When my oldest son was 3-years old we were growing concerned because his speech wasn't developing at all and he was dispalying some other peculiar behaviors.  We didn't pay too much attention because he was our first and we didn't really have anything to compare him to.  After a few various doctor visits we ended up at the area's best-known child development specialist.  He did a few tests and asked us some questions and told us to come back in a few days and he would have the results.  We were shocked and devastated when he told us that our son was autistic. The doctor said it was a distinct possibility that he would never be able to take care of himself and might end up living in an assisted-living facility for most of his life.  Where do you go from there?  Me - straight into denial.  My wife - straight to working on "fixing" the problem.  Within a month she had him signed up for every available program, eventually including a prgram offered through the public school system even though he wasn't school-aged yet.  Once I finally came around, we started telling the program administrators that we would like for him to someday be in regular school like other kids.  The unanimous response was "oh, he'll never be in regular school". 

He was getting all the help he could get from various services and at home we did our best to just treat him like a normal kid.  Things slowly started to improve.  "Never" turned into "maybe" and eventually he was able to start kindergarten in the public school in a regular class, although he had to have a full-time aide and a lot of extra services outside the classroom.  His development began to accelerate dramatically.  Eventually his diagnosis was revised from Autistic to Aspbergers Syndrome.   Fast forward to today and he is thriving in a regular third grade classroom and he no longer requires an aide.  He is graded on the same scale as every other kid and he gets all A's and B's.  The vast majority of the developmental and behavioral problems have disappeared and, other than being a little quirky, he is very much like a regular kid.  He is tall, broad-shouldered and ridiculously handsome (one teacher described him as having "movie star good looks") and he turns 9-years-old today.  When I think back to that day six years ago when we heard the news, it is amazing how far he has come and the weird and wonderful ride to get to this point.  I can never repay all the wonderful teachers, specialists and administrators that have helped us along the way but most of all I credit his #1 advocate - his mom. 

Sorry for the long, boring post but I really wrote it for my own enjoyment....wait...I think I must have gotten something in my eye....