On our last blog we spoke briefly about some of my son Jacob's issues in school and at home. On this blog entry we'll further examine Jacob's progression through kindergarten to his diagnosis of aspergers.
As Jacob progressed through kindergarten, my wife and I noticed some peculiar behaviour. Jacob would be very ritualistic in almost all aspects of his life. He would only eat certain foods or play with certain games. We never paid much attention to his actions as I eased my wife concern by saying "I did the same things as a child and I was gifted." The teachers and aides at school would talk to us about his behaviour and how it affected the other children either positively or negatively. When a teacher would mention autism to us we would become withdrawn and I would act like the school didn't know what they were talking about. After all Jacob was our baby, we felt he was fine. So when the school voiced their diagnosis, we disregarded it. I'm sure other parents can relate to the same situation. But for us it was slightly different. We had a paediatrician, with whom we visited after the school's recommendation to do so, who insisted it was NOT aspergers. During our first visit to the office, Jacob had to introduce himself to every person in the waiting room. And I mean everyone, each getting their own personal handshake no matter how they looked. The paediatrician saw this and felt that Jacob's social skills excluded him from the realm of ASD. We suspected ADD or OCD or something like that. So on one hand we had the school saying ASD and the doctor saying ASD was impossible. What were we to think? We were new parents, we discussed it and decided to tell the school we believe our doctor. That's when things got interesting.
During our sons first 2 years at school we had met with his teacher, the learning resource teacher and the principal on many different occasions. To the point that when "Meet the Teacher" night came around, we never attended. Because we would meet all the time. But, when we said we'd had enough talk about autism, the school changed its approach. The next thing you know Chedoke had a rep there an old doctor was there and even the CAS. Now image our surprise when the CAS worker introduced them self. We were immediately angered and as such we withdrew our involvement almost all together. We again mentioned our doctor said ASD was impossible as Jacob was too social to have it. We even began to medicate our son for ADD. My wife and I felt even more hopeless. Then we had another meeting, this time the school was a little less forward. They wanted us to see an ASD specialist, yet when we mentioned the fact that as a child I was intellectually gifted, they wanted nothing to do with that idea. We agreed for Jacob's sake that we would talk to our doctor about it. So again we went to our paediatrician and began talking about aspergers and what it was and what it meant. During the early stages of these ongoings my only perception of aspergers was Dustin Hoffman's character in the movie Rainman. Thankfully, the paediatrician referred us to a so-called autism guru, because our doctor felt that they were in no way capable of making such a diagnosis. which felt was extremely professional. After all, this same doctor said aspergers was way out of the question.
Next we discuss the doctor's appointments at Chedoke.
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