Baby Steps

Well, after some thought I have decided to enter into the world of blogging. It may not be every day or even every week, but just whenever I have a random though, breakthrough or comments.  These days that seems to be more and more frequent since my son's diagnosis. 

In April of 2010, my sweet, talkative, funny, handsome, intelligent baby was diagnosed (at the age of 6) with High-Functioning Autism (HFA), ADHD, Sensory Integration Disorder and a slew of other diagnosises.  If you have ever met my son you'd swear the doctors made a mistake, but if you get to know my son, you'd see they're very accurate.  With only one child and never having met anyone with Autism (that I knew of), we were thrown into a world completely new and unbelievably scary.  I will say that we are VERY fortunate that it's just Autism.  By that I mean that many other children suffer with a far worse diagnosis like cancer, leukemia, or something else that may be terminal.  Though Autism has no cure, it IS manageable.  We are also lucky to be on the high-functioning end of the spectrum. 

The question I get most often is...what IS Autism?  Simply put,  autism is a spectrum of psychological conditions characterized by widespread abnormalities of social interactions and communication, as well as restricted interests and repetitive behavior.  Pretty simple right? :) Exactly.  Since no two children on the spectrum present the same symptoms, it seems very broad and rare.  Unfortunately it's not. Approximately 1 out of 110 children are diagnosed and most of those are boys.  The question I get next is...what caused it? I think my son's neuropsychologist (with over 20 years experience) said it best when she said...we have no idea.  Insert my frustrated sigh here.

So what do you do but learn as you go, accept support where you can find it, and learn a little lot of patience.  I am determined that he will function as a "neuro-typical" child.  Yes, that's politically correct for "normal".  This blog isn't really about ME, however, it's more about my sweet 7 year old kiddo.  There will be more about him as the blog goes on.  Just taking baby steps for now. :)