As April is Autism Awareness Month I will share the story of my son Kyle. Kyle was born in 2004, my first child. When I seen him in the delivery room I fell deeper in love with this little baby then I was while carrying him. He had such blond hair and big blue eyes. He was my baby, perfect in every way possible! As the weeks went by he really amazed me because man was he a strong baby! At just 2-3 weeks old he as able to hold his head up while on his belly for a good amount of time and by 4 weeks old he was able to hold a 6 ounce bottle on his own while feeding. His grasp on things was even more amazing! If there was something that he really wanted you had to literally pry his little hand open to get it from him (had to do that often with my hair), I really thought that I just hand an abnormally strong baby because he was a big baby.

Kyle 3 weeks
   

Kyle 1 month










   As the months passed and he grew and his little personality started developing I started noticing things that was really odd with him. For feedings if his milk was warmed he would not take it and would just fuss until I fixed him another bottle that was not warmed. I remember when he was about 2 to 3 months old and the only people that he would let hold him was me, and my two best friends (they were always around). No one else could hold him not even my grandmother. That really shocked me because babies loved my grandmother! Yes this could be passed off as just being a spoiled child to the people that was always there and that is what I thought also until later I found out that this is one of the signs. Doctor visits was such a problem because random people would try to come up to him and touch him and he would literally freak out, and even the doctor had a rough time examining him and I would feel like I was a horrible mother for making my child go through this.

   By the time Kyle was 6 months old I started noticing that he would bang his head on anything and everything that he could, I just thought he was being silly, but it did worry me that he would hurt himself so I would try to get him to stop and when I would pick him up to get him to stop he would just bang his head as hard as he could on me. I consulted his doctor about it and he told me that I just needed to discipline him and he would stop. Really? Discipline a 6 month old baby? Anytime I would see Kyle doing it I would pick him and to get him to stop and if he would bang his head on me I would position him in a way that he was not able to. He did not like it much and would scream at the top of his lungs but I had to do what I needed to do in order to protect my child from himself.

   Around 7 months old Kyle learned to walk, he never crawled, just got up and was determined to walk. I was one excited momma and was very surprised that he was walking so young. It looked really funny to see such a small child walking around. But it made him happy and it made me happy.

   At 9 months old I started feeding him solids and noticed that he was very picky. Yes it is normal for small children to be picky eaters but this was different. Not only would his bottles have to be cold but he would only eat certain textured foods and the food would also have to be cold. Even if the food was room temperature he would not eat it. It had to be refrigerator cold.

   At this time his “behavior” was even worse. He was very aggressive towards everyone including me. Once again I consulted his doctor and this time he told me to read a book called the Strong Willed Child. So I did. After reading this book I realized that no I do not think that the reason for my child behavior was because he was strong willed, I felt there had to be something else.

   As time went on I noticed more aggression with Kyle, I also noticed that my child had not started talking yet. He would make sounds but would not form words. (Around 6 months he did say da da a few times, but had never said it since.) This concerned me but I figured he would start talking when he was ready.

   When Kyle was 13 months old we moved in with my grandparents. At first it was really hard on Kyle and he did not adjust all that well. Even at 13 months my grandmother still could not play with him so she would just talk to him and try to lure him to her with snacks. As the days went by he finally gave in and let my grandmother hold him while he ate a fudge round. From then on he was attached to her. Where you seen her you seen him.

   Not long after moving in with my grandparents I enrolled Kyle in daycare while I attended some classes. From the very first day it was disastrous. I received a call from the daycare owner his first day telling me that Kyle has been sitting in a corner since dropping him off and when anyone would come near him he would start screaming and banging his head on the wall and on the floor. I immediately went to the daycare to see what was going on with him. Before I even walked into the building I could hear my son screaming at the top of his lungs, I walked in and there I seen my son huddled in a corner rocking himself back and forth screaming. I went over and sat down beside him and when I tried picking him up he started hitting me in the face. I picked him up ad held him tightly until he calmed down. In my mind I was thinking that he was upset because I left him, but he had been with babysitters before when I worked, even though it had been a few months. I took him home and tried the next day to leave him there but received the same call. I told them that he would just have to get used to the place and the people and I explained to them that he does not react all that well to people he does not know so they kinda understood.

