I am a recently retired Family Support Specialist who worked for 32 years for a small child and family services agency in Helena, Montana. My job was to provide family education and support services to a caseload of 15-20 families. However, I'm not here to talk about the agency or our services. What I want to write about are the wonderful families with whom I have worked over the years and have grown to respect, admire, and love. Not that I don't also love the children, but it's always been the parents who have inspired me and taught me and helped me to understand how I could be a better support to them. I'm almost embarrassed at how naive I was 32 years ago when I first started in this profession. But somehow, those first parents guided me and supported me and helped teach me what I needed to know to support them. Thank you for your patience and your kindness.

Many days I would go home at the end of the day, thoroughly exhausted from the work. How little I understood about true exhaustion!! How surprising to me that most parents never really complained about being exhausted--they talked about the need for respite care, how nice it would be to take a little vacation, and wasn't that so cute, what Joey just did?

I want to end this with a story of a single mom who has two young boys with autism. The older boy was about 2 1/2 and had just been diagnosed with autism when I started working with him. Mom had just had her second son and was determined to leave her abusive husband as soon as possible. At about 1 year of age, the younger son was also diagnosed with autism--by this time mom had divorced dad. Mom definitely had her hands full by the time the boys were 6 and 4 ½. Neither were toilet trained, the younger boy still could not feed himself, and both of them had limited communication skills. None of this seemed to bother mom--she wanted her boys to learn the skills they needed and worked hard at it, but her focus was not on what they couldn't do. Every time I walked in the door, her first words to me were--"look how cute their new haircuts are", "don't they look wonderful in their new winter jackets?", "I'm so glad you're here today--you just have to see how Kade holds his spoon". Then she would go on about how much she appreciated the services and didn't know what she would do with the help. She was so grateful for everything--for her boys, for all the things they were learning, and for me. If I were ever having a bad day, I knew right where to go to feel better about the world.

So, I guess what I want to say to all the parents out there, is THANK YOU for all that you have done and are doing for your children and all that you have done for me and the professionals in your lives. My life is richer because of you--I am more grateful for the small accomplishments of life because of you--my life has been changed because of you! I have met some of the most wonderful people ever, through my work--32 years just flew by and it never really seemed like work! I love you all.

Karla Hood