Is it Autism...

April is Autism Awareness Month.


   I've never posted on my children before. And do want to keep most of their lives private..So I still probably won't say much about them. But my eldest son has something that should be shared in my opinion and talked about.


I had Kaiden in the late winter of 2006. My husband and myself we're very young when we had him. But from the start we noticed something was off with Kaiden. Don't get me wrong he was a great baby. But he just was not hitting any mile stones at the right times everything seemed to have at least a six month delay. All his doctors would say he just needed to catch up he's fine. When Kaiden was a year old we met up with a old friend who had her baby exactly 2 weeks and 15 minutes after Kaiden was born. Granted she had a girl and I know all babies develop differently. But her baby was TALKING and CRAWLING. Mine just sort of set there and scooted. 


 Immediately things come to mind. like "I'm a bad mom!", "I don't spend enough time with him", "I'm doing things wrong". 


So I take him back to the doctors..By now it's another year of the same thing. "he will catch up" And I've now had a second baby who's hitting all the milestones and in some ways surpassing his elder brother. My husband joins the army in the spring of 2009 and we move to an army base is Georgia and soon deploys to Iraq for a year. And I take Kaiden to go in (not to his normal doctor but one on call) to have his ears tested. The doctor asks me how many a word vocabulary does Kaiden have. My response. "He doesn't." Kaiden in total could say maybe 5 words to the point of understanding them. Not clear and most of the time if he said anything it was baby talk. He was 3 years old a very smart kid other wise and able to figure out puzzles and much to my dismay taking things apart.


Anyway the doctor pretty much said "WHAT? and no one has caught this?!?" Most doctors never gave me the time of day much less actually listened to what I had to say about my child but this one "on call" doctor noticed right away something was wrong. The next week I had a referral to speech therapy. 


About a month later we had not one but 2 diagnosis. 
Kaiden has a speech apraxia. 
     Apraxia is a speech disorder in which a person has trouble saying what he or she wants to say correctly and consistently. It is not due to weakness or paralysis of the speech muscles (the muscles of the face, tongue, and lips). The severity of apraxia of speech can range from mild to severe. He is on the severe end of the spectrum. But has improved greatly with therapy. Basically his brain does not communicate with his tongue the right way.


Second:
Sensory Processing Disorder 
Which is really hard to explain.. It's a mixture of everything of how one learns and receives information, it comes with eating issues and behavioral issues...


 You can find more on it here:
http://www.sensory-processing-disorder.com/

Kaiden now sees a speech therapist, physical therapist and an occupational therapist. He's improved so much in the last year. But in the last few months we found he also may have ADHD and they are not ruling out a form of high functioning Autism. His processing disorder already had put him in the autism spectrum. So we are off to a neurologist next. What I'm saying/trying to say is that Autism is out there it can happen to anyone. I sat there for the longest time wondering what I had done wrong. I've met so many family with special needs children since moving to this base in Georgia and all of them are truly amazing kids and their parents are just as scared/concerned/knowing and understanding as I am. If you suspect something is wrong with your child don't be afraid to speak up and say something like I was scared to. And know that you aren't alone and most of these kids go on to living somewhat normal lives.