Monday, June 27, 2011

Working out the Quirks

Hi, my name is Becky and I have a quirky kid. Or at least I thought he was just quirky until someone said IT out loud... that "IT" was, "Perhaps you should have him tested for Aspergers and whatnot..."



Hi, my name is Becky and I have an obsessive personality.... So saying things like I think your kid is more then just quirky and you should get him checked out, well that sends me into a non-stop thinking, speculating, evaluating every thing the child does kinda spiral. And to top it off the counselor told me to GOOGLE! Good Lord, have you met me- that is the worst possible thing to say to me, okay well " I think your kid is on the spectrum" was worse but ya know...

So now I've googled and read a bunch of the same info with slight differences. Why can't there just be a checklist? A "if your kids does this and this and this your in otherwise nope." No, it can't be that easy, and yes, I am thankful for the could be lableing of my child, that the evaulation is much more in depth but I want to know and I want to know NOW. I have my gut feelings and things I have thought but didn't want anyone else to think as well. I just want a professional in this field to tell me one way or the other.

Today the Dr asks questions like, "what do you think about _________?" Well now I don't know! Maybe what I thought was just a little quirk my kid has is what other people see as this blatantly obvious sign that something is different about him. ( Typing that sentence was difficult- how to word it? I don't want to say wrong with him or abnormal, etc...if he is on the spectrum it won't make him any different to us, definitely not flawed in anyway. Hopefully, it will just help us learn how to deal with these few behaviors that are starting to negatively impact our lives.)

So testing with a Neurologist is scheduled for a month from today. We are told to block out the whole afternoon for it. We have blood work to get done prior to to check for any deficiencies etc... Right now we don't really know what we are looking for- even though Aspergers and Autism were the main words thrown out there to quote the counselor " we are just throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks."

I'm hoping to hear "you just have a quirky kid." But, I'd also like some useful ways to make things better for him. As much as his bug phobia and sensory integration issues bother us, I am certain it is way worse for him and I feel bad that I am so annoyed by it- even more now that all of this info has been thrown at me ( even though it is really a lack of info at the moment).

I had told my friends at the beginning of the summer that we had a lot of stuff to work on with Wyatt over the summer- not school stuff- he is great on that- just behavior stuff. At the time I had no idea it would be getting this involved but this must be the right timing.

Here is to a summer of discovery and hopefully the beginning of understanding this quirky little genius child, Wyatt.