Welcome

For those of you who do, and for those of you who don't know, my son Oliver has autism. He was diagnosed over a year ago, but of course the journey does not begin there. There were several evaluations and several doctors appointments with different kinds of doctors first; over a time frame of longer then six months. Needless to say, that was a very stressful time in our lives. All the different terminology and tests were hard to keep straight and I felt bombarded with different information everywhere I looked. My moment of clarity came at a doctors appointment. See, Ollie's results on all those first tests were very confusing. He would score in the typical range in some areas and slightly dip down below in others. It was all very frustrating and there was no clear answers, did he or did he not have autism. No one would give me answers. All I got was more referrals for more tests and more doctors. My clarity came not from the psychologist, but from the speech therapist. I practically broke down during our visit. She took her time and explained every test that she was giving Ollie. Then she explained where Ollie fit compared to other typicals and other autistic kids. What I learned with Ollie was that he scored in a very high range for autistic children and a low range for typicals, but not severe range. However, what I really learned was an understanding of where my son was and for the first time, I felt like everything was going to be fine.

stay tuned for the next part of the story