Have you ever been 100% sure of something even though everyone around you thought you were crazy?
(And no, I’m not talking about NCAA tournament picks.)
I’m talking about that sixth sense that we moms get when we know something isn’t status quo about our child, yet we struggle to articulate exactly what the “something” is.
Every since my son Jacob was 18 months old, I knew that something seemed different about him. Like other toddlers, he was energetic, cute, and intelligent, but there were things that he would do that didn’t seem to fit the “norm”. Besides categorizing all his toys by color and shape at this incredibly young age, he had the unusual ability to sit for 45 minutes at a time to build with blocks and work puzzles.
Yes, at 18 months old.
One such occasion, he and I were playing Hide-and-Seek when he was two. I hid in the my walk-in bedroom closet behind some luggage. I listened as he opened the closet, but then shut it again when he didn’t see me. He became angry. “I hate my mom!” he stomped off to his room and cried. When I tried to comfort Jacob, he reasoned that he thought he was alone for good and that we didn’t want him anymore.
Can you imagine your two-year-old not only being able to articulate this, but processing these disturbing thoughts through a simple game of Hide-and-Seek?
At age four, Jacob would complain that one of his preschool teachers hurt his arms whenever he had to sit in her lap. This puzzled me because she is a phenomenal preschool teacher friend that I highly respect. She would never hurt anyone, especially my child. This was the moment I realized that Jacob was overly sensitive to touch. But, I didn’t understand why.
There were several incidents from ages four to five that didn’t make sense at the time, but would be explained by others as “Jacob just isn’t ready for preschool,”
or “Jacob has been an only kid for so long that he doesn’t know how to socialize with peers.”
Yet, I didn't agree with these statements. As an elementary teacher, I’ve become naturally intuitive when a child processes information and sees the world in an extraordinary way. Jacob was able to process information in a unique way that I haven’t seen many of his peers do.
I vividly remember the day Jacob, at age five, walked into my second grade classroom and told my team teacher all the details he had learned about Egypt and the Sphinx from a self-study Project Based Learning (PBL) opportunity my preschool teacher friend gave him. The second grade teacher was shocked, and replied to me, “He’s really smart! He’s going to need you to advocate for him in his education.”
At the time, little did I know how true that statement would be.
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When you first meet Jacob, he doesn’t seem like an atypical eight-year-old. In all the ways that matter he is. He excitedly showcases his Star Wars lightsabers, tells about the newest project he’s engulfed in, and likes to tell jokes. Adults find him honestly refreshing, outgoing, and endearing.
However, Jacob is anything but typical. I previously shared some of his back story in my blog entry The Importance of Mental Health. In that entry, I explained all Jacob’s diagnoses and what they were...The DMDD, ADHD, and Sensory Modulation Disorder. Jacob also is paranoid and suffers from anxiety. From the time I wrote that article in August, until December 2017, Jason and I were trying our best to work with doctors and school educators to determine the best practices and medicines for Jacob.
Even though a psychiatrist and psychologist both agreed with the diagnoses, I didn’t. The ADHD didn’t really seem to sum up Jacob’s problems. And, there were other oddities that no one addressed.
One day as I was conferencing with Jacob’s medicine prescriber, Heather, trying to figure out what the medicine options were, I seized the opportunity to share my opinions. I started with the sentence, “Look, I know I sound crazy, but I can’t help but think Jacob may…”
She interrupted my thoughts, “Have a type of Autism Disorder?”
“YES!!” I screamed and leaped up off the couch. “Am I crazy for thinking this? I mean, I’ve mentioned this before, but everyone else thinks I’m crazy because he doesn’t fit what people envision is the textbook definition of Autism. And I’m not buying the ADHD.”
Heather smiled. “You’re not crazy. Otherwise, if I didn’t see specific tendencies also, I wouldn’t have known what you were thinking. How long have you been feeling this way about the Autism?”
“Well, since he was two, but I had nothing concrete to prove it.”
Six years.
That’s how long it was on my mind. Finally, I met a professional who didn’t think I was crazy and agreed to put in a recommendation to have a professional who specializes in identifying Spectrum Disorders test Jacob.
Sure enough, test results confirmed what my heart had thought all these years. Jacob has a high functioning form of Autism Spectrum Disorder called Asperger's.
And while Jacob’s long diagnoses journey has finally come to end, my Autism Awareness and Acceptance Parenting Journey is just beginning. This is the first time I’m able to understand Spectrum Disorders not from just an educator’s viewpoint, but from a parenting viewpoint as well.
But, more on that coming in Part 2.
Well told.
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