks.

And we’re lucky.

I can sit at my com­puter and work till 2 or 3 in the morn­ing to make a lit­tle extra money, but many other par­ents don’t have a way of pay­ing for these things and unfor­tu­nately their chil­dren don’t get the help they need. What will hap­pen to these kids in the future?

When I heard Dr. Mike Woo-​​Ming has put on an event to help autis­tic chil­dren and their fam­i­lies, I was very touched. Dr. Mike him­self has a 7 year-​​old-​​son who has Asperger’s syndrome.

Through hard work and a strong will to make a dif­fer­ence and ‘do some­thing’ to change things, he’s brought over 50 top mar­keters together for a good cause.

That cause is Mar­keters on a Mis­sion.

These mar­keters have donated some of their best-​​selling courses and mate­ri­als for this cause. The inter­net mar­ket­ing com­mu­nity never seizes to amaze me; this is such a gen­er­ous and giv­ing group. And this lat­est event cements just how much peo­ple care.

By donat­ing to this cause, you’ll be help­ing many fam­i­lies who are strug­gling daily to help their chil­dren lead a nor­mal life. All pro­ceeds 100% go to the Pio­neer Learn­ing Cen­ter, a school specif­i­cally that helps chil­dren on the autism spec­trum includ­ing Asperger’s, ADD, and other social inte­gra­tion disorders.

Please open your heart and help. You’ll feel good, make a big dif­fer­ence to a child’s life, and get some very valu­able edu­ca­tional mar­ket­ing mate­ri­als in the process. Go there now…

Click here to visit Mar​keter​sOn​aMis​sion​.org.

Thank you, Mila, for such a great arti­cle. I equally ask you to do the same. Go check out the web­site and find out how you can be a part of this wor­thy cause.

About the Author

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