When my oldest son was three, I put him in an early preschool program because, quite frankly, I needed some me time. About three months in, the director flagged me down in the hallway full of moms and told me she needed to talk to me later. When I asked her what it was about, she announced in a hallway full of people, “Your son is autistic and we need to take care of this. Now.”

I went back to the car and cried for the entire three hours he was in preschool.

My husband and I met with her a couple days later and she said to me, “I’ve been doing this a long time, your son is clearly autistic and if you don’t get him help, his chances of suicide are extremely high.” He was three. I was told my three-year-old had a high chance of killing himself. I was told what I thought was my perfect child was damaged and I didn’t know what to do. It put me in a spin I wasn’t sure I was ever coming out of. 

We immediately scheduled an evaluation and the news wasn’t any better. The psychologist who did the testing told us that we shouldn’t expect much from him. He had a high IQ, but that didn’t mean anything. He would never play pretend or develop friendships or meaningful relationships. He may never be able to hold down a job and we needed to prepare ourselves for having an adult child living with us for the rest of our lives. He painted such a bleak picture, I left his office completely crushed. I felt lost and completely ill-equipped.

We enrolled him in a therapeutic preschool program, I put him on a gluten free diet, and I researched any and all therapies and treatments for autism. It was like my anxiety all over again where I was sure that each treatment would be the magic bullet. I reclaimed my hope with each and every new avenue we took because it was the only thing I could cling to. I had to have hope because if I didn’t have hope, I had nothing. We told a select few of our family members, but we didn’t tell our grandparents. They were a different generation, we knew they wouldn’t be around for long, and we didn’t want them to worry about him. We just wanted them to be able to enjoy him. It became another secret in our family. 

We tried every therapy we came across. We did B12 shots, a casein-free gluten-free diet, we tried the gut healing protocol, we put him in speech and occupational therapy, we did neurofeedback and supplements, we tried an energy healer, we even tried experimental trampoline therapy. I prayed and I begged God. I did everything in my power to “fix” him. 

While Evan was going to his therapeutic preschool, I became pregnant with our second son. I was so scared that he would be autistic too, but I also never planned on Evan being an only child. I wanted Evan to have someone in this world other than us. I would have wanted it for him whether he was autistic or not. My best friend at the time, when I told her I was pregnant, looked at me knowingly and said, “Oh, you’re having another kid so he can take care of Evan when you die.” I haven’t spoken to her since. The fact that she knew me so little, she actually thought I would bring a child into this world with that burden placed on them was beyond comprehension. I lost a lot of friends that year. 

Peyton isn’t autistic, but autism has shaped him just the same. His first three years of life were spent being dragged from one appointment for Evan to the next. He learned patience and he learned empathy and he’s the most amazing human being I have ever met. 

When Evan graduated from his preschool, I was distraught. I wanted him to stay there in the program because he had made so much progress but they told me they couldn’t keep him there because he was beyond what they specialized in. He was too advanced to be in their school anymore; but he still wasn’t up to where his peers were. We enrolled him in the local kindergarten and hoped for the best.

Evan had been making steady progress – school work was still a challenge – but he was improving. But in second grade, Evan took a dive. I couldn’t figure out what happened. He withdrew into himself and it was like all the hard work we had done was for not. Evan had been doing well socially and had made some friends – mainly ones who like trains like he did – and he was invited to birthday parties even though he was never really one of the group. It was my doing. I inserted myself into that school community with a mission. Every teacher, staff member and parent on that campus knew my name and knew who my child was because I was not about to let him slip through the cracks. But second grade was a totally different experience. 

About four months into the school year, I started getting phone calls from other parents telling me what was happening in class. Their kids were coming home with horror stories about how their teacher was treating Evan. There were multiple phone calls and they all gave me the same story. Evan’s teacher would push him to the point where he would shut down and then she would yell at him. Evan would cry and sometimes crawl under his desk to escape her yelling. When he cried, she would yell at him even more and shame him in front of his peers, telling him if he didn’t stop being a baby she was sending him back to kindergarten. 

