Technical Difficulties

Okay, so in my rush to create a new post last night I somehow deleted my original post. I don't have it saved anywhere, so I guess I will just recap it again.

I'm Meg. My husband Dave and I have a wonderful 2 year old son, Hunter. We had noticed that he "forgot" skills once they were learned, was behind in his speech, and had some quirky behaviors, so our Pediatrician recommended we have some testing done. I was thinking he would need some speech therapy at the most, but that we would probably be told he is just a little slow. Imagine my surprise when I was told he had significant delays in several areas. We went on to have an ananlysis with a psychologist. We were warned that it is often called an Autism screening, but not to worry. Needless to say I started to worry. The psychologist was super nice, played with Hunter and asked a lot of questions. She decided to not "diagnose" Hunter since he is still young, but said if she had to, the diagnosis would be either Autism or Pervasive Developmental Disorder- Not Otherwise Specified (PDD-NOS). Most people know about Autism, but if you are like me you have never heard of PDD. PDD-NOS is also a part of the Autism Spectum, the "umbrella catagory" that includes Autism, Rett's Disorder, Asperger's Disorder, Childhood Disintegrative Disprder, and PDD-NOS. Children diagnosed with PDD-NOS typically have delays in several areas, but don't fit enough of the qualifications of Autism. I like to think of it as Autisms cousin.

We are starting Applied Behavior Analysis or ABA as a type of therapy. With the ABA we are going to be working on Hunter's attention span, tantrums, and being able to communicate his needs either with pictures, signs or words. We met with the company providing the services yesterday and get to start therapy Monday! Therapy will be 5 days a week for 2-3 hours a day, equaling 54 hours a month. In addition to the ABA we are also starting Occupational Therapy (OT) to work on some of our other issues such as picky eating, liking tight enclosed spaces- the sensory side of things. I am working on this consultation and will hopefully get it scheduled Monday along with a hearing evaluation to rule out a hearing problem as part of our problem.

I started this blog to track our journey towards normal, but really what is normal anyway?