TAMPA, Fla. — Tampa teenager CJ Gilkes has come a long way in a very short period of time.

At 18 months old, his parents started noticing CJ wasn’t hitting milestones. He would track with his eyes, get stuck on repetitive behaviors, and wasn’t playing with his toys in a functional way.

Rosario and Keith Gilkes said they felt lost.

“When you’re a baby, 3 months is a lot of time, and I started seeing that he wasn’t making any gains,” Rosario said.

It was hard to not compare CJ to his older brother, Conner.

“All the moms were like, ‘What is your strategy for having Conner potty trained at 15 months?’ and I thought I was the special mom and the super mom that had all the answers,” she said. “Then I found out I didn’t have all the answers.”

It was a tough truth to face as a parent, but the Gilkes chose to attack CJ’s diagnoses head on.

“I knew as a parent we couldn’t do that to our son. It would be a disservice,” Rosario said. “I had to put my ego aside.”

The Gilkes decided to enlist the help of every therapist, teacher and doctor that they could. They worked to educate their friends and family and get them all on board.

“We knew he was going to have his development. It just wasn’t going to be on our timeline. It was going to be on his,” Keith said.

Over the last couple of years, CJ started to make incredible gains. He is now enrolled in a traditional middle school and is an athletic teen as a part of the wrestling team.

“It’s not really about what I went through, it’s about how my family helped me,” CJ said. “If I didn’t have both of them, I don’t know where I’d be right now.”

The Gilkes believe early intervention was the key to helping CJ. They hope parents in a similar position take the same route and let their children know that they’re not any different from anyone else.