Autism from a Father's Point of View

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Written on May 10, 2010 by Stuart Duncan

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My name is Stuart Duncan (in case you didn’t notice the URL) and I am the father of 2 great boys, Cameron (age 5 and who is Autistic) and Tyler (age 2).

We noticed rather early on very repetitive and unusual behaviours in Cameron… eventually we requested that our doctor refer us for a diagnosis, insisting against his opinion that Cameron was just ‘delayed’ and had him officially diagnosed in February 2008.

Shortly after, the Globe and Mail called us for an interview and even came to our house to get a great picture of Cameron playing with bubbles. Read the interview here and see the picture here.

Since then we’ve had a lot of trials and tribulations as most all parents do, especially parents of Autistic children. We had to pay $150/hour for speech therapy, we had to sell our house and uproot our family to another town where he’d be guaranteed teacher’s aids, an education with trained Autism specialists and other Autistic children where he won’t be judged or criticized.

I am a work from home father and my wife is a stay at home mother with Fibromyalgia, which adds a whole other layer of difficulty, we devote as much time to our children as possible because we feel that our children need our love, guidance and support far more than they need a new shiny bike. We can’t provide all that we wish that we could but our family is what it is, we push forward as best we can.