Nicholas is 41 months old, almost 3 1/2 years old. He was recently diagnosed with PDD-NOS which means Pervasive Developmental Delay Not Otherwise Specified. PDD is autism. One person told me Nicholas is not autistic but we asked our developmental pediatrician and he said, Nicholas IS autistic. Some people say, "Oh, he's fine, he looks at me in the eyes." And others ask, "What interventions are you doing? You better sign him up for these hundreds of therapies or he will not make progress." People on the outside assume that if you have a diagnosis of autism that magically, state agencies like a public school, will take you under their wing and lead you by the hand and show you what to do. On the outside, people assume that autistic children will automatically receive special services. What they don't realize is that even though there are federally funded and state funded services for Nicholas, each one comes with a brick wall. Can you hear this mother bear growling yet?
Our family began taking sign language classes with a private tutor named Jordan. (Here's a picture of Nicholas signing his name with Jordan.) Sounds fancy, but actually, the teacher is a student himself and used to be one of my students at Good Shepherd Lutheran. We are all picking up on it quite easily and quickly because Jordan has a special teaching gift. He's wonderful. The language pathologist at the autism clinic where Nicholas goes every few months told me that sign language would be good for Nicholas. It is multi sensory, meaning it stimulates Nicholas' communication skills visually and tactically. Nicholas' speech is delayed by over a year. He can say several words but does not engage in dialogue or speak in sentences yet but is beginning to put two words together.
Nicholas is a cool little fellow. He is obsessive about certain things, but I can appreciate his fascination with them. One of his new passions is car washes. On a typical morning, the first thing out of Nicholas' mouth is, "Car wash? Car Wash? Car Wash? Car Wash? Car Wash, peeeease." For a special treat, we drove the van through the automatic car wash last night and you would have thought we'd taken Nicholas to Disney World. He was so excited!
Another passion is dominoes. Nicholas loves to build things and he is fascinated by making dominoes mazes and knocking them down. This is a new thing for him. He can focus for HOURS on this new thing. He climbs on the pool table and gets his Kapla blocks and goes to town. Nicholas is the size of a 18 month old, but you should see him climb onto the table. My sister calls him Lieutenant Dan (the guy with no legs in Forest Gump) for his amazing upper body strength. I think I should send Nicholas to train with a trapeze artist. Actually, some times I think we should all join the circus.
Life is good.
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