I used to go to all the appointments with my daughter and that was with specilaist that understood Autism.
As I was teaching at the time, I made notes on the things that excited and interested my daughter. I noted some wonderful teaching techniques fron some very skilled people.
Eventually I designed my own course for my daugher based on my obsevations.
I then employed a student who was trying to get her degree in psychology.
I gave her my lesson plan and she stuck to it rigidly. She was amazing and the specialists were amazed at how her skills developed. I never let them know what was happening. This was at the age of 4 to 5 for my daugher. I remember how excited she was at having these day lessons.

Another thing I did was to take many photo's of things we did and use those photo's to help her undertand through pictures what we were going to do. So if we were going to the speech therapist, I showed her a photo of the car and then a photo of the speech therapist 5 minutes before we went out. She understood.

I also spent a lot of time helping her to use the computer at that age, even though some of the specialist were horrified at that. I have never regretted that, as the computer was a brilliant way of helping her to communicate.

Obviously over time things were changed to adapt to her latest situations.

She now goes to main stream with one to one support.

Early intervention and a willingness by parents to understand and do all they can to help them develope over time are critical.

In order to do that, one of us had to stop working and work solely on that side. As my wife wanted to carry on with her self employment as a freelance translator, we decided that I would stop working and do everyting in my power to help our daughter.

we sacrificed a lot and are basically broke because of that, but we wouldn't want to change that.