Progress

We've had a lot to chew on in the last few months and a big list of things to do for Cooper. We are slowly making our way through them. As the English saying goes, the only way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time. Here is what we have been up to.

We have visited three possible schools for Cooper and he even got to particpate in two of them for a few hours, and have decided on one for Cooper to attend in the fall. We will go to an autism clinic in Munich this summer which will hopefully be able to provide some autism specific therapy. Also in the next months we are going to bump his regular therapy up to 3 times per week. We are going to start the GFCF diet soon after the baby is born(more on that in another post coming up).


I mentioned in a previous post that there is a special therapy that is somewhat new and has great results with autistic kids. This is called ABA (Applied Behavioural Analysis) Therapy. Peter and I attended a workshop this past weekend geared towards teaching Parents how to help their kids and introducing the basic principles of this therapy. It was an expensive workshop, but very much worth it. The therapy is fantastic and I can totally see Cooper responding really well to the techniques. Unfortunately, this therapy is not covered by the state or any insurance in Bavaria (other parts of Germany are starting to offer some coverage) and averaging at about 9,000 euro per year it is significantly more than we can afford right now. I can't tell you how frustrating it is to have finances stand in the way of getting potentially life changing treatment for your child. But I guess this is a situation that a lot of parents have to deal with.


In the meantime, we are going to appeal to the Bavarian government and our insurance company. It surely can't hurt and with other families in Bavaria currently attempting as well, the more people that request the more likely it will be covered in the future. We are already starting to implement some of the things we learned at the conference, but our attempts are clumsy at best with the little knowledge we have.

If you have actually read this far, I am really impressed and thankful. I would imagine this is all unexciting, boring stuff to most, but it is the center of our lives at the moment. Pray for us to continue to be perserverent in this fight to help Cooper. It's not cancer, but it is so real for us right now. Many parents lose their kids to terminal illnesses. Autism is not a terminal illness, but many parents "lose" their kids to autism in another way. We don't want that to happen to Cooper or our family. We feel lucky that Cooper is not on the severe side of the huge spectrum of Autism. Pray that God helps us to make the right decisions and that He would make the right therapies available to us. Finally, pray for families struggling with autism in general. The workshop we went to was sold out, packed full of parents and therapists who have it much worse than we do, all looking for answers and ways to bring their children back from whatever world they feel the need to escape to.


Thanks for following our journey.