World Autism Awareness Day

This is a difficult subject for me to approach right now. Our son, Jett, is in the process of several evaluations and therapies, with a diagnosis of an autism spectrum disorder on the table. Having grown up with a special needs sibling, I am especially aware of those struggles that a parent faces when they have a special needs child. Honestly, it terrifies me.

We know that Jett has speech delays. We started speech therapy last week, and we're hoping to see some improvement pretty soon. However, during his speech evaluation, the speech pathologist pointed out something that we hadn't quite picked up on. She noticed that he went up on his toes a lot, and tensed up his arms when he got excited - signs of overstimulation. She recommended an occupation therapy (OT) evaluation, believing that he may also have a sensory processing disorder (SPD).

During his first speech therapy session, she noticed a few other things as well: he takes object and spins them instead of playing with them normally, he lines up like objects in rows, his eye contact is extremely limited, and when he gets frustrated, he bites his fingers - behaviors that could be signs of an autism spectrum disorder. I had picked up on a few of these, and I planned to bring them up at our OT evaluation, hoping that maybe it wasn't indicitive of any further issues and we wouldn't need OT. I also kept hoping that the speech therapy will help his speech, and he'll grow up to be a normal, neuro-typical boy with age-appropriate speech and developmental skills.

She (our speech therapist) brought up developmental pediatricians after noticing these behaviors. That's when I really started to worry. I thought this is real. He could have something more serious. How am I going to give him the special care he needs? I'm not strong enough to parent a special needs child.

It keeps hitting me in bursts. I'll start thinking about it, and the word "autism" pops in my head, and I just start crying. My greatest fears are that A) I somehow failed as a parent already, and I caused this, and B) I'm not a good enough parent to handle this - if I haven't failed already, I'm going to.

We don't have a definitive diagnoses yet (other than speech delays), but I'm calling tomorrow to schedule an evaluation with the developmental ped. Our OT evaluation isn't until May 26, and we probably won't see the developmental ped until after that, even. We're hoping for some answers then. The wait will probably drag, but at least I know we're getting the ball rolling.

Right now, I'm reading The Out-Of-Sync Child: Recognizing and Coping with Sensory Processing Disorder. We don't have a formal diagnosis of SPD, but several people have recommended the book, and we're fairly certain he has some sensory issues. I'm hoping to find some helpful information there.

I've also started a new blog specifically dedicated to Jett - Ready, Jett, Go!

Thanks for reading. I know this wasn't exactly a coherent collection of thoughts as much as a splatter of emotions and run-on sentences. I'm hoping it gets better from here. :)