   After a few days the daycare called me in to talk to me, when I walked in the owner had me go into her office and she talked to me about Kyle's behavior there. She told me that because they were so scared that he would hurt himself or others in the daycare because he would bang his head on the walls and floor and he would freak out when other kids would come near him and he would hit them they had to put him in an infant bed with padding wrapped up all along the rails. I had tears in my eyes because I knew at that moment that something had to be wrong. She asked me if I have ever spoken to a doctor about his behavior before and I told her yes although it has been a while and I have not found him a doctor in this city yet. She told me about a pediatric group there and said they are very good. I called them that day and set up an appointment for the next day.

   I dreaded going to this appointment with him because I knew how he reacted at doctor offices with all the people but I knew I had to bring him. Once I arrived there, it was not so bad, there was no one in the waiting room so he was semi calm. We were called into the room and waited for the doctor, it did not take long at all. The doctor came in and sat down and I explained to him what was going on and the whole time I was speaking to him he was watching Kyle and what he was doing. The doctor would try and talk to him and Kyle would not even acknowledge he was there he would just continue what he was doing.

   After spending about 30 to 45 minutes in there with the doctor, he told me that he believed Kyle has Autism. I was confused and excited at the same time. Confused because I had never heard of Autism and did not know what it was and excited because finally a doctor that is not telling me I just need to discipline him because he is just strong willed. I asked the doctor what Autism was and he explained that it is a neurological disorder that can affect many things from sensory, speech, behavior, tactile, being very repetitive, and personal relationships with people. He told me to do some more research on it and for me to contact Early Steps to have him evaluated.

   The next day I contacted Early Steps and set up and appointment for him to be evaluated. It took a few weeks before we were able to get an appointment and within that time I had given birth to another baby and had to reschedule. Finally after a few more weeks I was able to have them come and evaluate Kyle. They were very good with him and was able to get him to play for a short while. Once the appointment was up they told me that they did believe Kyle had Autism. They said they believe him to be high functioning which is a good thing. They said it seems as if he is having trouble with tactile, sensory processing, and speech. She then said with therapy it may help him and because of him being so young we may see better results then a child being diagnosed at school age or older. I was so happy that there was someone that could help him.

   Kyle started with occupational therapy, behavior therapy, and speech therapy a few weeks later. It was not magic over night but we did start to see progress slowly. After a few months Kyle was somewhat more manageable. They showed me different techniques such as joint compression's that would release a chemical to help calm him down and applying tight compression's to his body like a swaddled baby to help him calm down when he was having a “meltdown” as they would call it. They also showed me a technique with a device called a vestibular spinner that would work magic with him. The more therapy he would get and with all of the therapy I was giving him on the days he did not see his therapist (they taught me things to do with him on those days) things were improving drastically. At 21 months old Kyle started a new daycare. This was such a different experience than before. At first he would kind of stay to himself and do his own thing but eventually he started interacting with the other kids. He really came out of his shell when his “bubba” got big enough to be around the same area as him. Even though his brother was separated by a partition they would often let them interact together. He loved his brother but was often very mean to him. There were times that Kyle would take his aggression out on his brother and would bite him all over and hit on him. Yes I would try to stop it but you cannot always get there fast enough.

   Even with all the therapy and the progress I still noticed things with Kyle that was not improving. His aggression and his speech. He was aggressive towards his therapist, my grandmother, his brother, me, and himself. He would leave massive bruises on my grandmother's arms, on his brother, and has even broken my nose before. He would be aggressive towards his therapist but they were much better at controlling him. Eventually the therapist told me about something that may help Kyle with the aggression and that would be a weighted vest. It is basically a vest with little sand beanbags in pockets around the vest. I said yes lets give it a try. He would wear his vest almost all the time, and for sleep time he had a weighted blanket that also helped calm him down as he had trouble sleeping.
Kyle's grandmother and brother (bruises on her arm from Kyle)

Kyle with his vest at daycare very proud of his tower


   Things eventually got better with Kyle. After years of therapy things really improved drastically. At the age of three Kyle had to transfer from Early Steps to the School Board for his services because now he was too old to receive services from Early Steps. During this transition He had to be tested again for Autism. This test was called the GARS-2 and he had an Autism Quotient of 111 which meant the probability of Autism was above average. The stated “Kyle is very likely functioning like a person with Autism.” This test confirmed that my child had Autism.

   Once receiving this we were referred to another doctor for testing to have a chromosome X test done to see if there was another reason for his Autism tendencies. That test was negative and that doctor said he is defiantly showing problem with sensory and speech and it could just be a sensory processing disorder. She then referred us to a psychologist for more screening. Once again at another doctors office we get the same result that Kyle is functioning with Autism. He then recommended we see yet again another doctor, this time with the state and this doctor also gave the same answer, that Kyle does in fact have Autism.

   With all of this it really started to get to me. People were telling me how a child with Autism never leads a normal life and they are dangerous. I was determined to make sure that my child received all the help possible so he would not feel any different than any other child. I enrolled us in another organization that would give us family therapy. Someone that could help not only Kyle but also his brother and myself cope with his disorder. Once we started receiving services with them I had to start dealing with the same thing I dealt with when I had Kyle's first doctor. Being told that he does not have Autism he is just a strong willed child. My thought was oh my we are back to square one. I knew that Kyle had Autism, four different specialist had confirmed it. So I pushed that thought out of my head and put myself in the mindset of I am doing this to help my family. Their services did in fact help bring me and my children closer and they did give me great tips on how to communicate with a child that was unable to communicate verbally. They also taught me sign language so I could communicate with my son (since he was unable to talk and only had two words in his vocabulary at 3, his speech therapist taught him sign language because she did not think he would ever talk after having 2 years of therapy and still not talking other than a few words).

One of Kyle's favorite things to do. Tape things to windows.

Kyle would tear the pages out of books and line them up.
One of his other favorite things...Lining cards up




   At the age of 4 Kyle started Pre-K, this was a big change for him. It was loud for him and he did not do well with loud noises. The school bell freaked him out, the gym freaked him out, the lunch room freaked him out. But he was a trooper. He had a wonderful teacher that really helped him adapt to all the loudness and new people. He did get picked on by the other students because he only had a few words in his language and everything else was just weird noises that he would make, but he kept on going. He would get pushed down by other kids and just made fun of....who would have thought that children this young could be so cruel. With all of that going on he was a fighter, he would take it all and just go on his merry way.

   By Kindergarten I had really seen some changes in Kyle, with the help of his wonderful speech therapist at school he was finally able to communicate with people verbally. I was such a proud momma then. I still look back to that time and it brings tears to my eyes knowing that he went from a therapist that truly believed he would never speak more than what he was capable of at the time to a therapist that would just not accept that and produced a child that I could have a conversation with.

   Kyle still had struggles though, he was trying his best to get used to all the commotion at school and trying to make friends. He did not know he was different, and wondered why the other kids would tease him so much. Why they could not understand that he needed certain things to help him feel better in school. Why would these kids take his “sensory balls”. Why would they call him weird? It is at that time that I told my son “ you are different, you are special, God gave you a different way of thinking and a different way of feeling and a different way of seeing the world”.

   Today Kyle is in the third grade, he is mainstreamed and a straight “A” student. (With a lot of studying and the help of Resource)  He speaks with the maturity of someone much older than his age and absolutely loves learning. He is able to go in the gym with all the other kids and not many loud noises affect him. However he hears most noises others do not pick up on. He still has some trouble with aggression, sensory, and tactile, but it is no where close to what is was so long ago. He still prefers his food cold and there are times that he secludes himself and still has trouble with his temper. Tags bother him and his clothes has to fit a certain way. His things are his so do not mess with them. He is a hoarder of what most people including myself consider to be the most nonsense things but it is who he is. He does have a few select friends at school but does not make them easily. His “symptoms” are controlled by medication and not many people know that he is a child with Autism, off of his medication you are able to see right away that he is Autistic. He has had a long journey in his 8 years of life (seems much longer than that) but he is a determined little boy. Determined to succeed, determined to learn all he can, and most of all determined to be different.
Kyle 8 years old

Kyle 8 years old