Gives families tools to communicate

Denise Mangiante of Memphis felt like something was missing early on with her son, Will. He didn’t make much eye contact, he rarely responded to his name and he flapped his hands when excited, along with other obsessive behaviors.

Their pediatrician reassured her that everything seemed f i ne, but when Will t urned 1 , he sti l l didn’t have many words, and Mangiante’s concerns continued to grow.

She made an appointment with a neuropsycholog i st to eva luate Will, even submitting a video t hat documented his quirky behaviors. She got a diagnosis she never expected — Will had autism. He was just about to turn 2, and Mangiante felt heartbroken.

“Now that I look back, it’s so clear — but at the time, I really felt li ke I was making t his entire thing up in my head,” she said. Will i mmediately began t herapy at Janna Hacker and Associates, a Germantown-based group of specialists who provide speech-language, occupa- tional and social therapy. Mangiante says the words began coming and they finally enjoyed long-awaited progress. Mangiante and her husband, Gene, also received t ra i ni ng a nd learned how to work with their autistic child.

“Autism presents many different ways in children. Sometimes, it’s helpful for parents to see YouTube videos of different children with autism to see t he differences,” Hacker said.

The Centers for Disease