Time to catch up

Wow, it's been awhile since I've updated as to what's been happening with our progress. Let me get you up to speed as I have a feeling I will be keeping up with those blog a little more now!


So, the summer came and went. My son seem to do well. He enjoy'd the freedom of the lazy days and being able to spend his days playing with my daycare kids. September came and he started at his new school. Due to a boundary review with the French Immersion program in our area he was sent to a newly built school.

His new resource teacher was his teacher from last year at his old school, and his classroom teacher was also a teacher from his old school. Things seem to be going well, until I got a phone call from his resource teacher informing me that his behaviour has progressed and not in a good way.

The meltdown's were becoming more frequent and the intensity had become worse. I made arrangements with his teacher to go in and see what it was they were seeing. Me, being as ignorant as I was figured all would be well since I was there and there would be no issues.

Boy, was I wrong. He was asked to do some work he didn't want to do with his English teacher (the VP of the school) and it was a downward spiral from there. I removed him from the classroom, and took what seemed to be an enternity before I was able to bring him back. Only to have him go off again because his friend was further in his work then my son was with his. His classroom teacher returned and they then got into an activity that my son was interested in doing, and along with me doing some of the writing for him all seemed to be well.

This lead to a big push. Seeing this behaviour, I contacted our family doctor as I knew there was something more we had to do for his anxiety.

Our date for the Cadet testing had been pushed back because there school psychologist serving my son's school.

We saw our family doctor who referred us over to a peditrician. We saw the peditrician, gave her a copy of the previous reports and then had her refer us over to Trellis. Trellis called us and advised us to go to a walk in clinic since we weren't looking for a diagnoses, so much so as resources to help our son cope.

We did the walk in, however by the time we worked everything out with them we were just days from the diagnoses meeting.

While all this was going on, things were on a downward spiral. My son had finally been able to make some friendships, however he made one friend and clung to him. My son was totally dependant on on. Wanting to sit beside him, stand in line beside him, play with him during breaks and counted on him help when he was having a hard time. This new friend, although still a friend asked to be moved from sitting beside my son because it was becoming too much. My son and I had a talk and were able to get through it.

His anxiety was increasing. I firmly believe it was a combo of things. (New school, new teacher, new routine, switch in french/english teaching ratio, our (my husband and I) impending trip to Cuba (where the kids weren't coming), and his friend's moving to France. Poor little guy had a lot on his plate. His resource teacher managed to get him second in line for Cadet testing and we finally got a date in Jan.

So the quick version is, a few weeks ago my husband and I went in and met with the Cadet team. Answered alot of questions about him and about us. One of the Cadet members was observing my son in his classroom while were answering the questions. Once we were finished the team spent a few hours with my son doing some testing and observations. We met again at 2:30 the following day. Reviewed the information and without delaying it any further, my son was diagnosed with ASD. Autism Spectrum. They stated he didn't meet enough of the criteria to be considered Aspergers, but was for sure on the spectrum.

So now, here we sit. We were given a package with a bunch of local resources and now await a meeting with our local autism center in Feb to see where we go from here.