Still on the road to nowhere

We went to yet another therapy session with Ms. "he doesn't have the mental capacity" and I planned to basically fire her when she surprised me with "Next time is my last session, I'm leaving and the center will get someone else to take over Austin's therapy"

I could have jumped up and down! Maybe Austin would get someone useful!

We also headed over to the developmental pediatricians office to fill out the initial paperwork needed to schedule an appointment. I was a little hesitant. Two different parents had low opinions of this doctor and her staff, but I didn't know where else to go. I entered the office and could see immediately why the parents had complaints with the staff. The young man behind the front desk had his jeans down to his knees, with heavy gold chains around his neck and a t-shirt with Gothic lettering. I'm all for people wearing whatever they like on their off-hours, but I couldn't believe he was allowed to dress unprofessionally on the job. If he had been friendly and helpful, I might have been able to look past it, but guess what? Yeah, not so much.

The forms were all questions about ADD, and not much seemed to relate to Austin or to any 2-year-old child for that matter. Still, I did my best to fill them out and got an appointment for 2 weeks from the day.

As the appointment got closer, I had this feeling this appointment would be a waste of time at best. Two days before the appointment, I got a call from the office saying the appointment would be $300. Well, that pretty much settled it. I wasn't willing to pay that much for a doctor I had heard no good things about.

But where were we going to go now?

Meanwhile, Austin had started with a new therapist, who suggested he had sensory and attention issues and needed to bounce on a ball to be able to attend to the therapy session. I had no clue. It confused me because Austin sat perfectly well and still all during church, and during concerts, but I didn't really know anything about it, and was willing to try anything that might help and wouldn't hurt.

We balanced Austin on a ball while the SLP let him play for a minute with a fun toy. Then, she'd take the toy and ask him to sign "more". He would point and grunt for the toy, but refused to sign. It seemed impossible that he didn't understand what we wanted him to do, it was like he was digging his heels in and would rather not have the toy back than to have to sign "more". I'd move his little hands to sign "more" and then he'd get the toy back. Repeat this for a couple of months.

The SLP started really pushing to get an OT eval, saying he could have OT and speech at the same time and that would probably be the only way he would make progress.

I hesitated. It just didn't seem to fit to me. Austin seemed to react to things normally to me, at least as far as sensory issues were concerned. How did one prove sensory issues, and how would rolling around on a ball and being brushed and swung help him speak? I just couldn't wrap my mind around it. Maybe, if Austin had really seemed uncomfortable in his own skin, I would be more open to the idea. The thing was, he DID try to avoid the SLP, and I wasn't sure it it was an autism issue or the fact that she took things away and made him ask for them back that he wasn't comfortable with.

He was very affectionate with his father and me (and still is) He gave us kisses, patted our heads, was happy when we came back, cried when we left, smiled at us and looked at us often., with the SLPs, it was a totally different story and I couldn't figure out the reason.

I'm still not sure.