Nicole Muench Seidel:
CLASS OF 1986
Catoctin High SchoolClass of 1986
Thurmont, MD
Gettysburg CollegeClass of 1993
Gettysburg, PA
Nicole's Story
Life
I married Frank Seidel (Catoctin High class of '84) in 1996. We have 3 dogs: Diva, Tenor and Nitika. We did Keeshond dog rescue for a few years before the birth of our daughter, Veronika. She is 6 years old and has Autism. Before you think "oh how sad", she is magnificent! According to the CDC, one in every 150 children has an Autism Spectrum Disorder (e.g., Autism, Pervasive Developmental Disorder (PDD), PDD-NOS, Asperger's Syndrome, ...) I am founder of the Mason Dixon Autism Resource Network {MDARN}, since I can't post a URL if you go to Yahoo! Groups and enter the words "Autism" and "Maryland", you will find MDARN.
For most of the first 15-18 months of her life, Veronika was the overachiever, talkative, social butterfly. Then she went away. We've tried many therapies (OT, Speech, Music, Horse, Art, Dance, A...Expand for more
BA w/PECS...) We struggled with Veronika's Autism for years, until we found the Son-Rise Program® at the Autism Treatment Center of America (again, wish I could put the URL, but the Classmates rules don't allow it. So just Google and you'll find it.)
The results for Veronika in doing this have eclipsed anything we tried in the past few years, (in the areas of verbal communication [spontaneous sentences instead of one word], eye contact [up to 30 seconds uninterrupted], demeanor, etc.)! Things are also a lot calmer now that we are not trying to go 15 directions at once. I feel like the on-set of Veronika's Autism {originally refereed to as PDD-NOS} made it so that I lost my ability to really see her. Now, it's like I have had a blind-fold removed and I realize she is still the magnificent being that she always was.
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