Transforming Autism

Guy Sharar turns an apparent tragedy into an opportunity for love, light and transformation.

- Guy Sharar

The advent of our son’s autism forced and guided my wife and me to learn to become better parents than we could ever have hoped to be otherwise.

Between the ages of one and two, Daniel went from being a playful and energetic baby, to being almost totally cut off from his surroundings, including his family. He would spend his days lying on the floor rolling a toy car backwards and forwards and resenting any attempt at communications, especially if it included his name. He stopped looking us in the eye, lost all of the words he had acquired, lost even basic self-care capabilities including the ability to swallow solid food, and became susceptible to prolonged and intense meltdowns for very small reasons, during which he was totally inconsolable. This left him utterly exhausted.

It was heart breaking for us. The memory of our happy baby was so recent, and now we were seeing him suffering like we couldn’t have imagined. It felt as if the condition was robbing him of his life, both now and for the future.

We started frantically researching what we could do to help him. The Internet was full of therapies offering miracle ‘cures’ in exchange for colossal sums of money. They promised so much, but their marketing felt so commercial and when we explored the therapies in depth, neither of us really resonated with them. Luckily, we both relied on our inner feeling of what was right, and the vast majority of the time we came to the same conclusions.