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Maywood, Illinois
CNN
—
In the spring of 1989, Debra Vines found her 18-month-old son, Jason, staring ahead blankly in his crib, as if he was in another world. Alarmed, she and her husband rushed him to the hospital.
After visiting several doctors, they eventually got a diagnosis: autism.
Today, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 1 in 44 children in the US is on the spectrum. But in the 1980s, only roughly four in 10,000 children were identified as having autism.
“I had never heard of autism outside of Rain Man,” Vines said, referring to the hit movie that had been released a few months earlier. “I got books, I went to the library, but I still felt lost – like I just wasn’t a great mom.”
As Jason got older, Vines had to contend with his frequent tantrums and occasionally violent behavior that children with autism may…
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