Sing it with me now
C'mon you know it...
Love that song
Now that we got the blog post started right with some Lionel, how has your weekend gone? I hope well.
Right now I'm watching this travesty of a football team called the Steelers. They remind me of the Bad News Bears this year. They are atrocious. But I still love the Black and Gold. Always have and always will.
Early Years
I told you that today we'd talk some about Bailey and how we found out that he was autistic.
Bailey's first three years were relatively normal for an infant/toddler. He exhibited early development for certain skills like speech and problem solving. He was talking rather clearly by 6 months of age. Single words, but talking nonetheless. He had a normal timeframe for walking.
It wasn't until Bailey turned three and we were preparing Bailey for pre-school that we noticed some issues as it related to social interaction and group settings. The first incidents exhibited themselves at Sunday School. Nothing huge, but we saw the first signs that Bailey was going to have trouble in a group setting and fitting in with other children.
I'm going to pause here and kind of throw something out there that will cause passions to fly and tempers to flare. I don't have any anecdotal evidence either way and I'm not especially passionate about it. I believe that Bailey started to show symptoms of his autism after his 2 year booster vaccines.
Yeah, I know, I went there.
I think that the vaccine argument has some really dumb arguments on both sides. First, I wish the pharmaceutical companies that put out the vaccines would be honest with people about what they know and what they don't know. Because of the difficult nature of diagnosing autism, I think that companies have got off too easy in poo-pooing the obvious increase in the number of kids that are being diagnosed as being on the Autism spectrum. Second, I wish parents would at least acknowledge that companies have no vested interest in damaging those who they make their money off of...
It's like all the people that think companies have been poisoning us with our foods all these years. I have some people who I was really good friends with growing up that flood Facebook every now and then with posts about how much poison is in our food. Really? If processed food was as bad as you think it is why are people living longer and more productive lives? Don't you think that there are evil capitalists on the health food side of the spectrum that are making tons of money by you hawking all their "natural" remedies and foods? / end rant
Back to Autism. I don't know what caused Bailey's autism. Bailey was born without a heartbeat. He was immediately intubated as an infant and had to be revived after birth. He had the chord wrapped around his neck during a very difficult delivery. He was not breathing for about 2 minutes or so after birth. So there's a possibility that the temporary deprivation of oxygen had some effect on Bailey and the development of his brain.
I just know that after his 2 year boosters and prior to pre-school we noticed and increased "hyper-ness" in Bailey. In fact, during his first years in pre-school and kindergarden, the initial diagnosis that Bailey had was ADHD. The symptoms seemed to get progressively worse until the last two years where the progression has slowed. In conjunction with puberty if I can be honest.
Bailey was diagnosed as ADHD around kindergarten. I believe that we started some medication for ADHD in or around 2nd grade.
The symptoms Bailey had in the early years were
1. Lack of attention/inability to concentrate
2. Social awkwardness
3. Blurting - Bailey would just blurt out things at inopportune times
4. Anger - this was more due to the fact that he was not being understood. When we did not understand what the issue was with Bailey it was very frustrating for him and us (as parents) because no one was on the same page. It was a constant struggle.
I'm sure there were other things...but those are the ones that come to mind.
One funny story I will relate about pre-school. For pre-school, the teacher had a reading time and the rug she used was a square and it had the alphabet in big letters around the edge. The kids would be assigned a different letter every day. The teacher made the mistake of calling the reading time on the rug "Circle Time". Bailey raised his hand and told the teacher that it wasn't circle time because the rug was a square. He was very insistent on this point and argued with the teacher because his mind could not process the fact that "Circle" was not being used in a literal sense.
One thing you will find with autistic children is that they are very literal. Bailey took the reading time on the square rug as "Square time" - his mind could not process the fact that they were sitting in a circled manner. Autistic kids are like that. If you tell them that they are driving you up the wall they will start looking for the car that is being driven. Autistic children do not deal very well with metaphors or sayings that are not literal. Even today, I will forget this and blurt out some saying and Bailey will take it literally and I will have to take the time to explain it to him.
That's about all I have for today. I'll wrap up the early years some more in a future post.
One idea came to me today in Church. It was how the situation with Bailey shook my faith in God. Look for some musings on that issue in an upcoming post as well.
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