Refrigerator Mothers

I don't know if most of you already know this or not, but a long time ago, in the 50's, 60's and 70's, if your child had autism, it was considered to be your own fault. Doctors actually thought this. Imagine being told your child has this rare (back then, it really was rare, only 1 out of 10,000) severe developmental disability and worse of all, you caused him to be that way. It was all your fault, because you didn't love him enough, and ignored his needs and was "cold" to him, causing him to turn away from human interaction. So many moms were frankly told that, and I can imagine that more than a few of them went into a depression. Perhaps even became suicidial. It gives me the shivers to think about it. Today, there are so many people thinking about autism, why it happens so often nowdays, how to cure it, if it can be cured, who's kid is higher functioning than who's, how to get the insurance company to pay to the treatment that is needed, that frankly, it exhausts me. Sometimes I get sick of thinking about it. Sometimes I think I don't think about it enough. It looks like I am going to be able to get Tricare to pay for some ABA therapy for Ben. Now. Two years into our assignment here, I finally get all the ducks in a row and find out that there's a qualified provider of ABA therapy and consultation in Cary, and Tricare is willing to shell out for Ben to use her. Sometimes I think I stumble onto critical information like this by pure accident. Rob found out about ECHO from a magazine article, not from any helpful tricare person. I found STOMP, this great resource of military families with children with disabilities by chance, not by design. It makes me wonder what I still don't know about and how much time is slipping away because of it. Of course, if we lived on base, I hope they would have given us more guidance than I've gotten on my own, here. Better late than never I suppose.