Early Intervention

Short Version:
Cordon has a communication deficiency and a social deficiency. Two separate therapist are going to start coming to our home once a week to help him develop in these areas and try to get him caught up.

Long Version:
When Cordon turned one I started noticing a few things about him that didn't seem quite right. He wasn't babbling or making any attempt at communication, he wouldn't point to things, he ignored other kids and always played by himself, and sometimes he seemed to be in his own little world. We decided that he was probably just a little behind the curve and didn't worry about it. But as time passed there was no change. And as much as I tried not to I started comparing him to other kids his age and started noticing a lot of differences. At 16 months we talked to his pediatrician who pulled out a skill check list for an 18 month old and when Cordon obviously didn't live up to those standards he told us Cordon was probably autistic. While we didn't appreciate his dramatic jump to conclusions he was able to put us in touch with an early intervention non profit organization. After two months of phone calls, paperwork, scheduling, reschedule and changing pediatricians we finally had Cordons evaluation last Monday. A therapist came to our home for 3 hours. She asked a million questions about Cordons personality, skills and behaviors, she spent time just observing him then she pulled out several toys and activities for him. That part was very fascination to watch. These different activities are designed to test every area of development such as cognitive, communication, sensory, motor skills etc. Cordon did great with some of them like the matching shapes, putting the square shape in the square hole, figuring out how to get beads out of a small jar, stacking blocks, putting pegs in the right hole etc. Others, he crashed and burned. He was suppose to imitate marks she made with a crayon. The most she could get out of him was dots and the only reason she got that much was because he loves to hit crayons on the paper. Forget strokes, banging is more fun. She pulled out a ball to see if he would play with her, such as rolling the ball back and forth. Cordon took the ball, ran to the other side of the room and played with the ball alone. Another task she had for him was transition and imaginary play. After he stacked some blocks she tried to get him to line the blocks up and push them around like a train. Not only did he refuse to try this but he was getting very annoyed at her for not letting him build a tower. He had a great look on his face "hey moron, leave me alone, blocks are for stacking and knocking over." By the end of the three hours Cordon was pretty worn out and getting annoyed. I gave him a cracker to make him happy and he crawled under the table to eat it. He has never done that before. I think he was trying to eat his cracker in peace with out some strange lady trying to make him do something crazy with it.
The nice thing is we got his diagnosis right then and there. Most of the developmental areas he is right at 18 months or above. He is doing great. His communication skills are like a 12 month old and social skills are a 13 month old. This puts him far enough behind that he qualifies for in home therapy. A speech therapist and a child development specialist are going to start coming once a week to work with him and give us tools to help him develop. An occupational therapist is also going to come to do a sensory evaluation on him. During the evaluation, the therapist noticed that Cordon may have some sensory issues and wants to have him checked. She was pointing out things that I would have never thought could be an issue like certain ways he plays with toys, his high tolerance for pain, his lack of affection, and sometimes he walks on his toes. She said that some kids will walk on their toes because putting their whole foot down is a sensory overload. I thought that was pretty interesting. All these things together are red flags for autism and if we want we can do some further testing for that, however, the therapists theory (and we agree) is that he is still very young and if we work with him now hopefully he will overcome these deficiencies and start to develop how he should. 3-6 months down the road we will do another evaluation and if he hasn't progressed then we may look into more testing for autism, but for now we are very hopeful that he will be fine.
The therapist did leave us with a few tools to help him. Mostly they have been pretty easy to follow and it doesn't bother Cordon to much. However, getting him to look us in the eye is like pulling teeth. He gets SO focused on objects that the world around him disappears. Before we give him that object we have to bring it up to our face so he will look us in the eye, we say the name of the object and give it a sign, wait for him to try and repeat either the sign or name, try 2 more times then give it to him whether he tried to communicate or not. This results in screams and tears within 2 seconds, and his eyes never leave the object.
How do we feel about all this? Chris' initial reaction when the pediatrician first told us that something was wrong was typical. He was angry at the Dr. because how dare someone say something was wrong with his perfect little boy. My reaction was "HA, I KNEW it" No, I'm not some horrible mother that is glad my son is behind, it was just nice to be validated. Plus, for several months I felt like a horrible failure as a mom. I've tried so hard to teach him things but they never stuck. He wasn't learning things that he should have been. It is nice to know that I haven't failed as a mom, I just didn't understand that he needs to learn in a different way. We understand we have a long road ahead of us and there will be very frustrating days and road blocks but we are hopeful and not worried. We really like the company working with us and Cordon is smart, it's just a matter of time till he catches on.