Carrollton --  The mother of an autistic Carrollton Middle School boy says those attending last Friday’s Carrollton High School/ Haralson County High School football game, witnessed a very monumental event for her family---and a moment of hope for any family of a child with autism. At one point in son Garrett’s life, mother Janet Brown says she didn’t believe her son would ever read, write or talk.

Last Friday night, the eighth grader played his snare drum along with his fellow eighth-grade band members and the Carrollton High School marching band.

Brown says Garret was the child who sat under the chair at therapy offices because he was just too overwhelmed. “He constantly had a blanket… had to cover up and protect himself,” she says. “Through years of hard work and therapy, he’s come out of that shell to where he participates.” Brown says her son now goes on church retreat trips and joins clubs at school. “I don’t know that he’ll ever be completely ‘in-the-moment,’ but he’s out there and he’s trying where before he was always in his own little world,” she says. “Now he realizes there is a world outside of what he thought.”

Brown credits early intervention: social therapy, occupational therapy; the dedication of Garrett’s teachers; the patience of the Carrollton City school administration and staff; and the generosity of Carrollton Junior High’s band director and fellow members; in helping get to this seemingly simple… but truly special moment…. “There’s a lot of exceptional students in Carrollton who just excel at whatever they do and we all kind of take for granted that all of our kids are that way,” she says. “For Garrett to be in the stands, among all the chaos and all the noise… and be able to focus his attention and play the drums was miraculous. This is a child who couldn’t listen to piano without crying because it was too loud.”

Brown hopes that other parents can help in making “other children aware of the kids beside them who might be a little different... that there may be a reason he is a little different from everybody else.” And by sharing her personal triumph, she hopes that parents of recently diagnosed autistic children can have “hope that an autism diagnosis is not the end of the world.”