Quick Update

I've been meaning to update for a while now, but we have been very sick in this house! Jayden is getting over his very first double ear infection and I am getting over a terrible sinus infection and bronchitis that never completely went away from last month. The fact that I am able to open my eyes and actually sit up and type this updates means that I am feeling SO MUCH better. My house is very happy about that. Let's just say that if Mike was a bachelor, he would not keep a clean house!

Anyway, Jayden was accepted into the school system for additional therapy once he ages out of EI next week. The main reason for his acceptance: Autism. He had several small tests done on him during the eval including speech, cognitive, gross/fine motor, and social emotional, along with a GARS-2 eval, which is a screening done to show if a child shows signs of being autistic. Scores or 85 or higher means that the child is "very likely to have autism". Jayden scored 96. I wasn't surprised but my husband is still grasping at straws and hearing the behavioral therapist say, time and time again, that he is just not autistic, gave him the straws to grasp at. He's also been told that as Jayden gets older, the behaviors will disappear. That's not always true in a child who is diagnosed at such an early age. Truthfully, as we see some behaviors fade away (the headbanging), we will see new behaviors show up (lack of eye contact). The silver lining of it all is that, while Jayden does exhibit extreme autistic behaviors, he doesn't seem to suffer from any of the learning disabilities associated with autism. This is a positive and a negative thing for Jayden though. Because he is so bright and social (he is VERY social as long as he can control the surroundings) people will just tend to call him a "bad, spoiled child" when something sets him off and his behaviors spark. That's difficult for me b/c I know that there is a reason why Jayden does the things he does, and in my mind, I feel like once you accept that he is who he is for a reason, then it will be easier to deal with those behaviors. If people continue to view him as the bad child, he will continue to be pushed into situations that he just cannot handle and he will not be able to progress. So, if me helping my child to cope with what I know is a stressful situation to him is considered me spoiling him or babying him, then so be it. I know that he finds comfort in it and that's my job as a mother, to comfort him.

He has one more appt with his behavior therapist prior to exiting EI. She told me that he wouldn't get accepted into the system b/c his speech isn't delayed and b/c he has no social issues and b/c he is CLEARLY not autistic. Well, he tested at a 24 month level in speech and social, a year behind where he should be. I guess someone needs to stick to what she knows and it's obviously not child development.