"Andie is 16 he was diagnosed at 4 with Classic Kanner Autism and a severe communication disorder. Samantha is 14 she was diagnosed 4 months after Andie with Classic Kanner Autism and a pervasive communication disorder.

When Andie was diagnosed we went out and tried to learn as much as we could and to find out what he would need to help him cope and get better.... when Sam was diagnosed it was like someone dropped a bomb on our world.Depression sank in with all we head learned about autism we knew there was no cure only treatments to help improve the condition. 

Andie had been tested for over a year to see if there was a reason for why he was autistic and every test except one was negative.. the only one that had a positive was the woods lamp test... it showed a slight overproduction of melanomin.... we decided not to put Sam through the test but to try to approach our predicament from a different angel.

 Andie was placed in a mainstream nursery that had 2 special needs teachers and they also gave him a 1 to 1 aide... Sam stayed on at the children's centre that helped diagnose her.

because he had not had the right intervention before he was 3 the prognosis was not good... we were told to consider sign language for both especially Sam as she would most likely be non verbal and that Andie was as near to a non verbal outside of his echolalia there was no communication.  Andie was being moved onto a language unit at the local school so we applied for a place in the nursery that Andie was at and when Andie left Sam started and again were given a 1 to 1 assistant for Sam.

I refused to believe that my children would never communicate and decided to become more positive and hands on with their language development. I was enrolled on a course for Hanen by a speech therapist at the language unit... even though Andie was too old for me to qualify Sam wasn't and Marion thought he would still benefit from me using it for both children.

Withing 6 weeks of using what I was learning Sam started singing.  by the time she was 4 she would use single words to communicate. as she progressed we saw her overtake her brother with language skills and though he was falling behind he still made some progress....

2 years later they were both placed in special needs schools with educational criteria and both able to communicate minimally but enough for them to be deemed verbal. 

Sam now can use simple small sentences and Andie follows her lead... we once told someone how our children at times are like twins born 2 years apart. we know they don't need to speak to each other to communicate but they know mum and dad don't have that skill and they are more than willing to let us know if they like something or not.

Music was the thing that gave them the words and the confidence to use them, it helped them progress from nursery rhymes to Disney sing along to being able to do things we never dreamt of.

Yes they are still severely autistic and challenged in their lives, anyone who has ever tried to talk to them know they are still very limited... but we have hope and they keep showing us they have the ability to progress even slowly it is still progression.

Thanks to our children we live with Autism everyday... It has been said we are very up about it.. we don't want people feeling sorry for us. to us this is our life and we just get on with it as any parent of any child does."