It's The Little Things

As a parent of a special needs child, it's not the big things that make my son special, it's the little ones.  It's not that he's Legos, Pokemon & Star Wars like his friends, it's that he can tell you every detail about them.  He's home sick today and playing Pokemon White on his DSi, we are spending the time looking up all the different types of Pokemon to see what their strengths are and their weaknesses.  Not just the ones that he has, but all of them.

It's not that he gets upset when he doesn't get to share his idea on communication during the Children's message at church because he's in the bathroom, it's that he announces this to the whole congregation!

A special needs child is just like a regular child just more.  He's more lovable, more loving, more honest, more playful, more excitable, more excited, more interested...just more.

I can say one thing, I wouldn't have Kid Jedi any other way!!

New symptoms, new doctors, possibly new diagnosis

We've been going through some issues here...well, at least we're facing the issues.  I'm not really even sure they should be called issues, more like ways of life.  As we all know, Kid Jedi was diagnosed last September with ADHD.  Well, at the time, our wonderful doctor went over the lay of the land as far as ADHD and ASD go... basically ADHD is one step, maybe not even a step, off of the Autism Spectrum.  And as far as Kid Jedi is concerned, he kind of teetered on that step, she felt he fell just to the ADHD side because he made friends...doesn't that just give you the warm fuzzies.  Well, 1 year and 5, almost 6, months later and the hyperactivity has slowed (not gone away, but slowed) and we're seeing more of Kid Jedi's true personality come through, and it's a great personality.

The problem is, and there always is a problem with a Special Needs child, that as the ADHD symptoms are coming under control, we are seeing how he really doesn't get social cues from anyone, he's overly obsessed with certain subjects, he can't look you in the eye (and he really tries), he has routines he has to follow, and most significantly, he doesn't understand when other kids aren't being nice to him yet he still wants to play with them.

That all being said, I have been asked recently by many friends and family members if I was sure that Kid Jedi didn't have Asperger's.  I had friends who said that there was a high chance that he would eventually wind up with an Asperger's diagnosis from the beginning, but I think the one that really got me was my cousin who has a not so little boy (he's in college) with Asperger's and as I was telling her about the issues Kid Jedi has, she repeatedly asked if I was sure he wasn't an Aspie...then came the friend from HS that I "met" on Facebook, and she was telling me about her son who was diagnosed with ADHD, then it got changed to Asperger's.  

All this time, we had been concerned about Kid Jedi's OCD-ish tendencies.  Then came the slap in the face.  I was reading The Best Kind of Different by Shonda Schilling (I picked it up because it was about Asperger's and we were starting to suspect this a lot).  As I read the Foreward by the doctor that diagnosed their son, Grant, I kept saying to myself, that's Kid Jedi, that's my son.  Needless to say I called the pediatrician on Monday to get a recommendation and we now have an appointment with a Neurologist on May 3.

Going into this figuring that he will wind up this diagnosis helps, but I know it's going to mean a lot of work with us, but it will be good knowing what we are dealing with no matter what comes back.  So now we get to go through the almost 2 month waiting period (which is much better than the standard 3-4 months that most people in this area are facing).

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