Autism Pie

Well, we don't have to sit around and wonder anymore, and I can stop telling people, "I suspect autism." The university team agreed with me, and since they have better degrees for that sort of thing, they're not guessing at symptoms based on crap they read on the Internet.
It's autism. Their impression was autism disorder and general developmental delay. The first I expected but didn't want to hear, and the second is making me feel a little punched in the stomach. I suppose you never really want your suspicions confirmed on this sort of thing (unless you're a total whackjob). And really, he's not meeting a lot of milestones at this point, so of course he has a general developmental delay.
I still love my son. He's very mellow. He doesn't (knock on a giant block of wood) have behaviors that are super problematic. He doesn't bang his head on hard things or hit people. He shows affection. He's generally happy. He's pleased when he gets something right, and you can tell from the look on his face that he knows he's done well when he remembers to use his words.
Sadly, "his words" are still single words and sporadic. We've done fairly well showing him signs to go with words, because he doesn't pronounce most words well enough to understand, and the signs really help out. The team would like to see us work more on functional communication, so he can better ask for his needs and wants.
He loves numbers. He can count to at least twenty, although I bet he could go higher. He can sign to twenty. He can recognize the numbers if he just sees random numbers anywhere (Motel 8 ad on TV, F keys on keyboards, Uno deck). I think I might add some more visual prompts to his daily routine to see if we can get him to recognize more words. And I'll see about adding letters. Yeah, I know that letters don't count as "functional communication," but if he's more interested in counting and lists, I want to play to his strengths. I think learning begets learning.

IEP Meeting for the Girl

Princess had her IEP meeting today, and they're increasing services. I always get paranoid that they're going to take them away. They said that actually they'd already increased services and now the IEP was going to officially reflect what they were doing.

They said she's going interesting gaps where she does higher level skills well but misses basic skills completely. Her functional speech is still a big issue. She scored at 47% on receptive speech, which gives her a huge gap between expressive and receptive skills.

She can't identify double digit numbers at all, which puts her math skills behind, but I've heard her add and subtract, so there's that gap in a basic skill again.

She's now getting four 30 minute reading sessions, four 30 minute math sessions, and one hour of speech therapy per week. They're also evaluating her for music therapy, and they said they'd add that on if she qualified. They're also giving her extra cues and prompts and extra time.

She's got good coping skills, and she uses all the resources available, and she's making excellent progress. She just has a ways to go.They're very pleased with her fine motor skills, which used to be a concern in preschool, so yay. That's one of the reasons they wanted to see if she qualifies for music therapy. They figured she was so artsy that it might play to her strengths.

And sometimes Google isn't your friend. After reading this article, I'm even more concerned about dyslexia. She does all of those things. I guess the good news is that because she's receiving services, they're more likely to catch it if it is dyslexia.

Vaccines Don't Cause Autism, ABC!

So I watched the premier of a new show I thought might be good and end up being all pissed off instead. The show, Eli Stone, showed a jury awarding a huge cash payment to the mother of an autistic child over "mercurium" in a flu vaccine. They had a disclaimer at the end, but damage was already don.

Please, people. We don't need anymore damn "vaccines cause autism" scares. It's simply not true. The mercury used as a preservative leaves the body too quickly to do the heavy metal damage you'd see from eating fish or being exposed to environmental toxins. And most vaccines have phased it out due to bad press, anyway.

There are enough people scared of vaccines as it is. I'd rather have my kids avoid exposure to pertussis, TYVM. I've had it. It wasn't a harmless and comically loud cough. It was a struggle to breath with the occasional vomit. Yay.

And then when we get past the stupid vaccines and autism faux link, we find a kid who apparently neatly stacks thousands of toy blocks. His mom must own stock in the wooden toy block factory. Oh, and he never melts down and knocks them over. He just stacks the blocks. I know that if my son likes blocks? I'll buy him thousands of them instead of letting him play with 30-40.

It was just weird.

And the show? Was trying to be funny and really failing.

Eli Stone? You suck.

It's a Date

April 17th. We're getting King's long evaluation done. Note that we first called for an appointment in October. But this? This is the short waiting list. The other hospital that does autism evaluations has a year long wait before they call you to schedule an appointment.

A friend of mine just got punched in the gut with an autism surprise herself. Add this to a long list of parents I know with kids on the spectrum, and it really just makes me ask WTF?

Harry Potter Fans Start Early

Ok, so we've got a massive wall of bookshelves that are piled with books (and other crap that gets tossed up out of kid reach, but that's beside the point). They go from floor to ceiling and are a toddler temptation.

We put up a massively long toddler gate to block them off, but the gate didn't completely fit well, so there was a loop in the gate on one side that King would tend to fill with any object he could toss over the edge. It was a pain to clean, and you never knew what garbage you'd find when you did.

My husband decided that King was old enough not to take the books off the shelf all the time (ha!) and took the gate off. The living room is cleaner without the crap pile, but King, of course, loves taking the books off the shelf.

Apparently he's a big Harry Potter fan, because the other day he just took the Harry Potter books down. He removed the dust cover on each one and then lined them up on the couch.

If he does it again, I'm taking a picture.

The A Word

Yeah. That one. The one that starts with a and ends with utism.

When we went to the pediatrician to get the required paperwork for him to start preschool, King bombed the screening they give for autism. That doesn't mean he has it, but it does mean he should be tested.

The more I read, the more I'm inclined to think there's cause for concern. He doesn't have every single symptom, of course, but neither do kids with diagnosed cases of autism. So, yeah.

I've been mulling it over and trying to figure out how I should feel about the whole thing.

Ok, here's our areas of concern:

Eye contact. He makes eye contact sometimes, but only if it's something he's really engaged in. When he's on, he's on, but he spends a lot of time looking away and acting like you and the rest of the world doesn't exist.

Speech. Dude is almost three and we still don't have any two word sentences. Or that many one word sentences. He still asks for water by handing us a cup.

Play. Most of the time he takes a toy, like a doll or an animal, and he bounces it up and down. I've never seen him pretend like one doll is talking to another or take the dolls and put them in the house.

Other kids. He likes to chase after other kids, but he doesn't play cooperatively. No tea parties, no balls back and forth, etc. I don't know how much of this is developmentally atypical, but other kids his age seem to be down with the whole cooperative play thing.

Yeah. I think we've got some big concerns. The waiting list for screening can be up to six months long, so it may be a while before I find out anything more.