CNN iReport

Dave was diagnosed as PDD (pervasive Development Disorder) at 3½ years old here in Cape Town South Africa. Shortly thereafter, he was placed in the local autistic school, where we were warned he would probably never make it to a mainstream school.

David had significant interventions from his mom, a Gr 3 teacher and others. However, Dave's biggest break happened when we came across a paper by Lisa Lewis Ph.D and the work conducted at Florida State University under Dr Robert Cade. What is now becoming common for some autistic treaments, the removal of all gluten and casein from the diet ,was then very new and unknown.

Trying to test whether Dave was a candidate for this diet was pretty daunting back in 1994 since the required tests were not yet available in South Africa. So we had to send a blood sample to Boston and a urine sample to the team at Florida State - not easy when the blood had to remain refrigerated all the way! But thank goodness we did. The tests showed that Dave had high levels of the associated peptides in his urine and together, the results indicated that he was a good candidate for the diet.

We have much to be thankful for to the team at Florda State University. One of the most important things they told us - and one that any parent considering the diet should take very seriously - is that you either do the diet 100% or don't bother at all.

So Dave has been on the diet 100% now for over 12 years. Within 5 days (really!) of going on it, Dave started changing in front of our eyes. He said things and did things we'd never heard or seen before. He is now in Grade 10 at a mainstream high school and has a good chance of getting to university to study a degree in history - a great love of his.

He is a miracle to his parents and an inspiration to many with autism locally.

It's fantastic to see how much support is now becoming available for autistic-spectrum kids and I must commend CNN enormously for supporting World Autism Day so strongly.

If I could wish for one significant thing, it would be for more effort to be put into assisting autistic spectrum teenagers (Dave is almost 17 now). As has been written elsewhere, as they become teens, they have a doubly difficult time with adolescence plus the huge social challenges of autism. They really want to interact with their classmates but battle with even the basics of social interaction - and certainly can't handle the complexities of teenage relationships and the subtleties or worse of these interactions - which can be mean-spirited at times.

I would love for one of reseach universities or institutions to create a set of videos showing a series of typical teenage interactions (boy-boy, boy-girl, arguing flirting, just chatting etc.) and that literally explains the body language and facial expressions that go with these - and importantly - their meaning. Autistic kids struggle most with the social meaning of interactions and how to handle them. I believe that a video series that role-plays a bunch of typical teenage social scenarios, with explanations, would tremendously help these autistic teens prepare themselves better for managing their lives going forward.

It would make a huge difference.

My thanks go out to Lisa Lewis, the Florida State University team under the late Dr Robert Cade, and all the other amazing therapists that have helped David to get so far. Thanks also again to CNN for supporting this worthy cause.