Children's Hospital visit

Every 6 months or so, John goes back to Children's Hospital for an evaluation. The goal with these evaluations is for people who does not interact with him on a daily or weekly basis to give him an assessment. His two doctors there have been with us from the start, and it's always helpful to get their feedback in this way. We were there last Friday, and here's what they said:

If John came to us now, with no history of an autism diagnosis, we wouldn't classify him as autistic.

What this means: John is who he is. Autism isn't something that is cured, at least not at this point. The goal of treatment plans, and particularly early-intervention treatment, is to "rewire" the brain's neurological processes and to teach the child coping strategies for dealing with the outside world. More and more research is showing that autistic spectrum disorders are the result of the brain's inability to process sensory and other related neurological information appropriately. In very young children, it's possible to help rewire some of this and to train their brains to process this better (In John's case, lots of speech and occupational therapy), and in addition, to help them learn to cope with the things that bother them (i.e. how to avoid stressful or problematic situations).

What this really means: John's doing so absolutely wonderfully that it's hard to tell, at a glance, that he's autistic at all.

Make no mistake about it, he's still who he is. He's just coping with it extremely well.

Further, they want us to consider putting him in regular classes next year, as opposed to the special education class he's in now. Their thinking is that, since he's learned to model other students so well, that he should be exposed to "normal" kids to use as his role models. See, for John, his biggest hurdles right now are in social interaction and fine-motor skills, and for a kid who likes to copy others, nothing beats throwing him in a room with others who *want* to write with crayons and who carry on more normal conversations.

The next step happens on Friday. We go back to Children's for a full cognitive evaluation. This will help us quantify just how well John's cognitive abilities are, and will be an indicator to how he'd do in a mainstream pre-kindergarten environment. He'd probably still need some help in occupational and speech therapy, but we'll get a good idea of whether he can hack it in the rough-and-tumble of "normalcy."

We'll post again once we get back from that appointment.