STARTING A BLOG

I've wanted to do this for some time. I'm still not sure what "blogging" is all about but for me it's going to be a personal diary of such of our family's struggle and triumphs of living with autism.

Our son Will was diagnosed this past fall. We were pretty certain it was autism.....unlike some parents, it was no shock or surprise but still after hearing the diagnosis, I felt numb for days. No matter how ready you "think" you are, you're never ready for something like this. Don't let anyone convince you that you are. Since Will was about 18 months old we knew something wasn't right. Being first time parents sometime I wonder if we shouldn't have seen it sooner....I keep looking at past videos and pictures to see if the signs were there and I just didn't know what to look for...but he was developing pretty normally. He was slow to sit up alone, crawl and walk but not real behind. Nothing to be alarmed about. He was born a few weeks early, so we just thought that had something to do with it. He didn't answer when we called him by his name BUT we didn't call him by his name that often....we called him "Baby Boy", "Sweetie"......we convinced ourselves we just weren't using his name enough. He just didn't know what it was. When his babbling wasn't turning into words, we started having concerns. Not big ones, but we thought he needed to be around more children his age. Since he was the only child and pretty much the only small child in the family he just needed to be around some kids his own age. Then he'd learn and everything would be fine.

We had always swore we'd never put him in daycare. I was going to be a "stay at home Mom" and raise my son...no one was going to do it for me. My mother had stayed home and taken care of me as a child and to me it was the only answer. I run a business out of my home so it was perfect...I could work when I could and be "Mama" the rest of the time. But after talking to some friends of ours who had their "grandchildren" in this daycare, (we are older parents) we decided we'd give it a try and let Will go a couple of days a week to be around other children and hopefully build his vocabulary. The day we went to go check out the daycare is the day that I knew there was something terribly, terribly wrong....and I don't think our life has been the same since.

When I saw those other children Will's age and younger and all they were doing...and all they knew how to do....all I could think was "Will can't do that", "Will doesn't know how to do that", Will doesn't even know his name, how could he know the other children's name". I was in tears when we finally got out of there. I remember looking at Karl and saying "there is something so wrong". We both felt desperate at the moment and convinced ourselves this would be good for him. We ended up enrolling him HOPING that he would start learning and start talking. I guess at that moment, I was sure it was my fault...that I was a bad mother and hadn't been teaching him like I should. But after a couple of weeks of "trying" daycare it was a disaster and we knew there was something so much more going on. He cried uncontrollably when we would drop him off (I refused to take him and made Karl do it...it tore me up too much) but they kept telling us all kids usually do that when they started daycare. Okay..we bought that one. When the other children were sleeping he was awake playing and he slept when they were awake. When I'd go pick him up he'd be oblivious to the other children there. He looked right through them. He refused to bond with any one working there and there was only one person that he would even let hold him and she was part time so we had to try to work it so he was there on the days that she was. He refused to eat (which he has a lot of feeding issues) and they don't force the children to eat. By the time we go him out of there, he had lost over 5 pounds. For us, daycare was the worst thing we could have done for him BUT it did open our eyes up to autism.....

When I first heard the word AUTISM all I could think of was "Rainman". I began searching the internet reading every single thing I could. One of the first things I noticed when reading the "signs" of autism were that some children would spin wheels on cars instead of rolling them appropriately. Will had always done that!!!! OMG. We had laughed and said that he was going to be in the "tire business". Suddenly it didn't seem funny anymore .....the more I read, the more I realized he had so many of the "signs". For days, I read and read and read and ordered books from Amazon....I then decided we needed help. I called First Steps which in Kentucky is the early intervention program for children. They came out and did an interview and ask questions to which most I answered no and no he can't and then came all those evaluations....speech, physical, occupational, developmental.....but we were all in agreement Will had some problems and needed therapy. So when he was 20 months old, Will started speech and occupational therapy and developmental intervention. It continued til he was three and then we enrolled him in preschool.

That was probably the hardest thing I've ever done...but in the end it has been the best. He has done so well. It took some time to get him adjusted and it didn't happen overnight, but he seems to love it now. Yes, we still have days that things don't work out like they should but all and all he's done remarkable. He still doesn't play with the other children and he still seems content in "Will's World" but he does participate some and the teachers and aides work so hard with him. It's really a team effort between us all but it's working. No, he's not like the other children in the class, but he's Will and that's just the way things are. That's something we've learned to accept over time. We learn from him as much as he learns from us. No, he's not the child I thought I would have...but I wouldn't have it any other way.