Parenting on the Autism Spectrum

With any good story, there has to be a beginning. My journey with parenting on the Autism Spectrum started nine and a half years ago. I don’t pretend to be an expert on Autism. I don’t really think there is anyone on the planet that is an expert on Autism. There is still so much that even the scientific community doesn’t know. We don’t even know what causes it. Sure, there is the speculation that vaccines like the MMR vaccine cause Autism. But there has not been any verifiable proof that it does. But what does it really matter what causes it? Does that change what we as parents must go through to raise our precious children who are on the spectrum? No, so let’s move forward so that we can help our children to live meaningful lives.

In October of 2007, I gave birth to a beautiful baby boy. He was perfect. Sweet little chubby cheeks and beautiful blue eyes. All and all, as the months passed, my son developed somewhat normally. He was sitting up by five months and walking by ten months. The one difference was that he never actually fully crawled before he began to walk. He did what is called the army crawl. This is where the child basically drags themselves across the floor using their arms and legs. Then magically one day, he started to walk. According to an expert in childhood development, the average age for a child to start walking is around twelve months. So, I was thrilled that my son was slightly ahead of the curve. Then skip ahead eight months (my son was around eighteen months) and my husband starts to worry because my son is not starting to say the usually words like “mama, dada, or baba,” just babbling. I have to admit that I was in total denial. Every time he would mention it, I would be like, “Nooo, he’s fine.”

Then at a doctor’s visit, we finally brought up his speech delays to his pediatrician. At this doctor visit, the pediatrician suggested two things that we should immediately do to have my son evaluated. The first was to seek out a program called early intervention which is so highly important for any parent to look into if their child is having any sort of developmental delay. Getting help as early as possible is the key to success with any child who is experiencing a developmental delay. So we got in contact with a local company in the area and a therapist was sent to our home. Initially, it was a speech therapist. She was great and my son really seemed to like her. Then they brought in an occupational therapist whom my son I think mostly tolerated. Getting my son to talk was a very long process. By the time early intervention was over when my son was 3, he was still barely talking. When he did speak, it was very unclear. When early intervention ended, we enrolled Max at speech therapist with our local hospital group. This is where the huge difference in his speech began. It was such a relief to finally be able to communicate with my son. Though it took many years of therapy, every moment was worth it.

When he entered school was when we got a concrete diagnosis of Asperger’s Syndrome. This is what is referred to as “high-functioning” Autism. This means that a child is able to speak and take care of themselves; for example, being able to dress themselves independently. Though this does not mean that kids with Asperger’s do not have their issues as well. For my son, there is social awkwardness, not recognizing social cues, and being very emotional. The area where he seems to have no issues is with school work. He has always had excellent grades. He has gone through all of these struggles with a positive attitude and a smile on his face. He is meant for great things.