10.16.06
It
Carl has PDD-NOS. Pervasive Developmental Disorder Not Otherwise Specified. Basically he has a very mild form of autism or is concidered high functioning Autistic. We had our last evaluaation today. He has now seen 4 different people and they have all told us the same thing. We didn’t get him evaluated several times because we didn’t believe it more to find the doctor that we wanted to deal with and the approach that we liked the best.
For those of you who don’t know much about autism let me educate you a bit. First it is a spectrume that is fluid. A child can move forward or back as they recover. At the most severe end is Severe Autism. At the most mild side is Asperger Syndrome. The middle is PDD-NOS(which is what Carl has). Also in the spectrum is Rett Syndrome and another which I know every little about. The children that fall into Aspereger and Severe Autism have specific feaatures that they have to have. All of those children that fall into PDD-NOS have autistic characteristics which impaare their learning and ablitiy to work in the world but they are lacking those specific characteristics. However these children are in need of services to help them to learn to adapt to thier world. This is how I understanad it anyway.
This has been very diffecult to deal with. No one wants to hear that their child has something that is going to make thier child’s life more diffecult. It has been a true grieving process. Myself I have had a VERY difficult time with this. My life is about to completely change. We have qualified for 23 hours of services a week. Which is a huge amount. The plus is that they will help me to go out into the community, something which is very diffecult right now. It is a very good thing it is just so haard to handle. I have a hard time being able to verbalize what I am feeling. But at least we know. There is no other group in the area that could evaluate him and say he is fine. It is wierd because that is what I wanted today even though I know he has someing going on with him. But at the samae time I just want it to disappeare. It is irrational and very emotional. Unfortunaately this is all I can handle writing at the moment. Read the rest of this entry »