Big, dark-brown eyes ringed with curling lashes.  Pink cheeks and a rosy lips.  A pert little pug nose.  Long, dark-brown hair that tumbles down her back in haphazard, thick ringlets and curls.

Yes, that's our daughter.  Marni Grace.  She is nine years old and is the picture of a typical healthy child.

Looks are deceiving, however.  For our child is anything but typical.  She is severely autistic.

Marni has been this way since we can remember.  At first she talked, even walked; now she does neither.  She won't look at a person if talked to, and her moods can change on a dime.  One minute, she's singing tunelessly and smiling; the next, she is kicking and screaming in a rage, or is pushing you away.  Her behavior is often violent and unpredictable.

Marni spends her days sitting in the livingroom, rocking, sucking her thumb, or running her hands on objects, or even playing with things like cardboard tubes, spoons, coins (which she often tries to stuff up her nose or into her ears), even as far as playing with her own excrement whenever she has a bowel movement, much to our dismay.

She was toilet-trained; now she's like an infant.  We have to feed her and change her whenever she has an accident; we even have to dress her.  It is degrading because we remember how she was as to where she is at the current time, and it is heartwrenching.

We often don't understand what we did wrong as parents in raising Marni.  We did everything humanly possible to love her, take care of her; we had no clue she was autistic until she started exhibiting the first subtle signs at the age of two. 

That was seven years ago.

Now our lives are revolved in taking care of her, taking her to therapy appointments; none of it seems to be doing any good because Marni is as destructive, as violent as ever.  There have been many times where we (my wife and myself) have discussed the possibility of having her placed into a home for severely handicapped children because it is getting harder and harder to deal with her problems.

In addition to Marni Grace, we also have three sons, all younger.  There's Tobey Randall (7), Icarus Daniel (6), and the little one, three-year-old R.J. (Raylon Judah); they often don't understand why their big sister is the way she is; they get scared of her whenever she acts up.  When Marni is being difficult, the boys stay with a neighbor or with their grandma, just so they can have some peace.  It's awful  having to do this because we feel we are cheating our sons out of a healthy child-to-parent relationship due to all of the time we spend with Marni, even though she's older.

Well, Marni is screaming again, so I'd best attend to her.  I will share more of her story soon; until then, this is Pete Tagliano signing off!  Talk to you later!

~Pete, Marni's dad.

*to be continued.*