By Karin Hill

JONESBORO — When Dayna Miller’s first son, Briar, was about a year old, she worried he might be deaf because he didn’t respond when people called his name.

For many months they visited pediatricians who couldn’t figure out what the problem was.

When Briar exhibited behaviors such as beating his head against the wall, Miller knew there was something else causing her son to act out. It wasn’t until he was 3 and a half that Briar was diagnosed with moderate to severe autism.

Aside from mimicking a few words and creating his own sounds, Briar “was completely non-verbal,” Miller said. “They told me, ‘You’ve got to realize you may need to look for an institution, that he may never talk, he may never be able to function.”

After the initial shock, Miller decided she wasn’t going to accept that grim outlook and asked around to find doctors who could help. Soon she began applied behavior analysis (ABA) therapy with Briar for 32-40 hours every week. On top of that, they began a gluten-free, casein-free diet to alleviate his food allergies. Eventually a doctor confirmed that his autism was tied in to his immune system, which is why allergies were such a problem.

“He was allergic to everything,” she said. “He would itch and scratch until he bled. He couldn’t eat anything.”

Briar visits a doctor specializing in biomedical treatments in Florida on a regular basis, and he gets a vitamin B12 shot and other supplements every day.

The treatments and routines seems overwhelming, but now, at nearly 8 years old, Briar has progressed to the point where he can attend school in a regular second-grade class at Valley View, and there are very few indications of his initial condition.

“So far, he’s gotten straight A’s all the way through,” his mother said. “He doesn’t really realize he has autism. He recognizes it in other kids, but I tell him he doesn’t have it. A lot of kids will use it as a crutch, or it gives them anxiety. My goal for him is for autism to not be who he is.”

Granted, she said, many other children with autism aren’t as lucky and continue to struggle with autism despite intensive therapies.

“In autism there are no two kids that are the same,” she said.

In addition, the identification and diagnosis of the disorder has increased tremendously in the last several years, and doctors are more likely to discover it early on, she said.

The Knights

One Jonesboro family struggled with finding answers for their son in the early 1990s, when diagnosis and treatment of autism were still more rare. For them, the autism in their 18-year-old son remains a daily struggle.

Jeremiah Knight was born in 1989 to Ben and Shelby Knight. The boy had a serious aversion to strangers and would stare at the television for hours when he was just 6 months old.

Shelby Knight remembers a time when Jeremiah was 9 months old and she was trying to take his picture. She could not get her son to look at her. Instead, he was fixated on the flash of the camera.

She took Jeremiah to several pediatricians because she sensed something was wrong. Usually they told her that she was “being hormonal” because she had become pregnant again shortly after Jeremiah’s birth.

Just before he turned 2 years old, she started taking him daily to The Learning Center, where the staff eventually suggested Jeremiah might be autistic. The family went to the Dennis Developmental Center at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences in Little Rock, where nearly 3-year-old Jeremiah was diagnosed with moderate to severe autism.

Knight said she didn’t know anyone with autism at the time, and the local library had just one book on the topic.

“We were relatively new to it all,” she said. “And autism, although it was a hot topic, was still relatively new.”

Jeremiah transitioned to public school for kindergarten, which terrified his mother.

“From the very first day I felt completely ostracized,” Knight said. “Valley View did the best they could with the knowledge they had at the time, but they kind of cut their teeth on Jeremiah. They didn’t have a clue what to do with him.”

Going out in public could be embarrassing, she said, and loud noises caused him to act out.

“Jeremiah was invited to one birthday party in first grade, and that’s the only birthday party he’s ever been to besides family,” Knight said.

But he was smart. He knew how to use a computer and read before he started school, and he worked his way through all 13 years in Valley View schools.

Jeremiah will graduate this May, and all he can think about is getting a job. He has his heart set on working for UPS, but he can’t drive so his mom is helping him improvise.

“He’s employable, I really believe he is,” she said.

He has developed a knack for creating characters out of clay. He has a kiln in the back yard where he fires up the pieces on a regular basis. Knight hopes he will be able to sell them.

Knight wonders what she could have done differently.

“One of my biggest regrets is when he was younger we took him out of all the basketball games and kept everything segregated,” she said. “Maybe I could have, and I’ll never know, pushed him to do more. I’m OK with the things I’ve failed at because I think he’s fabulous, but I can give other people advice based on what I did or what I wish I’d done.”

Both Knight and Miller were instrumental in forming the Autism Association of Northeast Arkansas just a couple of years ago, and both are actively trying to help other families learn about autism and ways they can help their children overcome the disorder.

The group holds monthly board meetings and monthly support meetings for families which include guest speakers and time for parents to mingle.

“Just being with other parents and knowing you’re not alone” is a large part of the group’s mission, Miller said.

The support group meets at 6:30 p.m. the second Thursday of every month — but not April, because of Autism Awareness Month — at Valley View Church of Christ.

For more information call (870) 336-2784 or visit www.aanea.org.

khill@jonesborosun.com