Introduction - 18, 19, 20 and 21 months

Welcome!

I will be sharing more about the book as well as how we are recovering our son from autism. Our son (M) turned 6 in May.

We noticed the few words he did have were gone by his 18 mo "well baby" appointment. We were sent home to wait and come back in a month. I was in a playgroup and I gave another boy a friendly instruction while we were cleaning up to hand me the blocks. I did not expect any response from him because I had done this with my son many times with no response. This boy however, DID respond. I remember it very clearly. He was not even looking at me when I said his name and asked him to please hand me the blocks. He looked at me and crawled over and brought me a block. That is when I knew there was a problem. That day at the playgroup was the day I got scared. I was already prepared for no good news when I went back on January 3, 2003 for that appointment. I am glad I did not have to fight for that speech and hearing referal that started this ball rolling.

I did not have to wait long for the appointments but at the time, waiting that month was agony. We had both on the same day in February. Speech first and hearing second. M would not get off my lap. He did enough for an evaluation. I think his worst score was 3 mo range and he averaged out about 6 mo. At this time he was 21 months old. We could not even get a hearing test that day. First there was no way he was letting that lady put anything near his ear and the little examination she did get told her he had excessive wax in his ear. I knew in my heart he could hear fine. Although he did not respond to his name he could hear that Baby Bach Baby Einstein video from the other side of the house. I am so thankful we had that speech test first. This ST told us about Early Intervention, to call a Child Development Specialist and to get M checked by an ENT. This hospital also did all the insurance checking for you. We were at a speech therapy session within 3 weeks.