By Steve Flairty
NKyTribune columnist
“To Alex, the bravest kid I know, and my everyday hero.” – Dedication message in the book, Stella, the Sweet and Spunky Stegosaurus, by author Susan Mills.
It wasn’t until her child was eighteen months old that his mother noticed the first sign of autism.
“Alex started to eliminate foods from his diet that he had always loved,” said Susan Mills. Other unusual signs occurred. There was less eye contact from the child, and though Alex was still interacting, he wasn’t talking yet. He would spend unusually long, solitary periods of time sorting objects. “I felt like I was losing him. He was turning inward.”
Susan, with mounting concern, loved her child’s pediatrician but noted that “she just didn’t know that much about autism.” Pushing for more definitive information on her child while living in Illinois meant long, agonizing hours on the phone, with many dead ends. She finally found help from specialists in Chicago, who gave Alex the autism diagnosis after a thorough four-hour evaluation.
The next step in getting Alex help was starting him on an intense therapy program known as applied behavior analysis (ABA). Regrettably, because Illinois healthcare insurance rules didn’t mandate paying for such therapy then, the out-of-pocket costs—as much as $3000 a week, made the ABA expense “unsustainable,” Susan noted.
But then something happened in her life she calls “a God thing.” She got an offer to return to Lexington to a previous employment site. Susan accepted and moved back to her native state. With Kentucky’s insurance mandate, the ABA therapy became affordable, and Alex completed the therapy program, thriving from its results.
Today, eleven-year-old Alex is doing well. Although he struggles sometimes with metaphorical references, he decodes at a sixth to seventh grade level after reading children’s encyclopedias at a very young age. He is the delight of Susan and her now husband, former UK basketball player Cameron Mills, and Alex is the catalyst for the autism advocacy work Susan does.
Her podcast, My Autism Tribe, which started in 2018, has gained a far-reaching audience and feeds Susan’s inherent need to both teach and learn.
With Alex being a lover of dinosaurs, Susan has also authored and illustrated five children’s books under the publishing name of Rainbow Sparrow Books, with dinosaurs as characters and with themes related to a range of children’s exceptionalities. In each book, she also adds an extra dose of positivity by including a small, friendly bird looming alongside each interaction as the story progresses, supplying encouragement.
There are plans to release 26 books in all. Those first five books and their featured exceptionalities are:
• Stella, the Sweet and Spunky Stegosaurus (autism)
• Toby, the Terrific and Talented T-Rex (sensory process disorders)
• Alex, the Awesome and Artsy Allosaurus (anxiety)
• Hadley, the Happy and Helpful Hadrosaurus (food allergies)
• Oliver, the Outstanding and Original Oviraptor (vision loss) *Just released
Susan’s DinoSprout Educational Book Series is the company name she gives to her total educational services, which includes the books, teacher resources, and fun activities. More details can be found on her web site, rainbowsparrowbooks.com.
Sharing her reasons for launching a nonprofit podcast myautismtribe.com, she said that “I wanted to interview parents of children to kind of ‘form a tribe,’ but also wanted to allow people on the spectrum to be interviewed as well.” (Interestingly, one of those interviewed was Armani Williams, known as the first NASCAR driver openly diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum.) And although she hasn’t posted as regularly recently, she has had as many as 200 listeners in a week, a testament to the fact, Susan explained, that parents are always trying to figure things out about their children and that there’s “always a need for knowledge.”
Susan did much background work before she started her book series. Not knowing how to approach Alex with the subject of autism, she decided to peruse her library for ideas. She found some books, but they weren’t, she said, “fun and engaging.” With that, she decided to start writing some stories of her own and sent some of them to one of her editor friends, who, by chance, has a nephew who is on the autism spectrum. The friend was supportive of the samples and suggested she use dinosaurs as her story characters because of the universal likeability of the creatures. Others along the way encouraged her to focus on a wider range of exceptionalities, too. It was both practical advice and solid encouragement, helping Susan to feel that her advocacy approach was heading on the correct path.
Besides doing the podcast and her book writing, she also keeps busy doing speaking and teaching appearances at schools and other venues, including recently at an event sponsored by the Autism Society of the Bluegrass. Her background in marketing has made her a natural fit. Reach Susan about appearances via her email, rainbowsparrowbooks@gmail.com.
Along with embracing her strong Christian faith, Susan is buoyed by the example and support of her husband, Cameron, whom she calls “intelligent, funny, sweet, and deep.” That encouragement, along with her own dynamic spirit and the invigoration of having a child she adores and desires to give “as many tools” for his future use as possible, should serve to expand her “tribe” of followers to a new and higher level of outreach.
