Boxing With Shadows: Diagnosis

“You knew something was wrong, didn’t you?” The child psychologist was trying her best to be supportive. I nodded slowly as the tears welled up and then rolled uncontrollably over the rims of my eyes. I had known something was wrong, but never in a million years had I expected it to be Autism. A language disorder, yes. Perhaps a hearing problem. But Autism had never entered my mind. Yet the four-person clinical team that had evaluated Stovie for the past 6 hours agreed that he showed “signs of mild Autism.” 

Signs of mild Autism. What did that mean? Can Autism be mild? Can the signs be mild? Is there any hope at all of treatment and recovery? I sat in the chair while the psychologist reviewed the state services available to Stovie for treatment. While she was talking I looked back over the last two years and retraced the journey that had brought us to this point.

When Stovie was born he was a typical baby – hearing, sight and reflexes checked out great. He was eating as he should and responding beautifully to his environment. The only problem was that he continued to have fluid in his ear canal. The doctor said it was leftover from the birth process and should drain soon. But it never did, and it became infected. At his 3 week check up, the doctor reluctantly put him on antibiotics. Thus an 18 month cycle of infection and antibiotics began. Stovie never spent one day without fluid on his ears for the first 2 years of his life. He had constant ear infections, which were treated with antibiotics. Between infections, he was vaccinated routinely. Sometimes he was vaccinated even with a slight fever. I didn’t feel altogether comfortable with the vaccinations, but at the time I didn’t know I had the choice to not vaccinate. (More on that in another post.)

When Stovie was about 18 months old, I realized he wasn’t talking. In fact, he was becoming less and less interested in interacting with people at all. Kaylan had picked up speech easily, and I had always heard that boys were slower. But now I realized that Stovie wasn’t saying anything  — not mommy or daddy, body parts, his name, juice, shapes, colors, favorite TV characters — nothing. Just sounds that sounded like speaking but weren’t actual words. As if he had some secret language that only he knew about.

I became very intentional about trying to help him talk. He seemed to enjoy the games, but no words were ever formed. I wondered if he had the capacity to even understand what I was saying. Then one day we were eating his favorite dinner, pizza. Out of the clear blue he looked up and said, “Mmmm. It’s delicious!” My mouth hit the floor. Here was a child who had never said Mommy or Dada. Now he just blurts out a full sentence? With adjectives? We were thrilled! But try as we might, we could never get him to repeat the words. It was as if they appeared for a moment and then were lost again in the recesses of his mind. This happened several times with different words. So we knew he had the ability to speak and to understand what words meant.

Finally, after 2 years of frustration, we requested that our son have tubes put in his ears. Maybe, we thought, the fluid is keeping him from hearing properly. And once he begins hearing properly, maybe he will start talking! But even after the tubes were put in, things still did not improve. He still wasn’t talking at all, and we knew something had to be done. That’s why we decided to bring Stovie to ChildFind (www.childfindidea.org) to be evaluated and see what was wrong. And that is how I ended up in a chair, crying quietly, listening to a list of public benefits for my baby boy. Six months of in-home, early intervention speech therapy for a maximum of two hours a week. A business card for a therapist contractor. A “What’s Next?” flyer and an invitation to an informational meeting for parents of children with Autism. Sign here please. Thank you for coming in. Best of luck. Follow up in three months. Now all I needed was hope.