Autism

Today I am participating in a blog hop. Kelly’s Korner is hosting a blog hop specifically for parents of special needs children. As parents with special needs children, it can be difficult to connect with other parents who understand what we are going through. Kelly’s hope is to connect parents of children with special needs with other parents who have similar challenges. I have met a lot of great people online who have helped me in one way or another with the different challenges that come with raising a child on the spectrum. Hopefully I will continue to meet people or my story will help someone else going through similar issues.
Christopher is 10 years old. He has severe autism. He is non-verbal. I started to notice a difference in his behavior right before he turned two. When I say difference in behavior, I mean I noticed he was different from most children his age. He was always delayed with milestones and he had a lot of unusual quirky behavior for a child of his age. I know when I just say it like that it doesn’t sound like a big deal, but if you saw the things he was doing and how obsessed he was with doing those things….

At his 18 month check up, his doctor asked me if I was concerned about his development. I knew he was behind, but I wasn’t too concerned about it at that point. Somewhere between that check up and his 2 year check up, I started to get concerned. He wasn’t responding to people very much at all. He wasn’t trying to develop his communication skills when  he needed something. Most kids by age 2 would try to verbalize their needs using words, but Chris still got our attention by crying the way an infant does.
I Googled some of the symptoms that concerned me and found an article that listed 9 characteristics of autism. At the age of 2, Chris had 7 of the traits on the list. I printed that article and brought it with me to his 2 year check up. The pediatrician spent a great deal of time with us. She preformed a hearing test. She gave us further instructions on where to go to get additional testing done. She suggested the possibility of autism, but wanted a neurologist to give us the final diagnosis. We had several tests done and like most autism cases, the tests all came back normal.  The neurologist confirmed our pediatrician’s fears and my fears as well. Chris had autism.
We started speech therapy and occupational therapy right away. The therapists came to our house for almost a year. My husband’s job transferred us to another state. He started getting services from the school district when we moved. We were seeing some results, but nothing over the top extraordinary. About the time he got his 4 year shots, he got a new teacher. There was a lot of regression during that time. I started to notice that anytime there was change, he would regress. He also seemed to have the attitude that once he knew how to do something, there was no need to do it anymore.
Today he is 10 years old. It has been a while since we have seen significant progress in Chris. The good news is he is mostly happy. He is beginning to develop some aggression issues at school and we are trying to figure out how to deal with that. Hopefully that will stop now that it is summer vacation. He will attend the extended school year program which begins in July.
I’d love to hear from anyone who has a special needs child. Even if you aren’t dealing with autism, I’ve found we may not be dealing with the same diagnosis, but there are still some things that might be similar. Thanks for stopping by!
Jennifer