Our wonderful, beautiful grandson, Cooper, was born autistic.  He is 4 years old now and surprises us everyday with what he has learned to do.  The general opinion is that his autism is caused by the same thing that caused his melanoma that appeared at 18 months.....autoimune disorder.  He never regressed at the age of 18 months but was about a year or so behind in speech and other milestones like pointing and waving bye bye.  Both of his wonderful parents are in the health care profession, one being a nurse and one a paramedic.  They made the difficult and brave choice of leaving behind their family support group, a business and everything familiar to move to Katie, Texas , with no jobs but a hope and alot of prayer, to enroll him in a school that has a great program for him.  Since that time he has made enormous advances in language skills and behavior.   We are so proud that his parents had the courage to leave everything behind even though we miss them and especially him so much.  They lived right behind our house and we saw them everyday.  We have learned so much from Cooper about unconditional love.  He brings so much joy into our lives.  I can't image life without him.  Do we worry about the future?  Sure.  But you just have to have faith.  

If I had any advice to grandparents or parents it would be ,don't worry about why (unless you are having other children) and if you have to fight everyday with your local school system, like we all did, don't waste the money with an attorney, especially in a state like ours where the odds are stacked against you because so few of them understand it or really care.  Take the money you would spend on the fight and use it to move to a state that has the best program you can find as fast as you can.

And, love, love, love these very wonderful kids.