When I asked Evan about it, he said it was his fault. I was furious.

I called meetings with the principal and vice principal, I lobbied to have him change classrooms. I got push back from every direction. They protected their teacher and told me she had specialized training for special needs. Every complaint I had fell on deaf ears.

I didn’t care about fixing the problem at the school. All I cared about was protecting my child and fixing the damage that had been done. I pulled Evan out of school and homeschooled him for the rest of the year. We didn’t focus on mindless worksheets or redundant busy work. We explored. We went on trips. We watched educational videos. We researched Evan’s fields of interest and he made video reports pretending he was a news anchor reporting from our hotel room. I didn’t pay attention to any sort of curriculum. My only goal was to build his self-confidence and reinstall in him a love of learning that he had before Satan’s Mistress got to him. 

After that, we found an amazing private school for Evan and reenrolled him in second grade and started Peyton in preschool there. We found a new community and Evan’s confidence grew. We were still trying different supplements and keeping him off any sort of artificial food coloring and gluten and he was making progress. He still wasn’t quite up to where his peers were, but we had an amazing community and he was invited to every birthday party and sleepover and he slowly came out of his shell. 

He continued to make progress, but I still had teachers pushing me to put him on medication for ADD. He wasn’t hyperactive in the classroom, he was just spacy and they figured meds would help. I refused. I didn’t want that for Evan. I had been put on ADD medication when I was in high school because everyone was on it. And, of course, I was productive on it. I was high; I was on speed. I knew what it did to me, and I wasn’t about to do that to my child. Plus, he was so young. I wanted to give his brain a chance to develop in the absence of medication. 

When Evan hit 4^th grade, he started to develop a stutter. I reenrolled him in speech therapy and we did speech therapy for a couple of years. His verbalization became clearer, but he still had a bit of a stutter. We were still trying every therapy we could get our hands on and any new supplement that offered the slightest hope of helping. 

And then, when he was in 6^th grade, we did a test to see where his neurotransmitters were. As his school workload increased, I was toying with the idea of putting him on a gentle natural stimulant like green tea extract. When we got the results back, I was floored. The test came back with Evan’s cortisol levels literally off the charts. And I’m not some Kardashian saying “I’m literally burning up” when I’m hot. Literally burning up means you’re on fire. Literally. So when I say Evan’s levels were literally off the charts, I mean they stop tracking at a certain point and then Evan’s levels just kept going. He was having massive anxiety. Any sort of stimulant was out of the question. I found a homeopathic treatment for ADD called Brillia. We can literally see it in his eyes if he doesn’t take it. He was able to concentrate in school better, but I knew there was still a piece of the puzzle we were missing.

I had been on CBD for about 6 months, so I decided to try giving Evan CBD. His stutter went away overnight. Literally. Turns out, it was social anxiety that was causing Evan to stutter. It was anxiety that was keeping him from reaching out and interacting with his peers. It was anxiety that was making it hard for him to concentrate in school. It was anxiety that had him in the office asking to go home with an upset stomach once a week. Evan changed overnight. What happened with him was nothing short of miraculous. 

I would never say CBD or anything else can cure autism. But what I do know, is I’m not the only one with a story like this. Studies are few, but personal testimony is massive in this arena. Because of the possibility of the placebo effect, I really have no statistics on the accuracy of the claims. All I know is what I experienced personally. 

From one mother to another, you’ve got this. Your child ended up with you for a reason and maybe it was to teach you something or maybe it was because you are uniquely qualified to love, understand and fight for that child. I will never say everything happens for a reason. But what I will say, what I fall back on in my darkest times, is that we can create meaning from our pain. We can use it to make us stronger and to give our lives a greater purpose. 

It’s an awful truth that suffering can deepen us, give a greater luster to our colors a richer resonance to our words. That is, if it doesn’t destroy us, if it doesn’t burn away the optimism and the spirit, the capacity for visions, and the respect for simple yet indispensable things.

Anne Rice

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