KathleenW

He was one of the too good to be true babies. He was always happy and rarely cried. He started sleeping through the night on his 2 month birthday and has never had any sleep problems. At 13 months he had 7 words and was pointing to everything. Then he stopped pointing. He never lost any words, but he just stopped making progress. At 18 months I started to get concerned because he only had 10 words. When he was 23 months he started getting recurrent ear infections. At his 2 year appointment with the pediatrician I said I was very concerned because he only had 25 words and he was not putting words together. His doctor said this was not unusual and at 2 kids just start talking.

Three months later there was still no progress in language and he was starting to stare into space. I took him to the doctor for the six month in a row for another ear infection. She asked if his diet was high in dairy. I said yes. She said that could be part of his ear problems. She also referred me for a speech and language evaluation. At 27 months his speech and cognitve levels were at a 18 month level. She recommended that we go to the DEC to get the full picture.

I took him to the DEC on a Friday and the following Monday. The psychologist at the DEC gave him all kinds of tests and when she was finished she said No I do not see any autism in him. I was happy. Then we went back on Monday for the rest of the tests. After administering the CARS (childhood autism rating scale) the panel decided he had PDD. They said he was not autistic, but they were diagnosising him with an autism spectrum disorder. He scored a 26 on the CARS a score of 25 means you are normal.

Before I went to the DEC I had already made an appointment with the best pediatric neurologist in our area. We saw the neurologist 5 weeks after his original diagnosis. In the 5 weeks since his diagnosis he completely changed. I took all dairy out of his diet and started him on 50mg of B6 250mg of magnesium and DMG daily. I also spent every second of the day working with him on all the tests he had failed. As soon as we took him off milk his vocabulary went from 25 words to 200 in one month. He also started putting words together "I want a drink and things like that."

We spent 2 hours with the neurologist and the whole time my 30 month old was pointing to things out the window. "Look Car, Flowers, people etc. He was bringing toys to show us. He picked up one toy walked over to the neurologist and said "What is this?" My son has also always had perfect eye contact and no stimming (hand flapping, toe walking, looking out of the corners of his eyes, or fixating on objects). The neurologist said there is no way he had autism and he WAS SHOCKED that the DEC would tell me that.

We left very happy to have proven THOSE EXPERTS at the DEC wrong. Then I read the book Let me Hear Your Voice. I thought my child is nothing like this. I do not need this. I finished the book and what I took from that book was if you think something is wrong with your child you need to do something now. I started speech therapy 3 times a week and an ABA program 15 hours a week. I also kept him in a regular pre school for 2 year olds 2 days a week from 8:45-12:45.

5 months after we started speech therapy we had him evaluated again in speech when he was 2 years 11 months his speech was at 3 years one month level. I almost died. I could not believe that in 5 months he could go from an eighteen month level to a 3 year level. The ABA program just made everything click for him. He had a lot of auditory processing problems and ABA fixed it. A lot of people do not realize that if your expressive language is delayed so is your receptive. That is why he scored so low on tests. He could not understand. In June they tested his cognitive levels. He was 3 years and one month and cognitively he tested 4 years and one month.

My son who is still 3 can hold a conversation with any family member or stranger. He can answere any question Who, what, where, why, when, and how. He has lots of friends and no behaviors to make him stand out. He is extremely happy, loving, and very well behaved (my friends are jealous!!!) 18 months after the original testing we took him back to the DEC (4-26-04) He scored above average on his intelligence tests. They said he does not have any symptoms of autism. They said sometimes children outgrow their symptoms of autism and that is apparently the case with your little boy.

My story has been 18 months long and much too long to write. Please let me know if there are any specific questions you have. I would be happy to answer them!!!!!