Getting the News

This is Riley. He is newly 13-as of March 15! He has high functioning Autism.

If you are new to my situation, or if you haven't ever visited my other blog, Juliebeane, here's some background information. I am a mom and wife of 15 years to my husband, Kevin. My sons are 9 and 13 and I can't believe how old they have gotten! I am also a teacher. I've been teaching for 15 years. I currently teach 2nd grade, and have for 9 years. In February we finally got some answers to some of our concerns regarding our 13 year old (then 12) son, Riley. He has a diagnosis of PDD-NOS (Pervasive Development Disorder Not Otherwise Specified), from his therapist. This is a disorder on the Autism spectrum. We are seeking further testing from a clinical psychologist to see where exactly he falls on the spectrum, and to see what his strengths and weaknesses are. This will also help regarding school issues.

Let's flash back to February 8. That's the day I was home sick with my other son Quinn. Since I was home, I was able to make phone calls-something I have a hard time doing with my day job.

One call I needed to make that day was to Riley's therapist. He had had a significantly tough weekend celebrating his brother's birthday, and I wanted to run some of the events past his therapist. We had asked her to evaluate him, looking for signs of depression, anxiety, or an Autism disorder-something I had suspected for a really long time. She was just concluding her findings, and we already had a meeting scheduled to go over the results, after she consulted with a few people. In the course of our talking, she mentioned she thought he had many of the classic signs of Autism-rigidity, flat affect, lack of eye contact, etc. As you can imagine this was devastating news. I knew there was something "off " with him, had known it for a long time, had even suspected an Autism disorder, but hearing it confirmed, by a professional, threw me for a loop. Since then, it's been one adventure after another.