In The Beginning... "Now In Stereo!"

Today's posting, aptly titled, "In The Beginning..." is just that.  It's a summary of things that first caught our eye - and started us down the road of discovering Autism.  It's intended as a bit of a guide for other parents who are wondering about their child's development.  I get an email to that effect fairly often....someone I know will send me an email asking me about our initial experiences....as they cast a wondering eye at their own offspring.


So - without further ado - here's how it all went down.  And yes - I like the Motley Crue tune "In The Beginning - and how it leads into Shout At The Devil.  I really only want the ominous "In The Beginning" sound....but then ya know - it just leads into some classic mid 80's metal....so I used the whole tune instead. If you're not feelin' Motley Crue - just turn it off and read on.  If you are feelin' it....turn it up.  And if you're a lawyer representing Motley Crue about my use of the tune....take it up with YouTube - I'm just linking something that they are making available.  It's not like I'm getting rich here ripping off Crue tunes....

As best as I can recall - we first noticed that Nicholas stopped responding when we called to him.  He would just act as if he hadn't heard us.  So - being responsible and concerned parents...we took him to get his hearing checked out.  His hearing was fine.  He was nearly 2 1/2 at that time.


Around that same time - the daycare that we had him at wanted to speak with us about some 'observed' behaviour.  My wife and I went down to the daycare to have a little chat (interestingly enough - this is the same daycare my wife attended once upon a time....some of the same staff were their after all that time) about some things they had noticed about Nicholas.  We were glad that they took the time and effort to speak with us - they had a lot more experience with kids than we did at that time....so it was helpful to have people more skilled in child development than us provide some insight/concerns.  Basically - the behaviours expressed things like:

• he seems to be unaware of other people around him
• he likes to line things up - in order (we had noticed this as well).
• he doesn't always deal well with transitions
• he doesn't seem to have a lot of interest in socializing with other kids, or take part in group activities.

My wife and I took this information home - and began to wonder about our son...


It was also around the same time (actually 7-10 days before we noticed the hearing issue) that we had our son vaccinated with the MMR shot.  Now I know - there's a lot of controversy surrounding the use of vaccinations and the incidence of Autism.  And I'm not here to rehash all that nonsense - whether I believe MMR negatively impacted my son is besides the point.  And what good would it do anyways if we knew for sure?  But - for the record....I do not believe in coincidences (and I know a great many number of people who have had similar experiences)....and I do think it quite likely that it was the loading schedule itself that caused our son harm.  Kids today receive many, many more shots than we did when I was of that age.  I don't think it was MMR per se....but rather the frequency in which children were subjected to vaccinations that has a cumulative impact of children's neurological development.


We also noticed Nicholas had a fascination with lining stuff up.  Blocks.  Animals.  Books.  Whatever.  If it could be arranged from big to small....it was.  This is typical of kids on the spectrum - or so we learned.


Nicholas also had an innate skills when it came reading.  That we discovered is called hyperlexia (defined by the follow 'borrowed' text from Wikipedia):

Hyperlexia was initially identified by Silberg and Silberg (1967), who defined it as the precocious ability to read words without prior training in learning to read typically before the age of 5. They indicated that children with hyperlexia have a significantly higher word decoding ability than their reading comprehension levels.

Hyperlexic children are characterized by having average or above average IQs and word-reading ability well above what would be expected given their age.

In a nutshell?  Our son was reading at a very early - at a level far advanced for his age.  His recall on what he has read is nearly photographic.  He remembers everything he's read - and everything that's read to him.  Just try and miss a page when reading him a story he's already heard...


And then there was echolalia - the automatic repetition of vocalizations made by another person. It is closely related to echopraxia, the automatic repetition of movements made by another person.  Nicholas used to love repeating things back to us....and one occasions - when he gets really excited - he'll kind of flap his left arm (mostly when he's brushing his teeth these days however).


At this point - my wife got her social worker skills happening...and was able to get Nicholas in to see a Dr. by the name of Dr. Flanagan at St. Joseph's Health Care Centre.  Dr. Flanagan had opened a new clinic there - so we were able to bypass the year long wait that we would have had to endure if we booked at East York General.  Connections help sometimes.  From a few visits with Dr. Flanagan we were provided a from that basically said our child had autism....among other high end diagnostic expressions.


So - we noticed a few things.  Other people noticed a few other things.  A diagnosis here - a professional opinion there....and voila.  Instant diagnosis of autism.


Now....here's your written summary - you have a child with an issue on your hands....but no help provided as to the question, "Great?!  Now what the hell do I do?":


To be continued...