On The Spectrum

D- Day Diagnosis Day

It had been a long journey, but there we were after all the tests, reviews, interviews, observations, we were sitting opposite Professor Tonge waiting for news that could transform our son's life. Were we ready? No. Despite everything on our 3 year journey to this moment, we weren't ready.

It all started when Robin was born really. He used to cry and cry. You could change his nappy, feed him, burp him but he just never seemed comfortable. He would arch away from you not snuggle in like most babies, including our daughter had done. 'Never mind', we thought, 'boys are different.'

He was. I remember talking to the Maternal Child nurse when Robin was about 18 months old. He would babble and not try even the simplest words. 'Don't worry', I was told, 'boys are different. You are comparing him to your daughter - she's older and a girl.' The worries persisted until the start of 3 year old kinder. Robin didn't seem to play in a group with the other children. He was very possessive over the trains and certain toys. He would still babble. His kinder teacher suggested that maybe we get his hearing checked as he didn't seem to be interested in listening at story time.

This was the beginning of meeting our wonderful son. We had his ears checked, all fine. The ENT specialist said that given the fact that he had had a few ear infections during his infancy, perhaps he had missed a few steps in his verbals skills and recommended we see a Speech Pathologist. The first of our saviours.

When the results of the tests came through we were horrified to find that Robin's understanding was far lower than his speech. What we thought had been 'naughty' behaviour. Not paying attention, not completing small tasks, ignoring requests, hitting, all became clear. We felt awful. The Speech Pathologist gave us some great advice. Break up requests into simple, short sentences. Don't overload him with speech. Give him time to compute what you have said and react.

It transformed our lives. It felt as if we had found the Rosetta Stone. Finally we were able to communicate with our son. We learned to say 'Yes, later' when he said 'park.' Before we had been saying things like, 'Not right now, Mummy's got to take Holly to school, we can go later.' Robin would compute 'not' and throw a major tantrum. (More about those in a later post.)

So here we were starting to learn a common language with our son. Then the Speech Pathologist suggested that we see a Paediatrician. There's more? Yes, much more. She recommended that we have Robin checked over by the Autism team over in Clayton. We were stunned. Autism? Rainman? That wasn't Robin. Ok, he didn't communicate well, but autistic, surely not?

So here we were and yes he was. D-Day. Our son is a high-functioning autistic. In later posts I will tell you how we as a family dealt with the diagnosis. I for one felt relief. I had been told by a leading expert that my son had autism. Now I knew that I could begin to learn his language and hope that he would be interested enough to learn ours.