Connor's Story

December 23, 2008 was the longest day that ended in a happy healthy baby boy being born. From the week we brought him home he was the best baby, always on schedule but then we started to notice a few things. He wouldn't look us in the eyes, as time went on he started crawling and then a few months later walking but we still didn't hear the words.
His doctor had made the decision to put him in Early Childhood Intervention. Still saw more complications with his tantrums and mainly his high sensory needs. As I started college and put him in daycare, it was an everyday event of him pinching cheeks or choking his friends and lots of energy. I know it wasn't his fault but in the end they told us that in order to give the best care for all of his friends, he could not stay at his daycare. We tried to put him in the local head start program but was denied.
So we put him in Pre-K. Still pretty much and everyday struggle with pinching and choking his friends and very hyper, so we decided to go to our first specialist, who concluded that Connor was just a boy, with sensory needs. We agreed but still had a hunch of something more. As more of the incidents happened more often, we knew something else was going on. We took him to another specialist and finally some of the puzzle pieces were coming together, ADHD was diagnosed and medicated. This year he started his second year at his school and his teacher again had problems with him acting out so we had our first parent conference to see what we needed to do to get Connor the best education. They just gave us a couple of tips for his schooling hours and just said give it time. It wasn't getting better and neither were his grades, he was still considered at the Pre-K level. So we had him tested for Autism and he was diagnosed with severity 2 Autism just recently.

Kirsten Smith
Lubbock, TX