The Autism Journey.... Evans story Part 5 Tonight I want to start off by saying... I am overwhelmed and humbled by all of you who have called, texted, sent me a personal message, ran in to me, and commented on our story. I never knew our story would mean so much to so many of you. To those of you I am annoying, please just scroll on. LOL! A lady visited the Chipley Badcock store with her son and intrigued Delisha. (I will keep this person anonymous since I havent asked to tell her story) This little boy did a lot of the same things Evan did. He made a lot of the same noises Evan did so the mom started sharing that her son was just diagnosed with Autism. Delisha went to the library and started reading about it and told our mother about the lady and little boy and said I think this is Evan, too. Not wanting to hurt my feelings, she wanted Mom to talk to me about it. So mom comes over to our house and shares the story with me and gives me some information to read about it. (Remember.... we had no internet!!! And if I had had internet I would have been smoking up the dial up!) Ill admit I was a little intrigued and curious. We continued going to therapy, having early intervention.... evaluation after evaluation.... and paperwork. I filled out more questionnaires than you can possibly imagine. He started daycare and he loved it most days and the days he wasnt so in love with it, they figured out who his best friend was.... BARNEY. Barney made everything better and if he heard that musical intro, he would come running! Yes, definitely NO hearing problems!! He still wasnt talking and he certainly was making absolutely no attempts to potty train. Ms. Angie and Ms. Bonnie worked with him religiously. Seth was coming right along with potty training and wearing big boy underwear. It was as if Evan really had no concept of sitting on that giant hole and not falling in. He was terrified, not interested or just had no clue. I just could not understand why in the world Seth was trained and Evan wasnt even to the pull up stage. Seth was running around playing with toys and friends appropriately and Evan would just look at toys and he would play beside the children, never with them. (I later learned this is called parallel play. He wanted to play with them but did not know how.) We could ask Seth to perform a task and he would do it. Evan on the other hand could not follow directions. It was always hand over hand or you had to walk with him and show him what to do. It was hard for him to sit still and listen to a story like all of the other 2 and 3 year olds. We were signing and repeating words just trying to figure out what he wanted or what he needed help with. Seth was speaking very clearly now (talking up a storm) and Evan had never said Momma. I continued to research this thing called autism and it was suggested that we might make an appointment with a psychologist to see if they cold shed some light on things for us. In my mind Im thinking, how is this Psychologist going to talk to Evan when he has no speech? Evan certainly cant talk back to him. Isnt that what they do??? Dont they ask the patient lots of questions like how do you feel? Whats going on in your life? Hes 2 for crying out loud what is a psychologist going to do for us. Well, I made the appointment and went. I found out that they observe the child and take notes about how they play and what they do with the toys. They build block towers and try to get the child to rebuild the same tower. This guy was a quack! He had no idea what in the world he was doing and he quite frankly was getting on my last nerve!!!! He proceeded to tell me that my son was probably mentally retarded and may never speak or function in the world. I was pissed! I jumped to my feet, scooped up Evan and pointed my finger at him and said, You sir have no clue! My son is not RETARDED and you need to educate yourself on Autism. He will talk and he will function! And out the door I went. I called Kevin on the cell phone sobbing and told him about my experience with the fruitcake and of coarse he was ready to go and kick some butt. Another bombshell: Just before he turned three years old, I found out that the services we were receiving ended on his third birthday. How can this be? He is making progress and now you are going to take it away? Well.... not exactly. We found out that children with disabilities became the responsibility of the school system. What???? You are going to send my baby to big school??? There was no VPK then so what they offered for this age group was pre-K handicapped. The class was filled with boys and girls who had speech and language delays or more severe disabilities. They offered speech therapy and occupational therapy at the school so he could get the therapies during the school day. Hmmmmmm now what?
Posted on: Thu, 10 Apr 2014 02:52:44 +0000
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