By Courtney Rozen
When 15-year-old Aidan Hadley was first diagnosed with autism at age 3, his mom Yetta Myrick didn’t know other parents of children with an autism diagnosis. She didn’t know many details about autism, and there weren’t easy-to-use guides available to track Hadley’s development.
More than a decade later, Myrick has become a leader in the D.C. autism community, pushing for policies and programs that benefit her son, others with an autism diagnosis and their families.
The examples are wide-ranging: In 2008, she founded DC Autism Parents, a support group. She later became an ambassador for “Learn the Signs, Act Early,” a Center for Disease Control initiative to promote developmental monitoring. She also works at the Center for Autism Spectrum Disorders at Children’s National Hospital, the place where her son was diagnosed.
“For me, the diagnosis was a call to action,” Myrick said.
Autism is a neurological variation and is classified as a developmental disability, according to the Autism Self Advocacy Network, a group that empowers autistic people. A few of the characteristics typical of autism are different sensory experiences, non-standard ways of learning and difficulties in understanding and expressing language in typical verbal and nonverbal communication. About one in 59 children has been identified with autism spectrum disorder, according to the CDC.
Friends and colleagues say Myrick’s advocacy has not only helped her son, but other people with an autism diagnosis in D.C. They say she’s connected families with each other and with resources to support their kids. Autistic advocates themselves caution that all advocates should place autistic people at the center of their decisions. Friends and colleagues say that’s something Myrick has done.
“She’s a bridge builder, she connects people,” said Sonja Risdon, secretary of DC Autism Parents.
Myrick started DC Autism Parents as a Yahoo group in December 2008, she said. One of the group’s goals was to bring families with autism experiences together.
The group eventually held in-person meetings. Through DC Autism Parents, Myrick worked on a program that paired recent college graduates and autistic children for activities. That program ran for about five years, Myrick said. At the time, there weren’t many sensory-friendly activities for autistic kids in D.C., Myrick said, which is what made the program special.
The parent support group still holds monthly conference calls.
“It helps families feel like they’re not by themselves,” said Allysa Ware, a social worker at Family Voices and the mother of a child with autism.
As snow fell on D.C. this winter, Hadley peered out the window. Hadley communicates verbally, but has difficulty generating sentences.
“It’s beautiful,” he told his mom.
It was a moment that made Myrick proud.
Hadley was diagnosed with a speech delay when he was a toddler. He was later diagnosed with autism.
Her son’s diagnosis experience, combined with her desire to help other people with an autism diagnosis and their families, inspired her to get involved with the CDC’s “Learn the Signs, Act Early Campaign.” The campaign published a list of milestones children should reach at each age. If a child doesn’t hit certain milestones, the project helps parents find support services for their children.
“It’s not my kid, it’s the outside world,” Myrick said.
Ware called the campaign “groundbreaking,” and said it can help professionals and parents better understand signals of autism while a child is young.
Lydia X. Z. Brown, a board member of the Autistic Women and Nonbinary Network, said that it’s important that the premise of any early intervention program (that’s the term the CDC uses for support services at a young age) is for parents to provide support for the autistic person as early as possible, while educating themselves on autistic culture. It shouldn’t be to make people “less autistic, or at least less outwardly autistic,” they said.
Ware said that in Myrick’s work at Children’s National, she often consults with the Autism Self Advocacy Network to get advice from autistic people on her ideas, which helps her learn about their experiences.
“I have a daughter, she has a lot of language. So she can go out and she can advocate for herself, and I typically am not her voice,” Ware, the mom of a daughter with autism, said. “Where Yetta is a little bit different in that her son has much less language, and so she often has to be his voice and vocalize what his needs are. But she’s always talking from his perspective.”
Courtney Rozen 