Today I had prepared a macaroni and cheese with hot dog lunch. Little miss Lia ate so wonderful, but her brother not so much, but it is a working project. Let me start from the beginning.
When Anthony was born, he was a perfect happy baby, hitting milestones on point, up until it go to the talking stage. He knew his alphabet, and could count to 10. Once we got through the counting and letters stage was where we began to notice something just wasn't right. Not that my baby wasn't smart, but using more words, or completing sentences was a task he couldn't grasp. At about 2 and a half, we couldn't get him to eat anything other than white in color foods, like mac and cheese, dry cereal, white sauced pasta, and milk. It didn't seem to be much of a problem, as long as he was eating.
It was his three year checkup. The doctor we usually seen no longer accepted our insurance, so i decided to take Anthony to my childhood doctor. I knew from the start that I shouldn't have done that because in the end i didn't like that doctor. But we made the appointment anyways. We arrive to the appointment 20 minutes early, fill out the questionnaire that most new patients have to have filled out, were called to the back, and after a good 20 minute wait, the doctor came in. He looked at Anthony for a mere minute, and looked at us and said "your son has autism." I was in utter disbelief that a doctor that knew nothing about my child, didn't interact with him, or even say "hi" to him just went off of some paper and says "AUTISM", like its nothing. We were so confused, as most parents would be, so when the doctor tried to explain to us the process, we were just to upset that we left. From that day forward we knew that there where things we had to figure out, and that it would be a long process, not just for us, but for our baby boy as well.
It wasn't long after that doctor that we went and got a new one. This one helped us, not only did she speak with Anthony, but she was playful, engaging, and tried different things to make sure that she didn't just throw words around with out knowing for sure. She guided us to go to a child development and autism center, where we began our journey. After hours in intake rooms, paper questionnaires, evaluations, and a lot of one on one testing, we were guided to go to a speech therapist. We quickly got him into one where hes been going for the past almost year. His speech therapist is amazing, from 3 years old to now 4 he has developed such a vocabulary, that i'm so happy to say is a major improvement. If there is something he doesn't understand, or know he will ask what it means. But our journey is far from over, We are still waiting to get him into a behavioral therapist, and try to figure out what is keeping him from trying different things, acting a particular way, and to see what we as parents can do to help him in this crazy, messed up world we live in today. This journey will continue as well as this blog. But everything is taken one day at a time.
I hope you enjoyed reading this
xoxo
Mrs. Valerie Hill
****If you are struggling with autism, know someone on the spectrum, or need more information about it. please head over to http://www.autismspeaks.org/
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