still the same little boy

I have always been the kind of person that is very open, and probably to a fault. I definitely have a tendency to open up about things that people really have no interest in knowing about and probably make them uncomfortable. It's fine. My point is, I am a very open person and I have no problem talking about the things that are going on in my life and opening up about super personal things.

But not Jaxon. I don't like to talk about Jaxon.

Not because I'm ashamed- I'll shut you down right this second if that thought remotely entered your mind. I am not even the tiniest bit ashamed of Jaxon and I love my little boy more than I ever have. This has nothing to do with my own thoughts on the matter or my own emotions- it has to do with yours. It has to do with all of the people who might look at him differently. It has to do with people being ignorant and blaming us as parents or thinking little of Jaxon because of his situation. It has to do with people giving me unwanted advice and trying to tell me everything that THEY know on the subject, as though I haven't spent the entirety of the last 6 months doing as much research as I possibly can. But it was time for me to start being more open about it, because regardless of how much I want to avoid it- Jaxon is just a different kid.

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I think the first time we thought anything might be out of the ordinary for Jaxon was when Maddox was literally a month old or so. Somebody commented on one of my YouTube videos and acknowledged the arm flapping thing that Jaxon does when he gets excited. It's very obvious. He isn't subtle, and up until this point, I honestly thought it was one of the cutest traits about my little boy. She mentioned that what he was doing could be a form of stimming -

The term "stimming" is short for self-stimulatory behavior and is sometimes also called "stereotypic" behavior. In a person with autism, stimming usually refers to specific behaviors that include hand-flapping, rocking, spinning, or repetition of words and phrases.

Jax was 18 months old at the time and I was beyond ticked at this lady for having the audacity to turn something adorable that my son does into a diagnosis. Kelly immediately laughed and brushed it off, we knew he didn't have autism. That was literally the only thing that might be autistic about him- that's not enough. I was one month postpartum and my hormones would not let this go. I texted everybody that has met Jax even once and told them about this girls comment. They were all as pissed as I was and I did everything I could to push it out of my mind.

We were never worried about Jax and his speech at all. He was saying mama and dada at the appropriate time. Before he was even 18 months old he was asking to get "out" of the bathtub, or be picked "up," he said bye, hi, and would repeat words when we'd say them.

Then he turned 2.

I couldn't tell you what happened or when it happened, but one day we realized that he REFUSED to say up when he wanted up, no matter how many times we asked, "Do you want up?" He wouldn't say bye anymore. It took 10 minutes to get him out of the bath because we wouldn't get him until he said "out." We knew he didn't just forget the words, because if we pushed hard enough then he would eventually say them- but he just had no desire to talk anymore.

He also didn't point. He didn't bring me things. There was absolutely no way for me to know what my kid wanted throughout the day because he didn't communicate it in any way. He'd scream and cry and throw a huge fit, and I'd just have to guess until I said the word that he wanted me to say. He didn't go to the fridge when he wanted apple sauce. He didn't point to the bucket of strawberries on the counter, he'd just reach for them and scream when he couldn't get them.

As soon as we started to notice these things we thought back to that initial comment about stimming and how we briefly, even for a minute, considered he might have autism. We looked into getting him an evaluation, but it literally was going to cost $1,200 and so we decided to do everything else we could do FIRST before we went full into the evaluation. We went to an ENT and got a hearing test done and had him check for fluid in his ears, nothing. Which is amazing for a kid who spent two weeks in the NICU when he was born.

After we realized he was hearing us fine we decided to actually look into getting him some kind of speech therapy, so we contacted Early Childhood Intervention for our county in Texas and had them come out for an evaluation.

This was one of the hardest days of my life. Honestly.

