4/07

Jacob is 4 he will be 5 in august.  When he was born he was always moving around.  He crawled early, and walked early!  We just thought that he was going to be early at everything.  I am fluent in sign language and so I always wanted my kids to know and love sign language like me.  When Jake was a year old I started teaching him sign language.  He was getting pretty good and knew a lot of signs and used that for everything.  When he was around 2 1/2 I noticed that he wasnt talking and that it seemed pretty weird.  He was my first so I just figured that he would catch up soon.  I started to blame myself because I thought it was because I taught him sign language and had him use that instead of his words.  He was also very active.  I hated taking him to other peoples houses because he was always running around and getting into all of their stuff.  He would turn on and off lights and shut all the doors...it was just emberassing.  Again, I knew that was a little strange, but I never thought anything of it.  We lived in Texas at the time and 2 months after Jacob turned 3 we moved back to Arizona.  My sister was visiting and telling me that Jacob really doesnt have good speech and that we should get him tested to see if he can go to the preschool program that the public school has.  So we got him tested and he passed with flying colors!  So we got him in and he started to progress amazingly!!!  In a year he went from NO words to 2 word sentences   We were so happy that he was talking and we were starting to understand him more.  Lets fastforward to December '06.  He is still very hyper and his speech is starting to get so much better.  But now he has weird behaviors...he is very violent to himself and to other people.  He wont look into your eyes when you talk to him and he wanders off and will dart in front of cars without even knowing what he is doing.  I go in to a meeting with his teacher and she tells me that she is concerned with Jacob and his behaviors.  She told me that he is the worst kid that she has seen in the hyperness and not being able to focus on anything.  So she said it would be wise to take him into his ped and see what he thought.  So we did and immediately he told us that he would like us to go to a developmental pediatrician and see what they think.  So Feb 2nd comes and we go to our appt.  Within 30 min of being there she already knew that he had autism.  I kinda prepared myself for that going in because I was 90% sure thats what he had.  But I thought he had a form called Aspergers.  I didnt know that he was worse than I thought.  She diagnosed him with Severe ADHD, High Functioning Moderate Autism, Developmental delay, and a speech delay.  I was so overwhelmed when she told me that I just broke down!  I was a mess, and I still am.  We are still getting used to the autism diagnosis and every day I find something different that he does that makes me say...hmm yep I see the autism in him.   I am going to start this blog to put down my thoughts and feelings of the day into writing because it does help to get it all out.  I have such a hard time with this and I am so excited to be able to have some kind of outlet to get it all out.