I know this isn’t the “politically correct” way of telling you guys, but I wanted to let you know what’s been going on here…

Not sure if you have read Patrick’s latest blog on playertobenamedlater, but we’re heading down a road with Stevie that has already proven interesting.

Stevie says 2 words – that’s it. Hi and Bye. No “mama”, no “daddy”. no “no.” Just Hi and Bye. Now, I get that kids develop at different rates and that this may just be a delay and not an indicator of anything more serious. We took him to his doctor (freakin Kaiser offered me a phone appointment to discuss his speech delay with his new pediatrician). Dr started asking more and more questions (while stevie is literally running around the exam room and turning on the hot water). Eventually it comes out that she wants to give him 3 referrals – developmental pediatrician, hearing test and autism spectrum disorder screening. She made it clear that this is just a screening and doesn’t necessarily indicate that he has any level of autism, but she saw/heard some things that she would like another opinion on – namely that he doesn’t bring us toys and that he doesn’t point.

So, here we go. Got the massive packet of forms to complete in the mail last week. Took the necessary forms to his daycare and I got the forms back the same day. Patrick and I looked at them over the weekend when we started to complete our packet of forms and in looking at them, I wondered if his “teacher” can really evaluate a child that she spends 16 hours a week with in amongst all the other kids that she has responsibility for. AND, if some of these were such big issues, why haven’t they been brought to our attention? Yes, we talk to the teachers every day, but if they seem to gloss over most of this stuff. If we weren’t pushing for the screening would anything have been said? The one thing that really bugged me was one day of my kid taking his pants off doesn’t indicate a problem in my mind. Of course, I am not a trained educator and he probably got a reaction which is more what he wanted than just having his pants off. And then there is the complete inconsistency of them being “proud” of him the week before for taking his shirt off.

So, anyway, we have one more to complete (they sent the spanish version and I had to call to get an english version sent) and once we send those back and have them read, we will get an appointment for a screening. They’ve already told us that this will be harder on us than on him because he just gets to play. The wait for screening appt is right about a month right now, but Kaiser has an obligation to conduct the screening within a certain timeframe.

The hearing test is part of the autism screening as well and that will be done on Dec 7 (first available). The developmental pediatrician won’t book an appt until after the autism screening, so we’ve got that going for us. There is always the hope that he will just start speaking in complete sentences… So, we are looking at at least another month of well, panic and insecurity for me and Stevie just being Stevie.

So, that’s what’s going on here. Again, I’m sorry for the email about this, it’s somehow easier to write about it than talk…

love you,
Jani