My Nonprofit Reviews

To tell my SNACK story I must begin with the story of my son, Andy, now a 25 year old young man.

Andy was born in July of 1996. He was our fourth child of five, our second of three sons, the twin A to his one minute younger brother’s twin B, and the child I never remember not having worried about.

Having three older siblings and a twin brother, I had a fair amount of developmental material to compare when 18 month old Andy wasn’t walking, and what little language he had was rapidly diminishing. After a harrowing neurologist appointment, several speech and language evaluations and a physical therapy assessment I knew what I suspected for a while, Andy is autistic.

Fast forward to Andy at eight years old… afraid of loud noises, volatile, extremely self-stimulatory and occasionally self-injurious and basically not a very happy child, we were told about a program in New York City that was for children similar to our boy. I wanted to be excited, but experience had taught me that that was probably a mistake. While any type of autism is a “big “ diagnosis, what I didn’t know early on in the process is that autism is a spectrum, and many, maybe most programs are not for the more severely disabled individuals. We were turned away from several. We were sent packing, basically being told that Andy’s needs were far too severe for the programs we looked at that were geared to the “only a smidge autistic “

We showed up for a trial at SNACK NYC on a Saturday. Andy fell right in with the other children, enjoying the music classes, the soccer, the arts and crafts, and especially the amazing staff! Every person that has worked with Andy from SNACK has been nothing short of fabulous! They have always bent over backwards to accommodate and help Andy have a great experience, and have always been successful.

Now, at 25, Andy is attending SNACK’s 21+ program. He enjoys all of the activities, but is partial to cooking and working to put orders for SNACK merchandise together for mailing. He has an amazingly dedicated com-hab worker who really helps motivate Andy and understands his moods. Paired with the fantastic staff at SNACK, we really feel that Andy is in the best place possible and we feel grateful every day!