Off to School Already?

We get a call from the school board this morning, asking if we can bring the Little Man in for his assessment on Monday morning. Oh, thanks for the notice!

Basically the school board has to assess his file and write a referral in order for us to send him to a special private school specifically for autistic kids. So if they decide his needs can be met with a regular school, we can't send him there. Then the school itself will assess him and decide if they'll take him. If they don't, I have no clue what they do at that point. The referral has to be done by March 1st. Again, no one gave us any notice.

Anyway, we managed to schedule another day and Hubby will take him, because it's impossible for me to get time off with such short notice. Actually, it could be done, but I don't want to do things that way.

It's interesting how life goes. Had he been neurotypical, my intention was to keep him out of school until at least 5 since his birthdate makes him the youngest in the class. However, this autism school takes kids at age 4 and really, $5000 a year for daycare, speech therapy, OT and psych is a freakin' steal. I figure work with him til age 6, get him reassessed and we'll take it from there.

And then there's the thought of holy crap, my baby will be going to school in the fall if this works out! How did that happen? Wild.

Our Journey Through the Spectrum

So it only took about 10 months, but I finally got confirmed what I always knew: The Little Man was diagnosed with ASD today. Part of me feels relieved and validated. The other part of me feels completely exhausted.

I've got a crazy list of things to do now: try *again* to get a social worker so I can get access to English resources in the area (if any), get him started in intense ABA therapy, contact the OT at the hospital, call back the speech therapist at the clinic, fill out all the necessary forms for tax credits/exemptions, start shitting money out my ass so we can pay for all this (not public services, but a lot of the clinics seem to be out in DDO, which means a whole lot of driving)...it feels like a lot right now. Luckily, I took the evening off work.

And for those who understand and like details, we did the ADOS, but not the ADI. We will re-asses in about three years. In his case, it's still too early to tell if he's got Asperger's (unlikely because of his lack of language skills) or PDD(NOS) since he's so "weird." (Not a surprise to me that it's difficult to fit any child of mine into a perfect box. I take some pride in that! LOL)

The plus side of a diagnosis: we get to skip all the lines at Disney if we ever go.

All I ask from my friends is understanding - we may take longer to do things. We may not always attend events or not for long. I may opt to stay home with him knowing that my presence is needed if he's had an over-stimulating day. This is nothing new, I've always arranged my life around him, but now maybe people will understand he's not like other kids and I'm not paranoid or coddling or spoiling him. We do things our way and every decision I make is about him. This is all I know. I've only ever mothered an ASD child. And based on hugs and kisses, I think I know what I'm doing.