Well, it’s been a long time since I’ve written.
I see that my last entry was on August 21, which is the day we went to visit a psychologist to get my middle child evaluated for some difficulties he’s been having for, well, ever. Although we weren’t shocked to learn that he is indeed on the autism spectrum, it was still a punch in the gut (the diagnosis is PDD-NOS , rule out Asperger’s, which means that he’s definitely somewhere on the spectrum but it’s not clear exactly where he falls, and after further evaluation it’s strongly believed that the diagnosis will be revised to Asperger’s Syndrome.). It’s been a difficult two months and every time I would sit do write, I found myself googling and googling and googling all about autism spectrum disorders. I’ve also been very busy setting up services for him — both navigating the sometimes-frustrating school services and the arduous process of getting wraparound services started up (and that’s after figuring what the blazes wraparound services meant).
And more difficult than any of these things, I’ve been consumed with anxiety and guilt about the fact that we’ve been sending him out into the world with an entirely different set of tools than we thought he’d had. That we’ve been asking him to climb Mt Everest when we thought all we’d been doing is asking him to brush his teeth. I’ve been getting progressively fewer phone calls from school but for the bulk of September, I was anxious every day waiting for a call and unable to sleep at night.
Fortunately now that we’re settling into a routine, and we’re getting services started, and he’s feeling safer and safer at school, things are feeling a lot better around here.
And really — this kid? He’s gonna be just fine.
Yay for more posts!!