Killing Time

Between January and April of this year, I must have second-guessed myself a million times. I went from being sure it wasn't autism to sure it was and back again all in the same day, even in the same hour.

One day it would seem he was making progress, I felt we were really turning a corner. The next day, it felt hopeless.

I wasn't sleeping, and I also wasn't wanting to start the day. I wasn't eating anything healthy, but I'd often find myself cramming my face with junk I couldn't believe I bought and couldn't even taste much less enjoy. The good thing about having someone who depends on you soo much is that you're not allowed to wallow in a depression. You HAVE to move your ass and get your child breakfast and play with him and talk, talk, talk and go places and clean the house and bath him, OH and I'm an online math tutor, so when Daddy came home to take over, I got on the computer and worked (not a lot, but enough to keep me busy) Thank God for responsibilites!

It had been over a year since I first became worried, and it was really sinking in that this wasn't going to be something that I would one day laugh about. Not really so much with me, but with lots of very well meaning people who used to tell me that. It feed me hope, and still, there's always hope but everyone was kind of getting the picture that this was BIG, and serious and I knew no matter what it was, mama wasn't crazy to have been moved to tears with worry over her 13 month old boy. People stopped saying "oh don't worry, I bet he'll be talking in no time"

Moms know what's up, even new moms. Even when they don't know exactly what's wrong, they usually can tell when something isn't quite right.

I seriously decided to keep myself as busy as possible between January and the begining of April to keep myself sane.

We have a couple of very good friends here, who I meet up with once a week at least, it was easy for me to be around them. I can be totally honest with them, and their children are a year younger than Austin. Seriously, without them and my online support group, I think I would have lost it by now. Around this time, my friends' kids were beginning to REALLY talk, which was hard, and yet not, since I love their kids and delight in seeing them accomplish new things ALMOST as much as I do my own.

We also joined a playgroup. I think it was actually more for me than for Austin. I had to be around other people to keep from going completely off the deep end, even though it was hard to be around other people. Austin didn't mind people, he didn't freak out about being with a lot of people, but didn't reach out to them either.

It was hard to go out with all those other moms and 2 year olds and see how Austin was soo close to being the same, yet sooo different. On the playground, he looked the same. It was hardest when we did any activity. The other moms had no trouble getting their little ones interested in whatever it was, Austin usually could care less. I thought to myself "at least he doesn't flip out, he goes his own way, but he doesn't get scared or totally lose it" I didn't know though, whether to explain or not to explain our situation to these new people. I didn't even know how to explain it, or what "it" was. They were (and are, we're still in the playgroup) kind and supportive, and said "let us know if there's anything we can do to help him" which is so much better than the kind of people who say "let me tell you what you need to do to help him".

When I actually let myself trust people, it's refreshing to see that most people aren't jerks. They really aren't. Sure, there are some, but I believe half of them just don't know any better. They're not intentionally jerks, and I can't be mad at them because I've been there just out of ignorance and saying the absolute wrong thing, not to hurt anyone but just because I don't know how to put my foot in my mouth sometimes, and other times I'm a jerk because I'm so absorbed in myself and my problems, I don't pay attention as much as I should to people and things I should pay attention to. I'm a jerk SOMETIMES but I try not to be. (Oh! and the other half of people who are jerks are TRY to be, and they're just mean or bitter or have more issues than me or Austin ever will and it does no good to get all bent out of shape about them. They're the kind of people who can't ever mind their own business, but personally I have more than enough business of my own to pay any attention to them)

This was pretty much our life from Jan to April, with me still functioning, but in a go through the motions kind of way. Austin was Austin, being with other kids 3 times a week did nothing to help his language, and I knew it wouldn't, but it was still good to get out, to do fun things.

At home, I tried to do something called modeling and recasting. It's simple, actually. The modeling part is just naming whatever it is that Austin is doing or looking at, but just with one word. A lot of times when I did this, Austin seemed to not being paying the least bit attention to me, BUT later I would find he did indeed know the word, and that was something else that confused me about him. Why did he recognize so many words and attempt to say so few? Anyway, the recasting part is when Austin would make some sound, I would try to figure out what it was he was "talking" about, and say the word. (ie Austin points to the cat and says "a", I say "cat!" )

I do this so much, sometimes I think I'm going to totally lose my ability to speak a phrase longer than 1 or 2 words.

I can't describe how relieved I was when it was finally April. Not because I thought going to Nashville was going to make everything all better, but I hoped it would at least give us a direction. The worst part about this whole last year was not knowing what to do to really help Austin, especially when the people that I thought would help him certainly didn't seem to do much good (eeeh, see, that's what I mean about sounding like a jerk! I hate that it sounds like I'm totally trashing the SLPs all the time. I'm not trying to! I don't hate them!)