Families, researchers tout progress, continued work during Autism Acceptance Month

RALEIGH, N.C. (WTVD) -- It's another busy morning for the Hawkins household.

"We are a family on the go. We stay busy," said Tracey Hawkins.

Her husband Zack, who represents Durham in the State House, and two boys, James Preston and Adam, recently returned from a trip to Morehead City. Now back home in the Triangle, they're enjoying the final days of their spring break.

"(We) went to the aquarium," said James Preston, a fifth-grader.

Back in 2018, Hawkins shared that both boys were diagnosed with autism within months of each other.

"Autism presents itself in different ways, and the two of them... there are some similarities, but they're also quite different. They are two different boys, so two different diagnoses," said Hawkins.

Over the past seven years, the Hawkins' have made adaptations.

"It was just really understanding their needs, right? Their sensitivities to change, sensitivity to the routines, helping them to understand the structures that they need within their day," said Hawkins.

According to estimates from the CDC's Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring Network, about 1 in 36 children have been identified with Autism spectrum disorder.

"I think the first thing we've seen is that it's now a spectrum. We no longer talk about discrete categories of Autism, like Asperger's syndrome versus Autism. Now we consider it a spectrum, and so that has led to certainly part of what we're seeing is an increased diagnostic rate of Autism," said Dr. Brian Boyd, who serves as the Director of the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute in Chapel Hill.

Dr. Boyd's work focuses on evaluating practices to support people with Autism, as school-based interventions aimed at improving long-term outcomes.

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"We actually do have evidence that access to earlier interventions does lead to improvements for later outcomes of young autistic children. The timing of intervention does seem to matter. In general, we know that earlier is better, so the earlier we can get children identified and into high-quality, effective interventions where we know we have an evidence base, we do tend to see better outcomes," Boyd said.

Hawkins has also contributed towards helping families navigate these diagnoses, creating the Thrive App, a visual planning app geared for the neurodivergent community.

"We give you the visual component to it. We give you the reminders. You're able to bring in pictures. You're able to add subtasks to it. It's not just a reminder of that activity, but it's all the different things associated with that activity. You're able to have emotion regulation strategies within your app. If you are having a moment of disregulation, you're able to go into the app (and) bring in those calming strategies to help you regulate yourself. We also have a messaging platform so instead of going through your phone or your e-mail trying to find all your providers for your child or yourself - it's for children all the way to adulthood - you're able to have your support teams all in one place," said Hawkins.

April is National Autism Acceptance Month, with Hawkins stressing the difference between awareness and acceptance.

"We're aware of the diagnosis now. It's about understanding that we need acceptance. This is what the community is telling us, right? We're needing to learn from the community, the actual autistic community themselves," said Hawkins.

That includes, in the form of employment opportunities.

"How do we get industry to understand perhaps the unique needs and talents of autistic individuals and how they could benefit their business? How do we ensure that families and those of us in society, perhaps us as the researchers, are advocating and supporting autistic individuals to ensure they have access to the opportunities? How do we support autistic individuals in being their own best self-advocates to make sure they're getting access to the kinds of opportunities that they want and see for themselves," said Boyd.