It was a completely different experience from his initial evaluation to see if he (and Little Miss) would qualify for Early Intervention services. Four months ago, he scored considerably lower than I expected because he wouldn’t do ANY task asked, when asked. He’d do them later, when he thought no one would notice, but that didn’t count. He had his first huge meltdown, full of face-slapping, by the end and my heart was broken. Truthfully it was then that I let go of denial and accepted that PX was without a doubt somewhere on the spectrum.
This time, he did the tasks asked when asked with only minimal resistance. He stacked his blocks and put pegs in holes and rolled a ball and even responded to his name a couple of times. And then when done, he’d go back to toe-hopping and skipping, flapping his hands from head to toe, squeeing his trademark “eeeee! yaaahhh!!!!” the entire time. It opened my eyes to how far he’s come with just a small amount of therapy.
But I still blinked back a couple of tears when they said he indeed has “autistic disorder”. I suppose somewhere inside I was still holding onto a thread of hope they’d look at me and say “He’s fine, just quirky” and PX would chime in “LOLOLOL mom, fooled you! I can speak full sentences!” Even though I’ve known, at least since the start of the year, the truth.
We won’t have the full report for a few weeks but he has been put on the spectrum. So in the next month or so, we’ll be changing up his services again. I wish there were more center-based options around here before this kid goes stir-crazy.
We make-a the same face!
