If you happened to see a photo of a young boy leaning against his dog, iPad in hand, just sort of hanging out, you might think, “Oh, cute boy. Cute dog, too.”
But the now-viral photo of a boy and his dog is about so much more — and if you take a look at his mom sitting in back of him, hand over her mouth, crying, with a shocked expression on her face — you will start to understand that there is more going on than meets the eye.
The Facebook page Love What Matters shared the post of the boy and his dog on October 18th, along with the emotional, poignant words of his mom.
As she explains, her 5-year-old son has autism, and this photo depicts the first time he met his service dog, Tornado. In the post, the mom explains that she and her family live in Japan and waited for two years to receive Tornado.
The adorable, furry creature is from 4 Paws for Ability, an organization that specializes in training and providing service dogs for kids with disabilities. According to their website, they are the first agency in the United States to provide “Autism Assistance Dogs,” and also the first agency to provide dogs with tracking skills.
4 Paws for Ability promises that they will provide a service dog to any family who qualifies, although they admit on their website that they do have very long waiting lists.
The two-year wait that this family had to endure most certainly paid off. The mom in the photo describes how she was feeling as she saw her son — whose autism makes it very difficult for him to form strong attachments — literally melt into Tornado’s soft fur and rest on him as though he’d loved him all his life.
“This picture captures the face of a mother who saw her child, who she can’t hug, wash, dress, snuggle and touch freely lay on his new service dog of his own free will, with a purposeful, unspoken attachment,” writes the mom. “This is the face of a mom who has seen her son experience countless failed social interactions on the playground in an attempt to have a friend. Any friend. Any kind of connection.”
Wow. Just wow. It’s hard not to read her words without welling up yourself.
This moment is nothing short of miraculous. I’m sure that this mom was hoping for something like this to happen when she signed up to receive a service dog for her son, but it sounds as though she was taken aback by her son’s immediate attachment to the dog — something she might have not believed her son was capable of experiencing.
It turns out she is not alone, and that there is a growing body of evidence that service dogs are an amazing way to help autistic children learn about socialization.
According to a 2014 study published on BMJ Open, __parents report that service dogs make their autistic children calmer and safer. They report that their children are less likely to wander (wandering is a common and dangerous symptom of autism), and that strangers seem more understanding when they see their children with service dogs in tow.
Service dogs may not be the answer for all autistic children, but in this boy’s case, Tornado has provided something that no other therapy out there could. “No matter how hard he tries and no matter what he works hard on in his autism therapies,” his mother writes. “It doesn’t transfer to the natural occurring world for him.”
She goes on to describe the endless fighting and advocacy that __parents of autistic kids know all too well, and explains that although she’s been down a hard, hard road with her son, this moment put the whole thing in perspective, and made it all worth it.
“It’s worth every fight for services for my son, every diagnosis, every new provider, every dollar spent, every paper filled out, every school meeting, every shed tear, every step forward, every step back, and every wonder of the unknown future,” she writes. “Somehow because of this — because of Tornado — I know everything will be okay.”
Having a child who struggles in any way is probably one of the most painful experiences a parent can go through. But moms are warriors, aren’t they? This mom is no exception. And she deserves this moment of joy and relief more than anyone.
“As a mother, I have seen countless challenging and painful moments my son has encountered and cried countless more. Yesterday however, I cried for a different reason,” she writes as she ends her incredibly moving post.
And we’re crying right along with her.