Koleman's Story Part One
January 10th 2004 was the day that our lives would change forever! What an amazing change it was! Koleman joined our little family; His dad, myself and our 19 month old daughter Addie. From the first moment I held him, I felt something extraordinary about him. He had something that was distinctly special.
When Koleman was seventeen months we were at my mom's house. My mom and I were talking in the living room as Koleman sat on the floor playing with the magnetic alphabet letters from the fridge. We heard him say "M", and so we both looked over in surprise that he would even know the name of any letter. Even more to our surprise, when we looked at him he was holding the letter M. A few seconds later he turned it upside down and said "W". We looked at each other in shock. My mom said, "Let's see how many letters he knows.". As we held each letter up he would say the correct name of EVERY single letter!!! My mom asked if I had been teaching him. I wish I could have taken the credit, but I had never sat and taught him every letter of the alphabet.
He started reading when he was two. Not just reading words here and there, but fluently reading small books. He never ceased to amaze us, and still doesn't!! Although he was developing academically, and physically right on and way beyond the average age, socially something seemed amiss.
I started really noticing that he didn't like to play or be around other children. He was more content to seclude himself in his bedroom with books. I told my husband and my family and they just kept saying that they were sure he was fine, and that it was normal at that age to just parallel play. I would try to take their word for it, but couldn't push the feeling away that something wasn't right. When he was 2 and a half, I took him to his pediatrician. I told her my concerns, and she was willing and ready to help. She checked him out as thoroughly as she could, and proceeded to tell me that she thought he was just fine. I took her word for it, and figured she was a doctor and definitely knew a lot more than I did.
As time passed, I just couldn't push the feelings away that something was not right with him. I wasn't going to ignore those feelings any longer. They were much too strong. So I took him back to our pediatrician and pretty much demanded a referral. She referred me to Primary Children's Medical Center in Salt Lake City.
It was the beginning of December 2007 when we took him. We spent a whole day there as they did some very thorough testing. By the time we were done with all the testing he was diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome. Overwhelming feelings of fear, stress, and sadness came over me. I was so scared. How come my child just couldn't be "normal"? How was I supposed to know what to do? What if I did all the wrong things? Would he be happy? Would he be teased? All of these thoughts were flooding my head as we drove home. I just didn't know how I was going to handle this.
Like many I had heard of Autism and knew a little bit about it, however the Autistic Spectrum and Asperger's Syndrome were terms I had never heard of before. I just thought that Autism was Autism. I didn't know there were all sorts of forms and different levels of severity. I started doing my research. Along with the huge stack of papers I received from the diagnoses team, I started ordering books, reading articles, searching the Internet, etc. It seemed to me that all the resources I read through pretty much said the same thing. It seemed pretty straight forward and to the point. I thought that I would be able to refer to these resources for every little thing I wanted to know or needed help with for Koley. What a naive way of thinking!! We don't have a hand book to turn to for any child! All children are different, and that is the same for children with Autism and Asperger's Syndrome. Each case is different and unique! One of my favorite resources is OASIS @ MAAP. If you click on that link it explains what Asperger's Syndrome is and provides many different resources.
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