Diagnosis!?!

When I called me pediatrician about Carsons apparent motor delay they directed me to early itervention. Early Intervention evaluated him and agreed all was well with his development except his motor skills and ability to do puzzles, the pshychologist was also concerned about his anxiety. So I was told he did not qualify for early intervention because he was to smart, but, that there was something going on and I needed to go get a private evaluation. They provided me with quite the list of things to tell the pediatrician.....apraxia, motor planning disorder, bilateral cooderdination delay, and the list went on!

I was back at square one, the pediatrican, a different one than I had seen the year prior, of coarse. At his appointment I told them about the meeting with early intervention and read off the list of possible causes. The pediatrician had Carson write, draw, trace, walk on his toes, walk on his heels, jump and so on. As Carson tried to perform the tasks he would become either frustrated and refuse to try or he would become "silly". When he struggled walking on his heels he started falling down and laughing, I had noted this previously in daily life, I have always said he will be the class clown, when he has a difficult time with a new skill he will try to "joke" it off, intentionally making it a appear he was trying to be funny instead of what was actually happening, he was struggling. Pretty clever for a 4 year old I think. After some gentle insistance and a piece of bribery gum we finally got him to really try and walk on his heels. As he did his left hand curled up beside his chest in a "chicken wing" type motion. The Pediatrician explained that his motor cortex was overloaded and unable to process the information needed to complete the task. He said this could be as simple as a kid who is just a little behind to a very mild cerebral palsey, but that he was in no hurry to "label" my son. So to be totally honest, that freaked me out a little, cerebral palsey, that was one thing I was NOT expecting to hear. By the end he sent us away with a referral to see an occupational therapist for evaluation and treatment of "Fine Motor Delay". I felt a little worried, because of the "cerebral palsey" comment, a little relieved that someone finally listened to me AND recognized what I saw, and happy that we were going to get some help!

We made an appointment for an evaluation and luckily after a cancellation were seen only 4 days after our referral. For the first while we just went over his history, his paperwork, my concerns but after that the questions they were asking me were surprisingly right on the money. I definitely need to mention that during this entire event Carson is climbing onto and jumping off of EVERY thing he can possibly find. Finally after about 1 hour of him NON STOP running, jumping, and being crazy, the OT asked if he was like that alot. My response "I feel like from morning to bedtime he is constantly going nonstop." After about an hour and a half they mentioned that they believed he has Sensory Processing Disorder and asked if we would like to do the testing. WELL YA! As we went over the test, question after question came a sense of WOW, it was crazy how much it hit home with me. I felt like someone was looking into my life and then asking me questions about it. One WOW moment came when she asked if he ran into walls and fell down. Well I nearly fell of my chair as I thought "you have got to be kidding me, there are other kids out there who do that!" That was something that always struck me as strange, you dont really see kids run into a wall and fall down over and over and over, but Carson does. Well 30 minutes later (Carson still non-stop climbing and jumping, swinging and spinning) They gave me a packet that explained SPD, and told me he needed Occupational Therapy, starting with a 12 week program and then a re-evaluation. They gave me books to read and a feeling like, "we can help" and that is a good feeling! I also left feeling VINDICATED! All of those behaviors that I recognized, I was NOT crazy! I had known for along time this is what was going on with my son, finally someone listened and stopped long enough to see what I saw. From the outside Carson is just like any other 4 year old boy, but if you just stop and watch him, look at his behavior, you can see he is a VERY SMART boy who is struggling but is using his smarts and his heart stopping charm to pull things off. So finally we have a diagnosis!