Here is a testimony that I wrote to go on the Hope And A Future website. It speaks of God's complete faithfulness and the miracle that He gave us, which is Neurodevelopmental Therapy.

A QUIRKY KID

Sixteen years ago Zack came into the world with a chubby face and with red ringed curls all over his head. A year later we found out that Zack had also come into the world with Agenesis of the Corpus Callosum (ACC). The middle band of tissues in his brain that connects the two hemispheres was almost completely missing. We were told by the neurologist that his prognosis was grim. They didn’t know if he would walk or talk. We enrolled Zack in an early intervention program at the local university only to be told by the neurologist that he didn’t see how that would help our son.

We went the public school route, not knowing any better, because that’s where I worked. Working two doors down from Zack’s class I got to see the “good, bad and the ugly” that most parents don’t get to see. God had been calling us to home school for some time and we finally obeyed that call when Zack was 12 and our youngest was 9. Things were not good for him at school and we were seeing no progress, so we were more open to the big leap.

To give you a picture of our son: Zack had moderate retardation with many autistic characteristics. He seemed to have every self-stim behavior in the book. We called him our “stim king”. We didn’t know that was bad until we found Hope And A Future, we were told it calmed him down. Hog wash! Zack ate only pasta, chicken nuggets, French fries and pudding. He was 12 and still wore diapers at night. He perseverated on his favorite topics until his Dad and I thought we would lose our mind. His gross and fine motor skills were very poor. Zack was prone to be destructive to his things when he was angry and at times would even injure himself. His hearing was so hypersensitive, he would cry when my dad would blow his nose. My husband would have to take him for a car ride just so I could vacuum. When we began home schooling he couldn’t correlate the number 3 to 3 marbles. He could read and loved to read God’s Word, but had very little comprehension.

We saw Linda Kane for the first time in November 2001. Linda’s first words to me as I talked with her after she evaluated Zack was “you’ve got one quirky kid.” I was shocked! I was so used to the school system “tickling my ears” and telling me how great Zack was doing (when I knew he wasn’t.) Linda gave it to me straight and I learned to love and respect her for that. We had a lot of work to do. At our first re-eval Zack made a huge leap in skills - we were hooked!! Whatever this Neurodevelopmental therapy was…it was working and we were committed to taking Zack as far as he could go.

Almost four years later, we have done a lot of work, and we will do more yet. Zack is not the kind of child that is an “easy fix”. We’ll do this until God says we are done. However, Zack is no longer the same young man he was. He is no longer that same kid rocking and flapping his hands, saying the same things over and over. He’s a godly young man who loves the Lord, communicates very well, is self-sufficient in meeting his own needs. He runs and jumps and plays, and has interests of his own. His word recognition is at about a 12^th grade level with comprehension at the 7^th grade level. As I said before, Zack is no longer the same…he’s not the same “quirky kid”… his future is much brighter.

God is so faithful to His Word. He gave us hope…and now Zack has a future.

To God be all the Glory!