All About Andrew

It all began because of Andrew.

Everything changed when he was diagnosed with Autism and ADHD. We as parents began a lifelong journey.

At first the tears were many, but we were lucky to have the support of family and friends. Of course, that wasn't enough, so we quit blaming ourselves and went to work. A group called Early Intervention accepted Andrew into their program. Through this wonderful group we obtained referrals to hospitals for evaluation, which led to the official diagnosis from the Childrens Hospital of Boston that nearly broke our heart.

Shortly after the diagnosis the state of Massachusetts stepped in and sent a coordinator from the Childrens Services to our home. She helped us to apply for support services including full and complete insurance from Mass Health. Other organizations provided assistance with respite, social programs and financial aid. We could not have come this far without their combined help.

There are no words to fully express our sincere gratitude. We thank them all.

Our Continuing Mission:

Andrew and I became very close as we learned to understand each other's behavior. The journey was more than challenging and his mother and i often felt that it was impossible, even with help. Still, we never gave up. I began working with him by telling stories, then coaxed him to tell me a story too. Was it easy? No.

Often at first, he would not respond. Other times he would say things that made no sense at all. I became frustrated and Andrew would have a melt-down. I finally realized something new. Something that never occurred to me. I would sit with him on the floor, watching his behavior while playing with his toys. Then I began telling a story about what he was doing and waited. Andrew began telling a story about what he was doing. Five minutes passed and he wouldn't respond.

Over time, we began to make up short stories together like "Turtles and frogs on a log" and "The fish who took a walk in the park." I took notes and drew pictures. then i rewrote the story on one page and printed it out. Andrew loved it and read it out loud with the help of expensive software used by doctors to communicate with autistic children. Our support agency bought the program.

The whole point of this story is to illustrate the reason for this website. Over the years I gathered these stories together into little books and self-published them under the name of Andrew and Daddy Dean because we both have the same middle name. Andrew loved these little books and would take a handful of them to school and read them to the class during circle time. I printed enough for all his classmates to get a copy.

The Mission of Andrew & Daddy Dean's Special Place is to write more of these 'Special' books and to distribute them far and wide. We want to help special needs folks of all ages. Another thing we plan on doing is providing useful resources and links to the organizations we didn't know existed when we began our journey. As of now this site is only just a start, but We have plans to do much more. "Together we can do so much more." That could be our slogan.