Mother sets out to buy iPads for other autistic children

[Guest guest]

Mother sets out to buy iPads for other autistic children

By Hilyard

GateHouse News Service

Posted Mar 28, 2011 @ 07:01 PM

FRED ZWICKY/JOURNAL STAR Grady Oathout, 3, embraces his mom, Tara, as they

interact together on an iPad. Tara says her son, who has autism, was trapped in

a world to himself, unable to communicate his desires and remote from his

parents. " With the iPad, we've learned just how amazing he truly is. He reaches

out to us and now he can tell us what he wants and how it feels. " Tara has

founded a group called Loud Mommy Ministries to get iPads into the hands of

other parents. Tara wrote: " We love our child with every fiber of our beings,

hence why we are willing to do anything and everything we can do to be advocates

on their behalf. To be their voice. To be a Loud Mommy. "

Tara Oathout couldn't believe it. Her son, Grady Oathout, who will turn 4 in

August, was asking for fruit after just getting back to grandma's house after

lunch at a restaurant, where he had eaten more than anybody at the table.

" He's always hungry, " said Tara Oathout as she walked into the kitchen to fetch

him something to eat. " Amazing. "

Actually, it was amazing, but not only because he wanted more food so soon after

a big lunch. Grady, who has autism, didn't ask his mommy for a banana in the

conventional way –– by activating the anatomical mechanisms that produce human

speech –– because Grady doesn't talk. Instead, he asked by using his Apple iPad.

" How about a banana? " Tara Oathout asked, offering a chunk to Grady.

He smiled, pushed the banana into his mouth and instantly returned to the

electronic device that has, in ways both large and small, opened lines of

communication that those who love him once feared were closed off for life.

" From the moment you know you're pregnant, you have a dream for your children ––

what they will experience, what they will accomplish. Autism takes a huge chunk

out of that dream, " Tara Oathout said. " For us, the iPad brings some of that

dream back. It's as much for me as it is for him. "

The profound transformation in the Oathout household, as Grady slowly began to

reveal his thoughts and feelings via his iPad, triggered a transformation in

Tara Oathout herself. She is now dedicated to getting the same device in the

hands of other families like her own –– families who are struggling with the

often overwhelming burdens, challenges, costs and mysteries that a child with

autism brings into a home.

" I want other people to experience what we have experienced, " Tara Oathout said.

She has created an online support group called Loud Mommy,

http://www.loudmommy.com, which is subtitled “A loud voice for a silent world.”

She is also planning a local musical revue fundraiser. If both her shows sell

out, she can buy five iPads for qualified families.

" That's just the start, " Tara Oathout said. " I'd like to grow this into

something big. "

It has been a tumultuous five years for Tara and her husband, Floyd Oathout.

They were married in 2005, lived for a while in Princeville, Ill., and then

moved again to Sparland, Ill., in what is called the Octagon House, a unique

eight-sided brick home built in 1886 that is now registered in the National

Register of Historic places. In serious disrepair, they bought the house for

$16,000 and are slowly working to fix it up.

" We were looking at apartments, trailers, trailer parks –– anything we could

afford, " Tara said. " Then this showed up, and we were off on an adventure. "

Grady was born nine weeks premature on Aug. 6, 2007, weighing 3 pounds, 14

ounces. When Tara first saw her son, the ignition turned on her newly developed

mother's intuition, and a thought that she wouldn't share flickered in her mind:

Grady's not 100 percent OK.

Months passed and his development stalled. At 18 months, he was still not

speaking, and he was exhibiting several classic traits of autism: spinning,

flapping his hands, staring for long periods at lights and ceiling fans.

The couple had Grady assessed, and the word " autism " crept into the

conversation. The day after his second birthday, Grady was diagnosed with

autism, a complex developmental disorder of varying severity that now affects on

average one child out of every 110 births in the United States.

Tara, who turned 25 last week, immersed herself in treatments and therapies and

in loving a child who would not love her back. Through her research, she learned

that families were having success communicating with autistic children via an

iPad.

Tara wanted one, but the cost, about $800 with the software she wanted, was

prohibitive. The family was living paycheck to paycheck, yet Floyd was earning

slightly more than the cut-off point to qualify to receive an iPad from a

national program that was subsidizing the cost for needy families.

Undeterred and relentlessly resourceful, she posted a picture of Grady and her

story on a fundraising Web tool run by Facebook. She received enough money to

buy an iPad in 48 hours.

" Money came from across the United States and around the world, " she said. " It

was incredible. "

With the iPad in hand, Grady's vocabulary moved almost immediately from zero

words to 10 with the use of software called iCommunicate. The program is an

electronic version of a therapy regimen called Picture Exchange Communication

System. It's a series of simple drawings; iCommunicate offers more than 10,000

different images that can help people who have trouble communicating locate and

point to an image on the touch screen. The pictures illustrate a feeling, a need

or any of a wide range of other expressions.

Grady is already an expert at navigating the touch screen, and too much of an

expert in one area –– they had to disable the YouTube app because he was fixated

on looking at from the Super Bros. video games. Somehow, the

3-year-old learned how to spell M-A-R-I-O to access videos.

" Before the iPad, he was nonverbal and showed little emotion, " Tara Oathout

said. " Now I get hugs and kisses. "

Tara was asked by the Peoria Center of Easter Seals in Illinois, a place she

knows well because Grady receives therapy there, to train other families on the

use of the iPad as a communication tool.

" We have one iPad of our own in our autism resource room, and, obviously, Tara

is very familiar with what it can do, " said April Leopold, the director of

developmental and autism services at Easter Seals. " She connects with families

because she lives it herself, and getting iPads to people who need them has

become her ministry. She's awesome. "

Though no study has been completed on the value of the iPad as a communication

tool for people with autism, anecdotal reports abound.

" Children with autism usually love electronics, so it makes sense that an iPad

would be interesting and fun for them, " Leopold said. " Moms can just flip it in

a purse and have it available when they're in the waiting room at the doctor's

office or anywhere they happen to be. There's no research, but it seems like

it's a valuable tool. "

The Illinois Assistive Technology Project has iPads that it loans to families

for about a month to see if it is something they would like to purchase.

Currently, there is a 43-family waiting list, Leopold said.

" What Tara is trying to do is get them to people who otherwise couldn't afford

them, " she said.

Meanwhile, through all of this, Tara Oathout has been experiencing serious

health issues of her own. In April 2008, she suffered the first of five strokes,

and it took nearly a year to find a diagnosis –– a blood clotting disorder and

an autoimmune disease called mixed connective tissue disease. In that time, she

also had hysterectomy surgery, which makes Grady the only natural child she will

ever bear.

There have been signs along the way that Tara Oathout interprets as proof that

she is on the right path. She learned she was wanted as a volunteer at Easter

Seals on her 25th birthday, big news on a big day. The only weekend dates

available for the musical revue fundraiser was April 1 and 2, which happens to

coincide with Autism Awareness month. The only weekend date available to use the

Peoria riverfront for a 5-K race fundraiser was Aug. 6, Grady's fourth birthday.

" I was always stressed over what I wanted to be when I grew up. I always wanted

to know, and it just wasn't coming to me, " said Tara Oathout, who was

home-schooled along with her sisters by their mother, Nanette Smite, Grady's

adoring grandmother. " I went to beauty school, got married young and had a baby

at a young age. But I didn't know my purpose. "

Now she does.

" I want to be the mom of my autistic son, " she said. " And I want to help other

people. "

Hilyard can be reached at shilyard@....