So I actually remember the day that Grace really changed. She was about 2 1/4 years old. She simply woke up one morning and was different. She had always had her difficulties (the ear infections, the temper), but all of a sudden she was simply irrational. I was dumbfounded. At first I thought it was because I was pregnant. I thought she was processing the new baby that was coming. But I was only 3 months pregnant. How could she possibly understand that already?
She simply stopped communicating. She would talk to me, but not to anyone else. She wouldn't walk across the floor, wouldn't sit in the chair, wouldn't put on her shoes. She started needing to use the bathroom over and over and over again. I mean 10 - 15 times in 30 minutes. If I tried to stop her she would scream like I was killing her. She simply HAD to go to the potty again. I took her to the doctor. The checked to see if she had a bladder infection. Nothing was wrong with her ("It must be just a behavior problem"). I took her to a baby music class. She hid in the corner with her face to the wall. This is particularly alarming when you consider that a month earlier she would have interacted just fine with the other children and the teacher. To put it quite simply, she had just slipped away, quickly, suddenly and without any logical reason.
When I look back on it I wonder why I didn't rush her to the Early Intervention clinic. Why didn't I go stand on their front steps at the crack of dawn and wait for them to open up and then demand that they do a full eval. on my baby? I think I was simply in denial. I just couldn't imagine that she was showing signs of autism or some developmental disorder. But looking back now, that's exactly what it looked like. I remember thinking too that she was too old to develop autism or OCD. That happened when they were like 15 months old or something like that. Not true. Not true at all.
No comments:
Post a Comment