Autism Diagnosis…What Next?
Your Developmental Pediatrician looks at you, seeming to look right through you as if to ignore the fact that you have tears brewing in your 30 year old brown eyes. But you know he has done this hundreds of times…informed parents that their three year old son has Autism, Asperger’s, or PDD.
He doesn’t know you though.
He doesn’t know that you already knew the outcome two years ago when your son would not look at you or respond to his name, or when he cried when you held him. You knew when he hated the texture of his blankets and covered his ears and screamed in the grocery store, when he lined up his cars on the windowsill so he could stare out the window, and when he threw a tantrum on the swing while other children laughed and flew through the air.
Now that you have an official diagnosis you are not sure where to go, who to see, or where to get your benefits. Who will help your child?
1. Early Intervention can often be the best place to start. EI can provide Early Childhood programs beginning at age 3, speech, occupational therapy, physical therapy, and even summer school in some school districts. They can also provide respite care in some severe cases.
2. Explore options such as Floortime, Applied Behavior Analysis, and local support groups.
3. Research, Research, Research. Start with excellent internet resources such as:
American Society of Autism
Autism Speaks
Taca Now
National Institute of Mental Health
4. Team up with a group of doctors. You will probably need a neurologist, allergist, ophthalmologist, audiologist, immunologist, pediatrician (if not using your developmental ped.), speech therapist, occupational therapist, physical therapist, and in my opinion a biomedical doctor or DAN doctor (Defeat Autism Now) doctor.
5. Contact your insurance and inform yourself on their policies. (Most will not pay for medical treatment or for therapies because it is NOT curable)
6. Familiarize yourself with Wrightslaw for educational purposes.
7. Most of all, take time to be a family. This is and will be a very stressful time for all, no matter how much the diagnosis was expected. Agencies and Doctors will start to line up to help (hopefully) and the whirlwind will begin.
8. Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.
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