Helping Archie
Archie is 4 years old and has a diagnosis of autism. The Learning to Live Appeal is a fundraising initiative to raise money for the support, health care and education he needs to make sense of the world around him.
Helping parents at the crucial time before and after diagnosis
We want to help Archie, and we also want to help other parents in our situation – Before, during and after we got Archie's diagnosis we spent hours searching intensively for the information we needed to move forward – time we felt could have been better spent with Archie and his Sister – if you are a parent in a similar circumstance, we would like to save you some of that time with the advice, information and support we have gathered here. One of the things we found most useful was hearing about other peoples experience, this is why we made the decision to share our families' experience.
This site is biased because it talks about our experience, and we are still very early in the journey ourselves. Over time we hope to continue to broaden it out. Currently it is mainly geared towards helping those who have just received a diagnosis of autism for a pre-school child in the UK. Our son was diagnosed at the age of two, after regressing at around eighteen months. He broadly represents the type of autistic child whose numbers are increasing year by year.
Our son is a living, walking mystery. These are just some of the things we do know about him.
It may not be immediately obvious, but our son is really smart.
He has immunity and digestive problems that undermine his entire being.
He has real difficulty decoding human behaviour, but does find us interesting.
He finds it difficult to work out what is going on around him, so he likes to control his environment and do things that are predictable.
His senses ‘misfire’ so he cant rely on ‘taste’, ‘touch’, ‘smell’, ‘hear’ and ‘see’ like you and I can.
Our son is affectionate towards us.
Our son finds other children difficult to be around – they are small, fast, loud and unpredictable, but if he finds one he can ‘work out’ he loves to be with them.
The more we learn, the more able we are able to show Archie things in a way that make sense to him – and when we do, he learns fast.
Archie seems to really like people who are calm and wise – if he likes you he’ll walk up to you backwards and bump into you to say hello.
Archie would make a great Buddhist! He lives only in the moment. He loves water – raindrops, puddles, the bath, the ocean – he finds them all amazing – if it rains on a warm day he loves nothing better than to strip off his shirt and feel the rain on his skin, every drip running down a window is amazing to him – we think everyone should learn to appreciate the rain like he does!
Photographic images kindly donated by Jerry Fenner Photography
View the rest of the photo's in the photo album, and read about the photographic session!
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