Taking the Scenic Route

It went pretty well today.  I like the doctor, which is a good thing considering she is the ONLY Developmental Pediatrician in the entire state.  (found out today there was another one, but she went back to Oklahoma after 6 months). 

She didn’t want to give a final diagnosis today.  He had zero eye contact with her and, although he was more responsive than he often is with strangers, he wasn’t terribly responsive.  She wants to talk to his speech therapist (who she knows pretty well since she works in the same building as one of her offices and is the ST for a number of her patients, especially the boarding school area of the facility).  She also wants us to video tape him a lot in the coming weeks to see what his behavior & eye contact is like in more familiar surroundings.  She also wants us to take him to parks and such and videotape the peer interactions there.  We will go back in 4-6 weeks if we can get the Healthwave (kid’s medicaid) extended, but if we can’t, we will go back after the first of November when our real health insurance kicks in.

She said he is  on the spectrum, and it is more severe than just semantic-pragmatic disorder, but I think she wants to know better how is typical interactions are before labeling it.  I think if he would have been labeled on his performance today only it would have been more towards classic autism, but she isn’t sure if he is that severe from the reports from his ST and us.

She also would like to see him in a highly structured preschool that uses visual supports in addition to the 4 days a week of ST and one day a week of OT.  She also recommends making sure that there are verbal kids in the school if it is an autism class, but said he would improve the best in a more typical classroom with supports. 

There was also a lot of discussion of is OCD behaviors, but I don’t know if she is thinking of giving a diagnosis with that too, or if they are mild enough to just be an aspect of the ASD.  He doesn’t seem to be too disabled by the OCD stuff (able to be redirected without too much commotion when he starts getting ’stuck’ in a behavior)

So, we are going camera shopping & school shopping. 

Our current video camera is old, really bulky, and expensive to find tapes for.  (plus, we would probably have to convert all the tapes to something more easily viewable, which would be another expense).  So, we are looking for a digital dvd camera that is more compact.  Another unexpected expense related to autism.  lol.  Oh well.  It is just as well.  Zora is getting cheated out of video of her babyhood at this point, so it will be good for being able to do that, and with a reason to buy it can go from “want” to “need” and we can justify to ourselves shuffling money around.

The school shopping is much more intimidating.  I am actually considering going to a Christian preschool that is very near by us, even though they are too conservative for my Progressive politics, but use gentle discipline, structured environment and trained teaching staff.  I actually am fine with a very black & white view of Christianity for a young child, since young kids don’t think in shades of gray anyway.  I will pull him in a heartbeat if I start hearing things like “gay people are bad” and other offensive and negative views, but I doubt a preschool is going to address sexuality anyway.  The biggest barrier, that I can see, is trying to get them (or anybody) to accept a non-potty-trained child.  That is why I am going to try for a very close by school that can call me if there is an issue.  This one also has a nurse on staff, which makes me think there is more chance they might be able to deal with his issues.

Please pray for us as we search for the right school for him.  I am totally intimidated by the process of finding him a good preschool.