My son is 6 years old and has autism.  By the time I fully accepted it, it wasn’t a sad thing to know.  Not to say I wouldn’t love one day for him to turn around and behave like an average six year old.  Today I am optimistic about his future, while not ignoring the hurdles he has to face.  It took me 6 years to get here.

When my son was an toddler (say 1 to 1 and a half years old) He still wasn’t speaking.  While it was concerning,  I was told I didn’t talk until I was three so I could rationalize not panicking.  When he played with cars, he wouldn’t push the car around, he would just spin the wheels.  He’d be content to do this for long periods of time.  This too was not in itself a guarantee of a problem.  Those things and others together where red flags of autism.  My wife actually worked with autistic children and voiced the concern to me.  Not understanding fully what autism was,  my gut feeling was the child is fine.  He is smart as a whip.  He cant be autistic.  And he is very smart.  He could solve puzzles fairly quickly at a pace someone his age should.  So this assured me all was well. 

                As time went on and he still wasn’t really speaking, our doctor suggested he may be autistic.  Still linking autism to mental retardation I was certain it wasn’t the case.  He was potty trained very earlya (day trained by a year and a half old) and did so many things well I just couldn’t believe it.  At this point he was 3 years old.  We began him on speech therapy as his limited speech sounded a little babyish and also.. well.. was very limited.  We worked with him at home as well trying to improve his speech.  I read more online about autism, and while still not admitting it, the seeds were planting.  I realized autism itself isn’t mental retardation and many autistic children excel in non social endeavors and were very smart.  They could just not communicate, and to varying degrees, accept communication as well as the rest of us do.  At this point I felt, on the small chance he was autistic, that at least he was getting the speech therapy.  The speech therapist gave traditional speech therapy at first.  My son would go entire sessions only saying a few words, sometimes protesting loudly.  He was prone to inconsolable tantrums which was another sign.  After a few months, my son was fairly accustomed to the therapy and the therapist commented he spoke fine.  This is only relating to repeating words back which is traditional speech therapy, not forming original sentences.  The therapist began to tailor the program into what I later learned was elements of early intervention .  Teaching logic behind speech and appropriate responses to questions.  For example if you asked him did he want cake,  he would say ‘want cake’, as opposed to just saying ‘yes.’  I am grateful to the man as this early help, I believe set the groundwork for my sons later accomplishments.

I worked with him at home as well.  At this point following advise and teaching aids I found on websites made by parents of autistic children.  Even then not admitting he was autistic but really just treating what were only ‘coincidently’ parallel symptoms.  All the while learning more of this increasingly common disability.  Next blog I’ll recount more of how my ignorance was broken down and how my beautiful son progressed from then until now.