Introduction

Hi. I'm Amanda. I am a mom to three wonderful kids. Two daughters (A and T) and one son (LJ).

As an infant, LJ used to move his hands like he was riding a motorcycle. You know; twisting his hands like he's revving up the motorcycle. That along with his delays in speech got me worried. Another thing that worried me was the toe walking that I noticed. I brought all of these issues up with our pediatrician. I was told that the hand flapping was just a quirk of LJ's. The speech issues were okay because he's a boy and most boys are slower at reaching milestones. As for the toe walking, I was told that because he COULD walk flat footed that he was okay. The Dr. recommended waiting until age 3 for a speech evaluation so I went along with his advice.

After doing my own research, I decided to request evaluations with the OT and the ST when LJ was three. The pediatrician never advised these evalautions himself. I had to call and ask for them. We began seeing an OT at University Hospital. We also had a speech evaluation but LJ was denied for services. After several visits with the OT, we ended up talking to another ST who asked lots of questions. To make a long story short, the ST ended up getting us approved for therapy under "feeding difficulties". We continued with therapy for almost two years before I called the pediatrican to request the PT evaluation.

We saw the PT and started therapy. After just a few visits, the PT recommended AFOs for LJ. He had decreased range of motion in his legs from the toe walking. He was fitted for the braces.

After all of these evaluations and therapy visits I realized that our pediatrician was not meeting our needs. I switched to a pediatrician recommended to me. We set up an appointment with Dr. Paige Ward. At the end of our 30 minute appointment, Dr. Ward told us she suspected autism and ADHD. Finally we were getting somewhere. She referred us to a psychiatrist. We had an appointment but it was a couple months away. I was told about a pychologist that was good and I called to check their availability. Lucky for us, the office had a cancellation for the next week! I told them I would take it. We had our evaluation done which basically consisted of me filling out tons of papers with questions that I had to rate. They also did a brief interview with LJ alone. With this information the psychologist diagnosed LJ.

Asperger's Syndrome
ADHD
some Oppositional behaviors

We were finally getting somewhere! We finally had some answers to all of the questions that we've been asking since LJ was an infant.

After the diagnosis, we switched therapists. We started going to NDT Programs. We were already seeing the PT (Jan) at NDT and we started seeing the OT there as well (Meghan). We absolutely love this clinic. Unfortunately our insurance limits our OT and PT to a total of 20 visits per year. We should be going to therapy once/week but that would mean we would only have 2 1/2 months of therapy a year then go 9 1/2 months with nothing and start all over. This obviously won't work because it wouldn't be effective. So we started the year off doing once/week and we've now moved to once/month.

I try to work with LJ at home as much as possible. We are limited because of space in the house. I recently purchased a 12x16 storage building that I had intended to transform into a sewing room but I've decided to use this for a therapy room. I am going to be sewing and doing embroidery to raise money for the room. My first goal is to raise the money to prep the room. I will need to run electricity to the room and install lighting. I'll also need a window A/C unit and flooring.

Wiring and lights $150.00
A/C Window unit $120.00
Flooring $130.00
Total $400.00

I will be keeping track of my progress on this blog. I will be posting progress pictures as well. I will also use this blog to post information about therapy and hints and tips for working with your child at home. I hope this blog can help someone out.

And thanks to Meghan for nudging me to start this blog.