Josh's Story

Our son Joshua was diagnosed with Autism in April 2007 at the age of 4.   The journey to diagnosis had been frustrating and heart wrenching for us.  We knew something wasn’t right but were told by 3 separate doctors that he was not Autistic and that his behaviour could be caused by many factors.

Once we pulled ourselves together and started to filter our news out to our closest friends, the reality of the turn our lives had taken started to hit.  Where do we go to get Josh the help he obviously needed?  We heard about AEIOU from one of our closest friends.  It sounded just what we needed for Josh but we were advised that the waiting list was quite long as at that stage there was only the one centre.  We joined the waiting list in June 2007 and fortunately were offered a place for the beginning of the school year in 2008.

When Josh started at AEIOU he had limited speech, would spend hours at a time in his own little world role-playing his favourite movies in his head, did not know how to play or interact with others although we could see he did want to and his tantrums if he was challenged were at times overwhelming.

Within weeks we could see improvements in Josh’s speech.  The more he began to communicate with us the more we could tell just how much our little boy had taken in of his surroundings. He began to share with us how he was feeling and what he wanted to do.  With his increase in speech we could also confirm that there was no intellectual disability.  In actual fact, once he began to communicate with us appropriately, we found out that he was actually a very intelligent little boy who knew how to count, the alphabet, shapes and colours and much much more.

What was more rewarding for us than his intellect were the reports we would get from his teachers each day telling us how beautifully he had been playing with the other children.  They reported that he was able to intuitively know how to interact with each child based on what he had observed i.e he watched the teachers to see how they approached the children and would copy their behaviour to gain the child’s interest.  This intuitiveness is something that we dared not hope for.

The program at AEIOU is structured brilliantly for these children.  Each staff member has their own set of skills that they use to help the children communicate with each other whether it be verbally or via signing, play with each other and get ready for school.  The staff to child ratio is such that the children are receiving almost one on one attention and schooling.  This is vital for these children who sometimes have trouble staying attentive.

The leaps forward that Josh has made this year have defied all our expectations.  During family social gatherings and parties many relatives and friends have commented that Josh’s behaviour is little different to children not suffering from Autism. 

Josh has now begun his transition to a mainstream school and is coping beautifully.  At the initial time of diagnosis, we were told that it was more likely that Josh would have to be special schooled however with the hard work that he has done under the direction of some truly inspirational teachers he has proved that children with Autism can achieve just as much as everyone else.

Thank you AEIOU for not only brightening our son’s future, but for helping a heartbroken family recapture its happiness. 

Michael and Alys Cottrill