Daniel's Diagnosis

Once "school" began again, Daniel seemed to be doing fairly well... until around his 2nd birthday. ROADBLOCK! He regressed. Or, he seemed to lose his words, colors, shapes, numbers, counting... Gone! He didn't lose milestones, he still walked for instance, but his motors skills didn't seem to be improving as much as they had before. We had noticed little things before, we couldn't quite put our finger on it for sure, but we knew there was more going on than speech and developmental delay. We had suspected autism before now, but every one we talked to said he was too social, too loving... how wrong "stereo types" can be.

He had already been doing the spinning, toe walking, flapping his hands, lining up cars and watching the wheels as he pushed them off the shelf. He constantly looked out of the side of his eyes, or upside down, etc. They just became a lot more intense and a lot more prevalent. Everyone would tell us tell us that we didn't want him labeled, that he was inconsistent in his behavior. This would become a regular description of both of our boys: consistently inconsistent.

Finally, we got to the M-CHAT (Modified Checklist for Autism in Toddlers) and of course he passed/failed (however you may choose to word it) he had "autistic tendencies"... This brought us to the next phase, he would need to be reassessed by the Regional Center again. This time directly by the psychologist. As many of you may have already found out, this is just the beginning.

Once Daniel had his appointment with the psychologist at the Regional Center, he was automatically diagnosed with autism, and also mild mental delay. (They had to do a dual diagnosis, I was told, in order to be able to take him on as a client. Anyone with autism received this diagnosis.) Because of the "mental delay" we were referred to another psychologist to see if we could figure out the depth of the delay. We were grateful, because we'd also wanted a second opinion, to make sure we weren't missing anything. The second psychologist also diagnosed autism.

au•tism [aw-tiz-uhm] (ô'tĭz'əm)
A developmental disorder characterized by severe deficits in social interaction and communication and by abnormal behavior patterns, such as the repetition of specific movements or a tendency to focus on certain objects. Autism is evident in the first years of life. Its cause is unknown.

Now he would qualify for ABA (Applied Behavior Analysis). This would help him learn to redirect his focus and begin to tap into the things he had "lost". It will also help him learn to communicate in a world that won't learn how to communicate with him. We knew all of his knowledge was still there, we just had to help him learn to access it again. This was the beginning of our journey with Daniel and autism.