On the spectrum

We took James to a follow-up visit at the Knights of Columbus Developemental Center at Cardinal Glennon on Friday morning. We have wondered for a few years now if James is on the autism spectrum, and our pediatrician recommended this clinic as a good place to go for an evaluation.

At the end of the meeting (lots of questions, a medical evaluation, and a monitored play session; the first round last month was a speech and an occupational therapy evaluation), the doctor and the pediatric psychologist confirmed what we suspected: that James is on the autism spectrum.

What does this mean? Our opening position is that it means we have a term for the behaviors we are already familiar with in James: slow language development, low social awareness, self-stimulating behaviors. Nothing is really new here except that we have a formal diagnosis.

Where is James on the spectrum? We forgot to ask, actually. But the group seemed encouraged by the progress James has been making with various therapies, as have we—so again, not much really new there. And they did note that, developmentally, James is still very young, and so it is somewhat difficult to say for certain what's to come, or what parts of the evaluation are affected by developmental age rather than disorder.

The good news is that autism is where the money is these days—research, therapies, insurance. Missouri just passed an autism bill that requires insurance companies to pay for therapies, though I fear that our insurance will be exempt because it's a non-profit (even though Down syndrome is a medical diagnosis, we've been turned down repeatedly for therapies because they're not "medically necessary"). So it may be helpful down that road as far as school therapies or interventions go to have that dual diagnosis if we think we need it.