Harbl the cat... only a very different man... TLDR

[blacksmithden]

The biggest thing you need to sacrifice is your time. It all boils down to that.

Agreed.

Harb…..I hate to tell you this, but there some pretty big brains already working on the autism issue and have been for a few decades now. A family acquaintance of ours is one of the leading autism researchers in the world and he's now working right here in Edmonton. He has more IQ points in his little finger than most of us could ever dream of having in our whole being. He doesn't work directly with kids in a therapy sense. He's in the research end of things. Brilliant man.

I'm not saying you couldn't make great contributions to helping (not necessarily curing) people with autism using your talents. As I'm sure you've already learned, autism is a genetic thing. Unless you plan on becoming a genetic engineer, you're not going to "cure" it. I'm going to be really blunt here, so I hope you're not offended. I think you're trying to hide from dealing with your daughter directly and your personal escape is telling yourself that you're going to work on a cure rather than working WITH her. I've seen other parents of autistic kids doing similar things....hiding in their work. Trust me on this. If you focus your energy on working WITH her, you'll yield far better results than trying to find an actual cure. She is going to need a lot of direct work and patience on your part. You are going to have to take her places, work on her speech, work with her on general life skills. Teaching her things like getting dressed and person hygiene are going to take a lot more effort than your average kid. The mistake I think you're about to make is you're going to try and bury yourself in work and leave all the other stuff up to your wife. I can't put into mere words how much I think that will be a huge mistake that you'll live to regret.