Howdy, here's some of my background.

My name is Joey Barton and I am the husband of the lovely and talented Rashele Barton. She is both the beauty and brains of the family. I am here solely for manual labor and very small, very simple home improvement projects. Our family consists of 3 children.

Kyler age 11 - He is my stepson and he's been a part of my life for 10 years now. He is a truly amazing and intelligent young man. I love him like my own and do my best to treat him as an equal to my biological children.

Claire-Marie, the Autism Advocate and Princess of the family is 7, and in preparation for her teenage years and potential dating I made the wise choice to enroll her in Tae Kwon Do a few months ago. I will take great pleasure knowing that she'll be able to snap a boy's arm in multple places if she deems necessary. She will be a lethal fighting machine.

Mason, our youngest son joined us in 2003. He recently turned 5 and was diagnosed with autism at 19 months of age. Thanks to the watchful eye of my wife it was caught very early.

Our Journey Into Autism

As I noted, it was caught very early. Rashele made the wise choice to not listen to me when I said Mason was fine. It is apparent now that I didn't know what I was talking about. He clearly wasn't meeting milestones as he never talked, had poor eye contact, and a lot of sensory issues. Other issues surfaced later as he grew.

Mason's diagnosis has dramatically affected all of our lives, in many ways I think for the better, and obviously has presented to us a tremendous amount of challenges as well as changes in thought, beliefs, causation, faith, and relationships with friends, family etc. Autism has forced me to take stock of how I view things in life.

It is our belief that Mason’s diagnosis is genetic as we both noted on the day he delivered (4 weeks premature) that his arrival into the world was notably ‘different’ than Claire-Marie’s and I’m told different than Kyler’s. I have many friends also with affected children who believe vaccinations played a key role in their child’s diagnosis. I support them in their belief as I don’t think there is one sole cause.

We’ve seen solid progress since his initial diagnosis. He’s had hundreds of hours of therapies and it has worked well for him thus far.

Here’s a list of therapies that we have tried so far and/or are still attending today:
Physical Therapy – still attending
Occupational Therapy – still attending
Oral Motor Therapy – still attending (this has been a great help to him)
Hippotherapy – 1 year
Speech Therapy – still attending
Floortime – (3 months)
ABA – 1 year
PRT – Pivotal Response Training – 1 year
Music Therapy – still completing (thru school)