I hovered between aware and accepting during his second year of life - thing like when he showed little interest in his first birthday party and his second Christmas... he was happy to play by himself - lining up his cars, his crayons, even the soup cans from the bottom of the pantry. I kept waiting for him to speak rather than babble- for his efforts and gestures to have meaning - as his mom, I usually knew what he wanted intuitively, but he couldn't communicate with others - he rarely pointed or acknowledged people and things...
Except his obsessions - he'd cry if we turned left to come home instead of turning right to go to our local Publix grocery store - and if we went to the grocery store, we had to follow the same pattern every time - get a cart and make a bee line straight for his free cookie from the bakery - then a trip around the outside of the store - produce, seafood, meat, dairy and finally up and down the aisles until we checked out... He knew what the golden arches meant - his favorite food - french fries... and again, if we went to our local Walmart, he'd have a knock down fit if we didn't go to the Micky D's inside the entrance before shopping...
He'd swing on the swing for hours if we let him, take the same path up the stairs and down the slide almost step for step...
I finally had the courage to say something at his 18 month well baby check up... we talked about his obsessions, his needs and some of his external behaviors, along with the fact that he wasn't using any language - it was time to start intervention...
I was moving beyond aware into acceptance - I truly knew by 18 months that my son was special - and had special needs - I was on the brink of being able to say it - but the social services intake worker who screened him for barely half an hour saw that he was a smart kid and missed something - but did give us access to Speech Therapy...
So, for several months we had twice weekly play/speech therapy... but it wasn't clicking - speech therapy alone wasn't going to help him reach his potential or even his basic goals... we were seeing more - more needs, more stimming, less acceptance of new and different things - especially food...
As he turned two, I had read so much about developmental delays, sensory issues, language and more that the word that I had been thinking about in the back of my mind since he was 15 months old was solidified. Just a scant few weeks later, we had seen a psychologist who confirmed what I was already aware of... it was Autism.
The next challenge was making others aware - his speech therapist was shocked by the diagnosis... it took several weeks to convince Social Services he needed more therapies... I also became aware of what I should have been offered six months before that might have helped me bring the awareness out more quickly...
Once everyone was aware, things changed rapidly - his stimming decreased, his language increased, his ability to share and communicate increased... he now talks about having friends, makes eye contact and even says hello, asks for his cookie and thanks the baker at Publix for it... he's reading and counting at grade level and he's learning to turn his special skills into assets, for which I am grateful...
I've written many times about Autism and how it affects our world - you can check out the Autism Awareness tab above for more stories - mine, blog friends, experts and more - so that you can be Aware too!
I wrote this post because of the promot at and am linking it up to:
