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Have you ever noticed how you often don’t know that you are on an important journey until you are well along the road?  You can look back and see all the signs that you passed and all the different paths you could have taken.  This is how the discovery of our son’s ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder) diagnosis felt.  

My pregnancy with T was uncomplicated and although as an infant and toddler he was hitting milestones at the later end of the expected range and later than both his siblings we had no reason to feel he was needing extra support.  He loved patterns, so many of the daily routines were easy to follow.  It was hard to change any parts of the routines without T becoming agitated or distracted.  Looking back now I see that he was doing a lot of repetitive activities such as taking all the lids on and off bottles in the kitchen and rocking on his hands and knees.  Some of these things are common to see in toddlers but the intensity of his focus and the frequency of the activities was different.

photo credit Jonathan Petersson on pixabay.com

Around age 3 T started opening and closing doors.  Any door.  Every door.  Cupboard doors, the front door, bedroom doors, lego doors.  After a while he could not sit at the table to eat if there was a door open, even if he could not see it, he had to go and check.  Again, it is pretty clear now that it was relevant but to be honest it just became the thing he did.  

After about a year of this however it began to become more disruptive.  He started slamming the doors closed and open and could not walk from one place to another without having to stop or go back and ‘do the doors’.  Going to the supermarket was very difficult as the automatic doors had to close completely before we could continue into the store.  He would get very upset if someone else opened a door after he had closed it.  He would shout at strangers if they went near the door.  I was getting those looks that said to me ‘get a handle on your rude child’.   It was becoming exhausting to take him anywhere with a door…..so that’s pretty much anywhere!

photo credit Kelly Lacy pixabay.com

At the end of a particularly long day I was trying to get T to the bath.   Hearing my frazzled state my husband came to take over after.  He said to me that he thought there was ‘something more going on’.  In that moment I realised that I had been thinking the same thing for some time but did not want to breathe life into it by saying it aloud.  

I started researching constantly.  I looked up anything I could possibly find that sounded like what we were seeing.  We thought that perhaps it was OCD.  I also started the long process of calling health insurance and psycologists to find compatible providers without endless waiting lists.  I honestly can not remember how long it took to get an assessment set up with the psychologist but by that time I felt that ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder) or as I was still calling it, Asperger’s Syndrome, was more likely.  

photo credit Startup Stock Photos on pixabay.com

On 16 December 2016 we received T’s ASD diagnosis.  It was a relief for me.  I had spent so much time researching and looking for ways to help our little guy and having a confirmed direction was so helpful.  There was also something very validating for me to discover that we were on the right path and that trusting our instincts had led us to finding a better way of caring for our son.   The diagnosis did not change who he was but it did give us the information we needed to best support his needs.