How did we know? We just did....

How did we know?

We don’t get asked all that often if we knew that Zac was autistic or had a problem. I guess we just always kind of knew.

Thanks to an episode of the awesome show “Judging Amy”, we were able to set the wheels in motion that would end up with Zac assessed for Autism.

In that episode, there was a character with a child who was labelled “autistic” and they implied this by showing the child lining up cars. We now realise that this was kind of stereotyping autistic behaviours as a-typical, but we also appreciate that people need some crystal clear images sometimes to help with their ignorance.

What is hard is that Autism affects each child differently. Nothing is a-typical. Its not called a “spectrum” for nothing. There are more than 140 different aspects of Autism, then there’s the generic “not otherwise specified” diagnosis that bundles kids into a pigeon-hole of “we know its autism, just not sure which kind”.

In our reality, Zac lined up cars - all the time. He didn’t play with them like he was pretending they were driving down a road, no, he just lined them up, spun their wheels and investigated their every aspect closely.

One day Renee walked into the room and he had sorted out his cars. Interestingly they were sorted into groups of “same”. He was just 2 years old. It was kind of spooky.

Once diagnosed, it made a whole lot of his behaviours obvious. From birth he displayed certain characteristics that we labelled as “eccentric” that now in hindsight, were part of the disorder occurring in his mind.

These behaviours were more sensory as opposed to  behaviour and it can be interesting looking back.

He loved to be swaddled. Not just wrapped, but swaddled, in a cocoon until he was about 8 or 9 months old. He also didn’t laugh a lot as a baby. He didn’t interact with others like other babies would.

Then there were the milestones that were missed or delayed. He barely crawled and went to walking at 13 months. He spoke little and it was only what he had learned from TV shows like Thomas and Elmo. By the age of 2 he still barely spoke and what we know now as echolocaic language, Zac could not have a conversation with you or tell you how he felt.

Then there was the fact that he did not play with other kids or get involved in any group time at daycare. He simply played on his own. And no matter how much Daddy tried to get him interested in things other than cars, Thomas, trains, and wheels, he would refuse and be happy in his obsessions.

As I have blogged previously, Zac is not ashamed of his obsessions. Hell, he has no idea he is obsessed. This was likely our biggest indicator of the fact there was something unique about the boy.

The meltdowns were also the other key indicator. The fact that he could not calm himself and that he went from zero to tantrum in just as many seconds also made us cock an eyebrow.

“He’s just slow”, they would say. “No, its more than that.”

“He’s just lazy”, one friend said. “No, its more than that.”

“Just wait for his tonsils to be taken out”, the doctor said. “No, he can’t have a conversation with us.”

“He’s not obsessed, all boys love their cars, I loved my cars.”, the father-in-law said. “No, this is an obsession.”

“There’s nothing wrong with him”, the ignorant one said. “Thats because you don’t know him.”

What we are most proud of is that we got the ball rolling. Like my own mother, who did the same  with my brother (and never gave up), we went into our paediatricians office with examples and a firm belief that there was something askew with our boy.

Even when the assessment was done about 6 months later, the psych and speech therapist agreed that Zac was on the spectrum, only moderately, (however, there are days where he is firmly on the spectrum) we nodded and smiled. They even asked if it was something we were expecting.

It was, we had known all along.