When Nicholas was slow to walk, his mother became concerned.

“My mom and his dad told me I was just a worrywart because he wasn’t around other children and things,” Ellen Crouch-Hullender recalled. “He is an only child. So I just kept watching.”

She noticed how intently Nicholas rocked in his bouncy chair. She watched how often he flapped his hands.

Then one afternoon in her eye doctor’s office Crouch-Hullender picked up a Good Housekeeping magazine. There was an article on autism. It listed everything she had noted in Nicholas.

“I went, 'Oh no,’ ” Crouch-Hullender recalled. “My heart just sunk.” Read more of the story.