August through December

I have to be honest, I needed a break. I needed to get away from wishes and just enjoy what is. Dacotah is making progress by leaps and bounds. Yet the sting in my heart lets me know we still have a long road ahead to make life as normal as possible.

So I'll sum up August through December.  I had given up. EVERYONE fought us every time we mentioned that we thought Dacotah was autistic.  I have heard, "but he makes great eye contact" so many times I literally wanted to throw up every single time I heard it. That's great I thought, I'm glad he looks at you all of 2 seconds and escapes back into what he was doing. We had one specialist go as far as to tell us that Dacotah wasn't sleeping through the night because it was a learned behavior. I had the same doctor tell us that Dacotah bit himself just for attention and that his screaming fits in the car needed to be redirected. Needless to say I was abrupt and polite when I told him I disagreed with his medical opinion. A learned behavior when our son had never slept through the night or more than four hours at a time. But alas I regress and I'm not going to focus on that visit.

We had a review of his IEP in October, I was done playing back and forth and called a meeting with his entire IEP team, including his preschool and headstart teacher, his PT, OT, Developmental specialist, the school psych, and Dr. Sprouse conferenced called in from Maryland. At this point Dacotah has Severe Childhood speech apraxia, low muscle tone, KS, and the kind of services he was getting needed to be more focused on his genetic limitations. We changed his IEP from Developmental Delays to Other Health Impairment and got his speech increased to twice a week. Unfortunately, I still do not agree that it's enough to give him the best chance to succeed, but it was a step forward.

We spent Thanksgiving with some really close friends. We packed Dacotah's food and took it with us. It was the first time we attempted a meal with more than the grandparents in a while. Overall it went well. Dacotah stayed off in a room by himself where it was less crowded, happily eating and watching his "bot". At one point he hit behind some curtains and for about five minutes his dad and I were in a panic thinking he had found a way outside. When Dacotah is done, he is done and we left sooner than we would have liked followed by nonstop screaming all the way home. :(

Christmas was different this year. For the first time ever Dacotah was interested, he enjoyed opening his gifts and continued opening each of them. I recall last year him not caring. I am thankful for Ryan's Toy Review on Youtube Kids for showing him and sparking his interest in presents. Mamaw, Papaw came up the weekend before so he got to enjoy Christmas times two!  He doesn't understand the concept of Santa and that's okay I know a lot of families don't encourage Santa and that's okay. His ten year old sister still loves and enjoys it. Though next year we are going to let her be Santa and share with her the meaning of why Santa is important. Still there's a small part of me that would enjoy hearing him say "Look Santa Came" as he comes running into the living room. Alas, maybe next year.