Autism Speaks Canada

Special post by Stuart Duncan, the  father of 2 boys, one with autism one without.  You can read Stuart, aka AutismFather, here http://www.stuartduncan.name/

Excuses

Before my son was diagnosed, before I had been married, I was a man on a mission: To learn how to make a lot of money from the best money experts I could find. I went to seminars, lectures, read books and even got to see people like Anthony Robbins and Donald Trump speak… live.

The number one lesson from every single piece of information I could take in was to stop making excuses and find a way. That was it. All of the motivational speeches, all of the time management courses, all of the “get rich” articles in the world all boiled down to one simple thing… stop making excuses and find a way.

I never did do it.

Fast forward a few years and now I have a wonderful wife and 2 children, the oldest of whom has Autism. Now I wish I had gotten rich back then because it would be so much easier now.

But I’ve discovered something recently that I hadn’t realized for quite some time… not only did I learn the lesson but I’m teaching it now!

Day after day, as I talk to other parents with Autistic children, I hear people complain about lack of funding, lack of resources, the schools do have inclusion or they don’t, the professionals do something they don’t like or someone is missing something somewhere. The biggest one I hear is that they’d love to move somewhere better for their child but they just can’t.

I’ve heard this for years now and for years I’ve told every single one of them: stop making excuses and find a way.

You have to understand, I don’t tell people this because Trump or Robbins told me… not at all. I didn’t get their lesson at the time. I tell them that because I finally know what they meant.

By the time my son was four, my wife and I had been battling the education system for two years to ensure that he had the proper help he needed. Either integration, special classes, a teacher’s aide… whatever. But it wasn’t there. We came up to June and our son would be starting school in three months and we had gotten nowhere.

At that point, we searched all across Canada for what we needed and we found it in a little community of 7000 people. There, in that little town, was a school that dedicated 3 classrooms to children with Autism. Five to eight children per class, one teacher and three teachers aides… all specially trained.

It was heaven! But then we thought to ourselves… we can’t just pick up and move and leave our home.. can we?

We made the decision in June, renovated our house in July while working and living in it, moved in August and sold our house in September when my son was already in school. And we sold it at a loss. We’re still paying the mortgage on that house two years later.

To put it bluntly, it sucks. But I would do it over again in a heartbeat because my son is doing amazing. He’s reading, playing with friends, a whiz on a computer and his teachers are all wonderful in helping us and listening to us.

It would be foolish to think that it was any easier for us to just pick up and move than it would be for anyone else. It would be foolish to think that we have time, money or resources that others don’t.

I’m paying for a mortgage on a house that I don’t have. We’re living in a town that I do not want to be in.

But my son has everything he needs and more. He’s doing better than I expected he would and certainly far better than he ever could where we were before.

I learned the lesson. I’m not rich but I know the lesson in my soul, through and through. If you can’t do it for yourself, if you can’t see it through to get yourself rich, do it for your children. Do it for those that matter the most, even more than your own self.

Stop making excuses. Find a way.