Professor Terynski,
I have never had anyone ask me this question. However, I have asked it myself to parents whom have much older children than my son .So I will try my best to explain my own perspective without writing a book ☺
Year 1 and 2: My complete denial period in which he received the diagnoses of “severe autism”. I remember going into the evaluation confident that my son was going to get a speech delay diagnosis. Instead the words” I feel confident your son has autism” slipped out of the psychologist mouth with complete ease. I immediately responded back with “ absolutely not, I want a 2nd opinion” and left swiftly. It wasn’t that I didn’t believe her, or that I was in denial, but rather I looked at it as, I can’t label my son…show more content… I also found it extremely painful to listen to other parents tell me I was lucky that my child hasn’t started talking yet, because it was exhausting to those parent to answer their child's questions. Frankly, I found it hard to relate at all to those parents. Mostly because I didn’t want to expose the issues we were facing, like whether or not my son would ever speak at all. The stress of those "what ifs" such as speaking at all wore on my family early on. Instead of indulging our expectations of our pre-diagnosis son such as what sport he would play, what college we hoped he would go to, instead we were talking about things such as PECS as an alternative to spoken language, and a restricted environment in special education. I can’t emphasize in words the pain that comes from hearing this about your child. There was nothing anyone could say to ease my…show more content… Our second evaluation at age 4 came back as moderate autism with sensory processing disorder, which we accepted to receive more services to help our son, I also believe this diagnosis is more accurate, because of my own daily notes and much research on typical and non-typical behaviors.
As my son ages, autism becomes more obvious, specifically for my son, in communication, cognitive speech and social skills. These are reality I cannot hide from nor deny any longer because my son gains nothing from us doing nothing. Instead, I chose to let go of my expectations of what I thought my son would be and embrace who he is because he is amazing, intelligent and undoubting going to be an amazing person whom has so much to offer the world. These thought get me through the hours of therapy and countless nights of research over sleep and the "what ifs". I believe in my son regardless of his
