Mother creates music and art program for children with autism after she sees benefits for her son

From the NY Daily News:

For Yolanda Vitulli (pictured), art and music aren't just leisurely pastimes. They are vital lifelines into her autistic son's mind.

It was a simple song that prompted her son Michael (pictured) to utter the words "I love you" to her for the first time when he was 6.

That moving episode showed Vitulli how art and music could be powerful tools to open up autistic children to the world around them.

It also motivated her to create Tender Care Human Services, a nonprofit agency in Jamaica that serves autistic children in Queens and Brooklyn.

"I wanted to give back to the community," said Vitulli, the agency's executive director. "I wanted to educate them. To show them there is hope."

But the troubled economy has taken a toll on charitable giving, and now her agency's art and music therapy program is in danger of shutting down, she said.

It has enough funds to run "bare bones" through January, Vitulli said. The agency is having a fund-raiser tomorrow at Boucarou Lounge in Manhattan to keep the program afloat.

But she would eventually like to expand it since there is a waiting list of 30 children, she said.

"They love coming here," she said of the children in the program. "We had a break for the summer and they would be calling us, 'When are we going to have that music therapy back?'"

"It means a lot," said Jamila Housni, whose son Ismail, 7, attends the program every Saturday. "He enjoys it. He likes to play music. It helps. What I see - he's more friendly. He's more social."

When Michael, who is now 20, was diagnosed with a form of autism when he was 3, Vitulli recalled being determined not to let it hold him back. "I just looked at that beautiful face and I said, 'You're going to be fine. You're going to be okay. We're going to get the answers,'" she said.

One answer was music. Even as a baby, Michael would stop crying when she played the songs of Andrea Bocelli. "This sound of music would calm him down," she said.

She researched the topic and discovered that music and art therapy had been shown to help autistic children communicate.

When Michael was 6, after listening to the children's character Barney's "I love you" song, he ran to his mother in the living room and said, "I love you."

Knowing her son had echolalia - a condition that causes people with autism to echo words they hear - Vitulli wasn't sure if her son knew what he was saying.

But he said it again and again. And when she told him that she loved him, too, "he got a big smile and we had a big hug," Vitulli recalled. "That's when he started to develop his speech."

Vitulli was so grateful for the help her son received that she started Tender Care in 2001. She launched the art and music therapy program three years ago.

Vitulli said she hopes others see the value of such programs, as she once did.

"That's why I'm putting all my faith and all my hope to see if other people feel the way I'm feeling," she said. "Reach out to some good people to help us, to help these children."