Diagnosis

We  have 2 sons, Reece my oldest, is 7 and has PDD-NOS and Daxton our 5 yr. old has Moderate Autsim.  When Reece was 2 he started receiving services for speech through ECSE, when he was almost 4 he started attending school 2 x a week.  Dax had just turned 2 and was completely non-verbal, I mean silent.  I called in Reece’s old school speech therapist through school to evaluate Daxton.   He would be silent for hours, you could almost forget he was there, he had a terrible temper (happy to nuclear in 60 sec.).  The school came out and did their tests, then they did some more tests, and I finally asked “what exactly are you testing for?”.  I had known this woman, she’d had been in my home once a week for almost 2 years, she started to cry and said “we think he might have autism”.  The only thing that I could think of was “but he loves to be touched”,  I mean I hadn’t even seen Rainman.  So I spent the day crying and searching the internet, which made me cry more.  My husband and I decided to not tell anyone until the diagnosis was final which came in Nov.  During this whole time Reece was going to school and really enjoying it.  Reece was a too much kid; too chatty, too touchy, too loud, too aggressive, too friendly.  In January his teacher called saying they has some concerns  wanted to test Reece for Autism  too.  I thought “well what’s one more?”  And 4 years later after a  lot of work we have 2 wonderful kids that happen to have Autism.  Even though we work at it every day we wouldn’t change anything!

One of the very first things I did was ask at school about a support group, this was 3 years ago and the district hadn’t started theirs.  I didn’t know about Arc or Pacer or the Society.  Which by the way are all great places to get information on support groups.  The support group I joined was just a group of parents that got together 1x a month and just talked which is what I needed at that time.  There are many different kinds of groups out there.  You may not find one you like the first time around but keep trying .  Sometimes I just don’t want to go, I don’t want to be Super Autism Mom, but I’ve never regretted that I’ve gone.