Another Newbie

[Guest guest]

Hi all, I'm , mom to 4 kids including Adam, 3 1/2 on whom we're

waiting for a diagnosis. He has an evaluation on the 26th to determine

where on the spectrum he falls.

I suspected something over a year ago, but was told by friends and

family I was unfairly comparing Adam to our eldest son, who is in the

gifted program at school. I feel a little bad, because I could've

gotten him in the Early Intervention program, but I've heard OHSU's

autism program is wonderful and resource-laden.

Adam's fine motor skills have always been fairly advanced, and he's

outwitted almost every child-proofing device we've ever installed. His

speech was delayed; I wasn't " Mom " consistently until he was past 2,

and he didn't realy string sentences until about 30 months. But he's

now pretty much on track, other than his speech patterns. He will ask

the same question anywhere from 3-20 times.

I saw at least one other mom had a son obsessed with the Tank

Engine. Even before Adam could speak coherently, he would run back and

forth on our back deck, naming off all of the main engines, their

colors and numbers. Some times he'd do this for half an hour at a

time. He still has a hard time sharing his trains with his brother.

It's hard for him to process that not all trains are his, even in a

toy store. When he was having meltdowns, videos used to be one

of the few things that would distract and re-direct him. His current

obsession is computer games, particulary Feeding Frenzy (a fish eating

fish game) and Tropix (a variety of puzzle games featuring a monkey).

He will leave the table in the middle of dinner to go play his games.

When we took his sister to school the first day, he'd walk up to

anyone he could find and say " I ate the big alien fish! " . We don't

allow him to play anything violent, but trying to limit his computer

time upsets him.

I'm still pretty new to this, so I have a lot to learn. I certainly

welcome input and suggestions from the " veterans " . I'll keep you

posted on the findings. I know we don't have an official diagnosis

yet, but as I told my husband, if Adam doesn't have ASD, I'll eat my

2-year-old tennis shoes! )