My daughter Quinn went through a very dark and difficult time beginning when she was about 15 months old and lasting until after her third birthday.
Did she have autism and we caught it soon enough to beat it back? Was it just some kind of developmental phase? Is she just weird? Is it all going to come back again without warning?
We don’t know. All we know is that her brain is a very mysterious place.
At 18 months, she had lost all of her vocabulary and compulsively stacked things for hours on end. She couldn’t hug or wave. She wouldn’t ask for things. She was like a little robot. And, frankly, we were kind of used to it, so we fed her on a regular schedule and put scenes 3 through 5 of “Finding Nemo” on repeat and just tried to keep her happy. Because once she was unhappy, you were in for an unpleasant 12 hours.
Then I broke down and did an online search for some of her offbeat behaviors. When I came across an autism red-flag checklist, she hit 8 of the top ten signs. I told my husband, and we both admitted that we had been worried about her for months but didn’t want to freak the other one out.
So we began the process of screening and researching and fighting and pushing to get something done for her. She was never officially diagnosed with anything – although she was repeatedly and consistently assessed with “characteristics consistent with…” any number of autism spectrum disorders, from hyperlexia to Asperger’s to sensory integration issues.
Now she is four. She has been cleared of autism. She is a snuggle bug and makes up songs. She can’t tell you what happened yesterday, and she speaks English as though it is a second language – “Daddy can make that bug to be dead for to go outside with that bug on the driveway?” (”Is daddy putting the dead bug outside?”) She wears sound-blocking headphones to the grocery store.
She is teaching herself to read and doesn’t want our help.
Through the whole process, we found it interesting to hear what other parents were doing at home – far outside the realm of prescribed therapy – to communicate with their kids, stem their autism and sensory-related issues, and cope with everyday trials.
I hope that this blog will become a place where parents can share their ideas, tips and strategies for at-home tactics that help. We’ll try just about anything.
My weird ideas, your weird ideas, whatever works.
