Shelia McCrary   Shelia McCrary
I was blessed to have my second child on January 17, 1993. That is when my son Stuart was born. I have always known that when you have more than one child each one has a different personality and you have to treat each one different. We noticed though that Stuart wasn't one to let you cuddle him and wasn't really a happy baby. I loved on him anyway and made him as comfortable as I could. As he grew older we noticed that he enjoyed spinning things and opening and closing doors. This really didn't click with me at the time that there might be a problem. None of want to think of our child having a problem, we want them to be healthy and normal. Stuart then started holding anything that he wanted to look at to the side, either left or right. We thought it was just his way and didn't put a lot of attention on it. He started getting happier as he grew older. He would play more but he was always a loner. He always had a certain object that he was fascinated with that he wanted to look at and talk about. For a while it was balloons, then clocks then water towers.
One of the ladies at our church had noticed all of these things along with us but she saw some other things that we had not picked up on and greatly advised us to have his eyes checked. At the time he was five years old. She used to work a lot with children because she had a private kindergarden. We took her advice and were very grateful that we did. He had cataracts on both eyes and had apparently been born with them. So he had surgery to have the cataracts removed before he had to start to school.
That took care of him looking at things from the side once the surgery was over and he started wearing glasses but Stuart still kept being fascinated with different things. I'll have to admit that autism had crossed my mind but I didn't want to think about it. I guess I was in denial. As I said above, no parent wants their child to have a problem.
When Stuart started to school he started having some problems, not discipline wise, just with his handwriting, coloring, etc. We didn't deal well with this, we thought at first he was being lazy. This is not easy for me to say, but I just feel led to share. My husband and I both got on to him and told him he would have to do better. Thankfully he had a wonderful kindergarden teacher who could tell there was a learning disability. He could memorize anything he wanted to, it was just getting it from his head down on paper. She suggested a good place for us to take him to get counseling and testing and we did just that.
The people at the place we took Stuart for counseling advised us to take him to a doctor in Birmingham, Alabama for testing. We did this and this precious lady diagnosed Stuart with autism. It is a mild case, he is under the asperger umbrella. That was why we had a hard time finding out what was actually going on. It was a relief to know the problem but the guilt was there that we thought he was being lazy at first. When we realized what was going on we let him know even more how much we love him.
Stuart has had an aide with him since first grade now and he has made tremendous progress. He will be in the 9th grade and is 14 years old. He is taller than me, Ha! Ha! He is a precious and caring young man. He is always wanting to help people and will do anything to please. He respects elderly people and they have told me at church so many times how sweet they think he is. It makes my heart swell with even more love for my son.
He loves trains and airports and when they have time he and my husband go look for trais together. Stuart hopes to be train engineer and drive a train when he gets out of high school. I pray for his sake that he will achieve that dream and my husband and I will be doing everything we can to help him make that dream co9e true.
I'm so proud of Stuart and the fine young man he is growing into. He is another blessing in my life and I'm so thankful that God allowed me to be his mother.
Jun 4th 2007 21:11