Maddox and Jax had just started sharing a room and Maddox woke up at 6am and woke Jax up along with him, and so he was in just the most awful mood. He was throwing fits about EVERYTHING. He wanted nothing to do with the evaluators, and everything kind of "off" about him was magnified 10x. I kept explaining to them that this really wasn't my normal kid, but you could tell they didn't really believe me and didn't really acknowledge what I was saying. They said Jax had the development of a 17-month-old, and that he most likely had something called sensory processing disorder. They also said that because of his scores they were required to do something called an M-Chat, which is more or less a questionnaire that evaluates whether or not your child is at risk for autism. I had done M-Chats like 20x on my own online and they ALWAYS said he was at low risk. Their results were the same.

Still, they recommended that Jaxon have Occupational Therapy once a week, and speech therapy once a month. I was so pissed off guys, I can't even tell you. How dare you come in and tell me that my kid is underdeveloped? Because he didn't play with the toys you wanted him to play with? Because he was so tired from waking up so early that all he wanted to do was cuddle his mom? Absolutely, how freaking dare you. I cried, but I took it with a grain of salt. I knew my kid didn't have sensory processing disorder for starters, and I knew he was smarter than they gave him credit for.

Let's fast forward.

Jaxon had one or two speech therapy sessions, and we scheduled for an Occupational Therapist to come and evaluate him to see what kind of therapy she could do to increase his learning of speech. The day she was supposed to come she got a flat tire and wasn't actually able to make it to the session. His speech therapist still came, and straight-up said that she didn't think he needed OT at all and that we were going to change his therapy to one speech session a week, and no OT. This was great news. It was also great to have this therapist actually start to acknowledge the fact that Jax was NOT himself the day of the initial evaluation.

Today he had another speech therapy appointment. We talked about how in about 5 months we're going to start getting him evaluated by the school district to see if he qualifies for pre-k through the ECI program, along with that evaluation they are going to do an autism evaluation. I straight up asked his speech therapist what she thought, and if she thought he had autism. She said that most likely he had something called PDD-NOS, which is BASICALLY that he has the symptoms of a kid with autism, and he IS on the spectrum, but he is not severe enough to get the actual autism diagnosis.

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This is a long blog post. There was a lot to say. It's a lot to take in.

When things were really starting to get going with Jaxon it was really hard for me. Really hard. Suddenly every little thing that he did was a symptom. His arm flapping thing wasn't cute anymore, it wasn't fun, and it didn't make me happy to see him get excited- it was a symptom. I started getting irrationally angry with him when he wouldn't repeat a word because I wanted to prove them wrong. I started to think about his future and how people were going to make fun of him. I started thinking about how every time my toddler threw a fit people were going to attribute it to autism instead of him just being a two year old. I just simply started looking at him differently.

Then Kelly said something that I repeat to myself every time I get overwhelmed- he is still our same little boy. He is the same boy he was yesterday. He is the same boy he was 5 minutes before he was evaluated. He is still just Jaxon.

It's been difficult, and we still won't know for sure what his autism diagnosis is for another 6 months or so, which is really hard. It's hard to see people diagnosing my kid when I don't really believe they're right. It's hard to see people only look at his symptoms instead of looking at Jaxon as a whole.

But he is dang crushing it. He is going to daycare two days a week to help with his socialization issues and he's doing so well. He listens so much better. He'll bring me something that he wants and ask for help so I open it for him. He doesn't run into the street when we're getting out of the car. He doesn't just throw fits for seemingly no reason. He learned how to count to 10 on his own, and every single day we see more and more improvements.

We are making progress. He is learning, and he is just the best and most fun little boy. He loves Buzz Lightyear, Lightning McQueen, and Dave & Ava. He LOVES his ABC's and 1-10. His favourite band is Imagine Dragons, by far. And he will run and jump around the house until he passes out. He goes to swimming lessons once a week and he LOVES it. That's our little guy. The same little guy he's always been. He might not be speaking in sentences like he should be at this age. He might flail his arms around when he gets excited. He may have a harder time learning certain subjects in school later in life. But he's still just Jaxon.