Grasshopper New Media Presents...

Part I
“You should get him tested. His development is definitely delayed.”

The pediatrician’s words hit me like a punch in the stomach. My eighteen-month old son Michael looked at me with such an innocent expression. On the surface, he seemed like any other toddler. His dark brown eyes sparkled in the lights of the exam room, but I thought to myself,

“What does he see?”

Michael had always been a challenging baby. He announced his arrival into the world with such lung power that the nurse commented with a laugh, “There’s nothing wrong with his lungs!” When we took him home, he slept quite a bit during the day, but at night, he screamed and fussed like crazy. He was colicky his first four months of life, and my husband and I were at our wits’ end. Then, at sixteen weeks, the colic magically disappeared, and we sighed in genuine relief.

He skipped crawling and wanted to walk at ten months. During the mornings, he sat at my piano and banged on the keys to his heart’s content. The black keys, in particular, held his interest, and he played them over and over, from the low scale to the high. I thought he was sharpening his ear for musical tones and wanted to hear them over and over. After a while, he stopped experimenting with the other keys and played the black keys, never varying at all.

At sixteen months, he wanted to walk around Concord Mills, one of the major malls in Charlotte, instead of riding in his stroller. His balance was a bit unsteady, but I figured that was normal for a child who was learning to walk. As time went by, I noticed other strange things. He would walk right into trash cans and kiosks as if he didn’t see them. Instead of avoiding people in the opposite direction, he would walk straight for them. Michael tripped over his own feet. Was this just awkwardness, or was there something else wrong?

I took him to his pediatrician for his eighteen-month appointment, and she listened to my concerns. Then she said that statement that punched a hole in my gut. His development is definitely delayed. Was it something I had done, or didn’t do? I felt shame; was I a good enough mother for my son?

My husband believed that Michael would “grow out of it”. He refused to accept that anything might be wrong. I couldn’t blame him, for Michael was his firstborn, and both of us had hopes and dreams for Michael’s future. The possibility that something wasn’t right was too scary to even think about. By the time Michael’s second birthday approached, there was no doubt about it. Michael was not talking, but communicated with grunts. He refused to play with other children during playgroups, preferring his own company. He turned his gaze away from me, so he didn’t watch and mimic sounds or movements. Loud music scared him, and he threw tantrums for no reason. My son had turned into a time bomb, and I didn’t know what would set him off.

I needed to do something. His pediatrician gave me the number of the Carlton Watkins Center in Charlotte and advised that I schedule a full evaluation for Michael. It took me two days before I got up the nerve to call. Little did I know that it would be the first step in a long journey, not only for Michael, but for my entire family.

Links

The Autism Society of America

Face Autism/The Face of Autism: Resources

[tags]autism, parenting, developmental delays, Carlton Watkins Center[/tags]

Photo (which once again has nothing to do with anything but is super cool) by Deborah Lattimore via Flickr.