The world is a big place, but the power of technology, and the love of family, is making it smaller every day. Erika and Denis Garijo were living in their home country of Brazil when their two-and-a-half year old son Tomas was diagnosed with autism. While the news was difficult for the Garijos, it also provided relief to finally have some answers.
“I think it’s always a shock,” Erika Garijo said. “We didn’t have any relatives or close friends with ASD so all of this was super new and unknown for us as parents. But our love was powerful enough to encourage us in any kind of situation and we moved forward reading all that we could, looking for professionals to teach us and doing all that we were able to do to help our son to have a happy life.”
Unfortunately, autism services are very limited in Brazil, and those that do exist are very expensive.
“The closest Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) services were far from our city and were so expensive that we could not afford them,” Erika said. “No specialists are covered by health insurance in Brazil, so we always had to pay for everything.”
Because services in Brazil were so lacking, the Garijos decided they need to start looking elsewhere for ways to help Tomas. In 2014, the Garijos were planning a trip to the United States for a close friend’s wedding. The wedding was going to be in Columbia, Missouri. What a small world.
“We already had realized at that point that the USA was so much more advanced than Brazil in terms of autism research and resources,” Erika said. “I wanted to take the opportunity to have an evaluation of Tomas performed, so I googled about autism centers near Columbia and to my surprise there was a center in Columbia. The Thompson Center at the University of Missouri. We managed to schedule an evaluation during the week we would be here in June 2014.”
The Garijos were able to see Thompson Center pediatrician Dr. Kristin Sohl, who told the family that Tomas needed to be in a place where he could receive the proper expert care he needed.
“Dr. Sohl was so wonderful and we fell in love with her and the whole team,” Erika said. “She told us that they could help Tomas to develop better if he was here and that he needed to have ABA and specialized therapists. I came back to Brazil with a tight heart. We knew what he needed but we couldn’t offer it to him. Our city did not have professional experts. He was receiving some therapies there, but we had not seen much progress.”
After much thought and prayer, the Garijos made the decision to try and move to Columbia. Thankfully, Denis received an offer to work as an associate pastor at a church in Columbia. He also is pursuing a master’s degree in theology at Calvary University in Kansas. After waiting a year to receive visas, the Garijos made the big move to mid-Missouri.
18 months later, Tomas is now eight years old and making amazing strides. He has been receiving ABA services as well as speech/language therapy and occupational therapy (OT). The Garijos say they have seen great improvements in every area.
“He is doing much better with his fine motor skills from his work in OT; he now can write many words when he used to not be able to even hold the pen,” Erika said. “We also can see the improvements in his verbal language from his speech therapy. When we got to the United States, he just spoke single words such as milk, juice, etc. He had a good vocabulary but he couldn’t build sentences. Now, he is saying entire sentences such as: ‘let’s go to the Thompson Center’ and ‘Let’s go to see Ryan’ (or some of his other therapists).”
The Garijos also have seen Tomas make incredible advances with his behavior.
“We can see how the ABA is helping in his behavior and learning,” Erika said. “He is more focused now and they have helped us with issues like safety (he used to run away) and aggression (we are working on that right now). He also is interacting better with us too and using more eye contact. It’s so nice to see him growing and gaining so many skills.”
Tomas’s successes also are translating into success in school. In Brazil, Tomas was placed in a regular school with a paraprofessional who lacked appropriate training. In Columbia, Tomas is in a special class and he has an individualized education plan (IEP). The school is in touch with Thompson Center and every month they align what he is learning with what skills and subjects they need to continue to practice.
“It is amazing that the Thompson Center can exchange information with the school and they can share goals and strategies,” Erika said. “At home he is much more aware and interactive. We can play more in an appropriate way. He is using much more verbal language, he is doing so many things that he didn’t do before coming to the Thompson Center. I can say that in the last year and a half his progress has been greater than in the previous four years since the diagnosis.”
Every family affected by autism has a long journey ahead of them. Literally and figuratively, the Garijos already have traveled thousands of miles on their autism journey, with many more miles yet to go. But they say they have found a home far away from home here in Columbia.
“The Thompson Center staff and professionals really care about helping our son and helping us as family,” Erika said. “It is not just Tomas who receives care, but we as parents have learned a lot and so we can help him even more at home. In addition to learning, we feel embraced and encouraged. The Thompson Center is truly a blessing to our family and to so many others that I see daily.”