Little Mario’s Journey In 2008 my husband and I were blessed with a beautiful baby boy. Little Mario was born with a smile on his face and fiery red hair. We knew from the moment we laid eyes on him that he would be a very special little boy. Over the months little Mario developed and created a bond with us. He spoke new words and became playful and sillier as each day passed. One day, I noticed that Little Mario was not repeating certain language which he had already spoken, and as a new parent I did not think too much of it at that time. I returned to work as a Community Health Nurse and little Mario went off to daycare. This was where we really began to realize that our little guy was not developing as other children were. We took Mario to see his doctor and then for a specialized assessment of his development. We received news that our son had Autism Spectrum Disorder. Devastated yet determined, I researched as much as possible and found a promising program called the Son-rise program. I travelled to the Autism Treatment center of America to receive training to develop our own Son-rise program, which is a home-based program. We set up a specialized playroom for little Mario and dived head-first into this program. Mario immediately responded, and responded so well that he gained many skills within the first month of our program that he did not obtain within 8 months of another well- known behavioural therapy program. We were overjoyed to find a program that our child loved and responded to so well that I decided to take long-term leave from work to focus my time and energy into developing our son’s program. We added four wonderful and committed individuals to our team, trained them and they began working with Mario. Our facilitators work one-on-one with Little Mario for up to 30 hours per week in our home based program. My son has developed so many skills, skills that we were lead to believe he would never achieve, let alone within a time frame of a year and a half. Little Mario has gone from speaking one to two word combinations (which were mostly him echoing what you had said to him, ex: “mama” or “water”) to now using full sentences (ex. “Can you make the blue robot Godzilla” with play-doh) which are spontaneous and meaningful. Little Mario is connecting with others and making wonderful relationships with them. Additionally, he can perform many self-care actions and is becoming more independent each day. We are so happy with Mario’s progress and have great hope that he will continue to break boundaries related to Autism. We will continue to work with Mario as much as he needs each and every day. It is for this very reason that we are hosting the “Hope for Little Mario” golf tournament fundraiser. The funds raised from this event will be put towards our trip to the Autism Treatment Centre of America in Sheffield, Massachusetts. I will be travelling to the centre with my husband, Little Mario and our daughter, along with our four facilitators to attend a five-day intensive therapy program facilitated by their staff. This training allows us to observe, and be observed by the centre’s highly trained staff for 8 hours each day that we are in attendance, in their specialized playroom. This will be a valuable experience to our program as this training will allow us to enhance our skills and be able to assess Mario’s future needs and goals. Please support our cause and help us to continue to inspire our special little boy on his journey of breaking the boundaries of Autism. In doing so, we hope to inspire others to have hope for their loved ones who may have Autism. Thank you so much for your time.
Posted on: Fri, 18 Jul 2014 05:20:01 +0000
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