How we got here

Meet Butters and Peanut

About 6 months ago everything we thought we knew about Butters was turned upside down. We always figured he was a little different in some way but nothing much. Sure he had an unusual obsession with numbers. By the time he was 2 he could count to 100. By the time he hit 3 he was taking bath tub foam numbers and arranging them in 6 digit combination and could tell you what they were with no problem. We just thought that he loved numbers and wanted to let him explore what he was interested in at the time.

At Peanut's first birthday party someone mentioned that we might get him evaluated by a speech therapist. So we agreed to and made an appointment with the one in our peditrican's office. The test showed results much worse than we thought. His speech was on the level of about an 18 month old. She also said the word we never thought we would hear. Autism. She thought he had a form of autism but wouldn't elaborate any further.

From here we met with an occupational therapist (OT). The OT was wonderful and the news she gave us was similar. She stopped in the middle of the evaluation and said how intelligent he was and how she thought he had Asperger's Syndrome just due to his high IQ and motor skills that were pretty low. When she met him he was also rated as age adjusted as an 18 month old. She also observed that he was having drop seizures. We thought he was just clumsy but turns out we were very wrong.

Talk about a kick in the gut. Yeah we went from thinking that he was just a little speech delayed to haveing autsim and seizures.

Then there was the psych evaluation. She actually said that our lifestyle caused all of this and he just had ADHD. Do I even need to say how crazy we thought this woman was?! Lets just say we never saw her again.

After the seizure mess Butters had a 1 hour and 24 hour EEG done. Both showed nothing much and after discussing things with his peditrican it was decided to do nothing and his doctor thought he would grow out of it in a few years anyway.

After he was medically cleared he started classes at The Little Gym. This was a different kind of therapy for him. While we were still working on fine motor skills with his OT, the gym provided a place to work on gross motor and social skills. It also provided a great place to learn from other kids. After just over a month he was following directions most of the time and even listening to the teachers.

Then we got the offical word we were moving. We still met with the local school system and tried to get him in, but after the inital evaluation we were going to have to travel 20 minutes one way to take him to school. The whole system just frustrated me and we never even did his IEP.

Now that we are settled in WA things are getting better. He still goes to The Little Gym and loves it. All we look for now is slight progress every week. We celebrate increases in language and interaction with other kids and even his sister!