Joe Baker was diagnosed with Autism at 4 years old.  After intensive speech therapy and OT as well as supportive special education teachers he made tremendous progress. He encountered a setback at age 10 with the development of Epilepsy.  In 2019, Epilepsy cut his high school experience short, but he managed to graduate! Throughout all of [...]

Joshua Silver Banks passed away on January 17, 2021 at the age of 33. Josh lived a passionate life, and enjoyed many hobbies such as food, yoga, horseback riding, hiking, sailing, dance and yoga. He was also talented artist, and loved to express himself through his art. Josh was well-known at Els for Autism as […]

Derrick Freeman is a self-taught artist diagnosed with Autism, a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by impaired verbal and non-verbal communication. By age two, he was completely non-verbal and was unable to learn and use language like most children his age. By age three, art became his only form of communication. He learned to express his perceptions […]

Amy Lourie is an artist and Coach at The First Tee of the Palm Beaches. The First Tee has established Nine Core Values that represent some of the many inherently positive values connected with the game of golf.  Amy encourages parents to reinforce these behaviors by talking about them, what they mean and what these […]

Jeffrey Hoyt creates  3-D  figures of his illustrated characters as well as writing story lines and dialogue for his comics. He is also working with his sister on a novel that they had created together years ago and now are turning into a graphic novel.  He also enjoys being outside and taking walks or riding […]

Sebastián López Durán was born in Guatemala in 1986 and belongs to Asperger’s Syndrome. He paints in a self-taught way a vocation to relate to the world. He paints to express, he enters every day in the world from his autistic world. Cubism innate not learned, like the one that Picasso dreamed after his long […]

Margie-Lee Rodriguez Born in Puerto Rico in 1966, Margie-Lee was a “normal” but hyperactive infant.  At age 2 she was diagnosed with Cerebral Palsy which explains her slurred speech.  She did not talk until age 10 and was diagnosed as “severely” mentally retarded.  She started grade school at 13 and graduated from 9th grade at […]