Friday, December 21, 2007

Education and Media Week

Better late info then no info. But hey! It's the Christmas season AND we do have those six Autistic children and their needs. Anyway...

Sunday, December 9th was the start of the Education part of the week. A neighbor of ours, Melisa, does educational seminars for teachers and parents of Autistic children. She is a 'Behavior Analyst', as I understand it, that teaches these groups how to communicate with their Autistic children. She does seminars all over the country and concentrates on Aspergers children. She and a fellow Behavior Analyst, Aaron, from California; watched our children, came up with a plan and personally bought materials for us to use. Aaron specializes in working with more severe Autism. Thanks guys!

On the afternoon of the 11th our documentary producer and camera man came over to see what was needed to get the house ready for filming. They were here that day and Wednesday and left late Thursday. Got a lot of family life and daily living plus on Thursday I took 3 of the children to University of Utah's Autism research center we've been involved in for the past year. They filmed one the Dr's doing evaluations on each of them.












Here's our crew, Monica, Scott, Keith and Richard:

Then on Friday, December 14th, our magazine photographer, Ken, arrived. He followed us around for the next 3 days. He said he would take over 1000 shots and they'd end up using 6-8. I thought that was huge, but he said that it is very typical.

Our reporter says that now that we have pictures our story should be out fairly soon. We are hoping that it is THIS month.

Our goals are better and more awareness and getting support and financial aid to families through our AutsimBites Foundation.

“Funding for Autism research is good, funding to help with day to day living, is better.” - Dad

Wednesday, December 12, 2007

Glenn Beck Turns Back On Dad of Six Autistic Kids


My title is another example of sensationalistic "Headlines" that we are seeing a lot during this political season. (my little joke, HA!) If you look closely you'll seen Glenn smiling. (also notice that Glenn and I have similar chins) He was at a book signing, last Saturday, for his latest book. My oldest son, Ben, snapped the picture just after I handed Glenn a gift t-shirt from our website. (Glenn was actually turning around to put the t-shirt on a table behind him) He was very nice and when I told him I was the Dad of six Autistic children and that the t-shirt was from our website he said, "God bless you sir."










The big face in this shot is me.







I silenced the room and created a fair amount of laughter when I let out a VERY loud, AWWWWWW-YEAHHHHHH!!! about 5 times during the book signing.



The people behind me got this shot for me and emailed it. Thanks Connie!



In between the folds of the t-shirt I included a note to Glenn regarding Autism. Here are some excerpts from that letter: "Make a Difference for Autistic Families. Who We Are - My wife, Robin, and I are the parents of six Autistic children. We are participants in a genetic study on Autism at the University of Utah. We’re making this appeal especially to you because as a father of a special needs child you would have an understanding of our hopes for, our and all Autistic children’s future.


You Are Too Busy - I know… I know that you are busier then a one-armed paper hanger that also has just one leg, now involved in a butt kicking contest. However, I hope that you will consider helping parents that have been financially devastated by Autism.

We are forming a non-profit, The AutismBites Foundation. Our wish is to get needed funds into the hands of Autistic parents for basic needs, home renovations to keep their children safe, for treatments and interventions to improve their children’s lives...

...Do an AutismBites charity day on one of you radio programs sometime in 2008. It could be much like the one Rush Limbaugh does for Lymphoma where he raised around 5 million dollars last time."

I then included this recent picture of our family.

Hope and pray with me that we can get the AutismBites Foundation to become a reality very soon.
Dad