When Brooklynn was born she was a very healthy baby girl--10 lbs 3 oz and 22 in. She was beautiful, perfect in every way. She reached all her milestones right on time, some even early (except for walking, she was 13.5 months old). When she was 18 months old I noticed she wasn't talking as much as she should be. At her well-visit I expressed my concerns with the doctor, but he also noticed she was crossing her eyes and said that a vision impairment could be the cause for her speech delay. We took her straight to the Ophthalmologist and found out that her vision was very bad. We did everything--glasses, bifocals, patches, and then surgery. We got her speech evaluated around 20 months, but she wasn't delayed enough to qualify, AND even the speech therapist thought her vision problems were the cause of the delay. I kept diligently working with her. I did my own version of speech therapy. We worked on flash cards, educational play, etc.
When she was 2, I decided to be more forceful and took matters into my own hands instead of relying on the doctor. I found an early intervention program and began making phone calls. We got her evaluated again, and this time she qualified. The sweet lady that did her eval. mentioned that she saw some signs of Sensory Integration Dysfunction in addition to her speech delay. Then the pieces of the puzzle started to fit together. All these little things that we saw as her quirks--overall "floppiness", low oral muscle tone, "W" sitting, inability to sense the difference between wet/dry and hot/cold, extremely high pain tolerance, etc.--it all seemed to make sense. We were told that since we discovered this early on, she would likely be completely "normal" by kindergarten. We jumped right in and started therapy (it took awhile to get all the referrals and evaluations). By 2 and a half she was receiving speech, occupational, and physical therapy (2 or 3 sessions each/week) and at 3 she started a preschool for children with special needs. There she received her therapy, and was blessed with teachers who understood her special circumstance. After two years in this school, they told me she was ready for Pre-K in a normal classroom setting. Throughout all of this, I still believed she would be "fine" by kindergarten.
Her pre-k experience was great! She had an amazing teacher who loved her almost as much as I do. :) While she was still different from the other kids; although behind from where she needed to be for her age level, she worked very hard. I also worked hard to make sure she received all the therapy she needed, and developmental therapy was added as well. School parties were the most difficult. She would get over-stimulated, which usually resulted in crying just laying on the ground, and was ready to leave as soon as I arrived. After the first party, I realized she's better if I don't even come (which is so very hard for me), so from that point on I would wait until the end to arrive, but I could at least be there on her special day.
Near the end of the year it hit me like a ton of bricks, all those people that told me she would be "fine" by kindergarten were wrong. So we started working on her IEP for school, and even more evaluations started. During her IEP meeting with the school district things went terribly wrong. They brought up something I had been asking about for years. All the doctors said no, all the therapists said no, all the teachers said no, but now I'm hearing the word Autism. I cried like a baby in front of perfect strangers (looking back I'm sure they thought I was a complete nutcase). How could this be? Sensory processing disorder is something that a child can "outgrow", but Autism seemed to be a different story. I became very discouraged, but just as determined to do everything I could to help her. I started thinking about homeschooling, but realized for her particular situation public school would be best (although I decided to wait until Christmas and take her out if she wasn't happy). I cried every time I thought about having a child in special ed. My heart broke for my baby girl.
The first few weeks of school were rough, and I was scared. Brooklynn kept asking to go back to her Pre-K, but around the 3rd week things started to change. She began to grow up. Since then she's become so much more independent, and is even improving socially. She is very intelligent (her IQ tested normal, and the examiner wasn't able to finish the test because Brooklynn just quit. She said that Brooklynn would have been off the charts if she had finished the test), and she's one of the happiest children I've ever seen, with a wonderful imagination. Her teachers have told me how impressed they are with her progress.
We've been blessed with wonderful teachers throughout our entire journey. Her special education teacher emails me on a daily basis to tell me about her progress, and her regular teacher emails me each week. She started out by spending about 30% of her day in the regular classroom with an aide helping her along, and then the rest of the time in the resource room. Now she spends about 60% of her day in the regular room without an aide! She's really grown up so much. She has continued to surprise her teachers, and they said they didn't expect her to progress so quickly. She even recently received "Student of the Month".
So that is an update of what we've gone through over the last 6 years. Throughout this entire process I tended to alienate myself from people. Playdates and playgroups were almost impossible. Brooklynn would get overwhelmed, or I would feel like other mom's were judging my child's abilities and my abilities as a mom (because, lets face it, mom's compare kids). Even dinners with other families were hard when their much younger children were doing things that I could only dream of Brooklynn doing. Now that we have Trail I realize that I was wrong. Things simply come naturally to him, and Brooklynn just has to work harder. It has nothing to do with our parenting or her intelligence, it's just how she is. We're still waiting on an "official" diagnosis--we've been on a waiting list for a neuro-psycological examination for 7 months now. As she gets older, she shows more signs of Autism. I will honestly be more surprised if she's not autistic. But throughout this process I've grown up too. I can now type the "A word" without bawling my eyes out (okay, there are a few tears, but no more sobbing), and I've learned that she's not a victim. She's a special little girl that God blessed us with. She's beautiful, intelligent, sweet, loving, compassionate, and I could just keep going on and on. We love our little girl more than words can express, and I know if she didn't have these "issues" then she wouldn't be our Brooklynn! I think the poem "Welcome to Holland" is a wonderful description of what we've experienced, and I must say that I truly love Holland.
