I would like to begin with the worst point of my life because in my experience, when you become a special needs mum, you always begin with rock bottom. For me that was July 2011 when my eldest son, who was four at the time, was diagnosed with ASD. I remember sitting in the doctor's office, tears streaming down my face as he relayed to us the full diagnosis. Then that sickening feeling...why didn't I realise it sooner.
AND a teacher - so I should definitely have known. "I should have done something about it sooner" - that thought plagued me and ate me up inside for many many years. It took over 2 years for me to let go of that feeling of guilt, to forgive myself.
So why didn't I get him diagnosed sooner? The simple answer is, denial. When they say "don't ever underestimate the power of denial", it is true. I have meet many mothers and fathers of ASD children who are in denial and who have had to go through the same emotions I did. I think it is because our children are not born with obvious characteristics like parents of down syndrome children, (don't get me wrong, all special needs parents go through the same roller coaster of emotions), it is just that because ASD is diagnosed later in a child's life, it is easy to deny what it is, especially if like my son there are no obvious early symptoms.
I remember going through the checklist after his diagnosis:
Did he make eye contact while breastfeeding? Yes
Did he smile when smiled at? Yes
Did he respond to his name or to the sound of a familiar voice? Yes
Did he point or wave goodbye or use other gestures to communicate? Yes
Did he make noises to get your attention? Yes
Did he initiate or respond to cuddling? Yes
Did he imitate your movements and facial expressions? Yes
Did he reach out to be picked up? Yes
Did he play with other people or share interest and enjoyment? Yes
And the list went on and on. My son did all of them, he reached all of his milestones except one...speech. For speech, he reached the first few milestones, then stopped talking altogether. However there were plenty of other reasons to feed into our denial: we were a bilingual house and bilingual children tend to have an observation periods where they stop talking; boys tend to talk later than girls; he had a problem with his ears (his ears were not getting rid of the excess wax, so he couldn't hear very well until the doctor removed the wax); he was shy.. However when there was still no progress after six months and speech therapy twice a week, we could deny it no longer, we had to see a developmental specialist. That was where our denial stopped.
In my job I meet plenty of people, who when they find out I have an ASD son, tell me that their friend/relative has a child with obvious symptoms but the parents refuse to acknowledge it, lying to their friends, family and even doctor about what their child can do. As an ex- denial expert I don't really know what to say except pray for them, pray that they see the light / or a developmental specialist sooner rather than later, because what the doctors and experts say is true - the younger you work them, the greater they become. My son was four - by ASD standards quite old - but I have seen him improve in leaps and bounds. I still imagine where he would be now if my denial had ended earlier...
