My son Ethan (warning LONG POST, but lots of background on Ethan)

I know I've written about Ethan alot. But I don't know if I've ever really explained things. That's what this post is going to be about. To tell how his diagnosis came about, but also to help you get to know him better.

I found out I was pregnant with Ethan just after Thanksgiving 2001. I had an uneventful pregnancy for the most part. We found out at around 5 months that we were having a boy and tried to decide on a name.

On July 28th, around 6pm I was sitting at the computer instant messaging a friend and noticed that I was having period-like cramps. I dismissed it for the most part and just went about my evening. They got stronger and I took a warm bath. Around 1am, my contractions were about a minute apart and strong. Jason drove me to the hospital and I was admitted. Labor went fairly quickly after that. I had an epidural about 6:30 or 7am. By 7:45, I was pushing. The doctor was mean, I remember that clearly. I was having a hard time pushing and she said (in a nasty tone!) "Well if you don't push harder and get that baby out soon, we will just have to do a c-section." Which I was not against but her tone was not nice. She had no bedside manner at all. She also had kept taking the sheet of me the entire time I was there and I was freezing!!

Ethan was born at 8:31 am with the cord around his neck twice. As soon as the cord was cut he was breathing fine. We stayed in the hospital that day and night and Tuesday night also. Wednesday morning the pediatrician noticed a heart murmur and did his first of many echos. Sure enough, he has Ventricular Septal Defect. A small hole in the wall of his ventricle.

Time goes by. We tried breastfeeding but I couldn't get the hang of it, my milk never really came in and Ethan HAD to gain weight because of his heart. I made the decision to switch him to formula.

Little did I realize at the time, I was actually depressed. I ended up going when he was about 6 months old to the doctor and getting a mild anti-anxiety/anti-depressant medication that I was on for a year or so.

Ethan gained some weight but slowly. He was always and still is in the 25th percentile for his weight and 60-75th for his height. His height has slowed lately though and he is now in the 50th for that.

At around 6 months old, I captured him on video playing with the toy piano at my request. Looking back though, he never really gave eye contact or babbled a whole lot. He cooed a little, smiled some and laughed some.

At a year old, he was very independent. He liked to play by himself and kept him self occupied for hours. I thought I had gotten lucky and just had a very easy-going, self-sufficient child. It breaks my heart to know that maybe I should have seen the warning signs.

When Ethan was 18 months old and not talking at all, I asked the pediatrician about it. He recommended the local Birth-three early intervention through the county school district. Ethan was evaluated immediately and found eligible for speech therapy and eventually to go to school 2 days a week after he turned 2. His teacher, Miss Kim, came to the house once a week and worked with him. She was the kindest lady ever. She gave us some great ideas and really helped Ethan and us. She was also the first one to mention Autism.

To us though, Ethan didn't seem to fit the typical Autism "profile" so to speak. Everything you hear and see, didn't seem to fit him. So we waited and just kept up with speech and early intervention preschool. A few weeks before he turned three, Ethan started talking all the time and had learned some easy sign language to help communicate with us. Alex was born 2 months before Ethan turned 3 and Ethan seemed somewhat excited about the baby but not too interested.

Just after his third birthday, I was sitting and looking at flashcards with him to have him name the pictures. On the front was the word and the picture. I had dropped the flashcards and they got all mixed up. Laying on the ground, with the picture covered was one of the cards. Ethan looked at it and told me what it said! In disbelief, I picked up and shuffled all the cards, covered the pictures and had him tell me what he saw. Sure enough he was reading the words! Just to be sure I made new cards up on index cards with other words. Again, he read them to me!

At the time Ethan was still not potty trained and didn't even seem to know when he was wet or soiled. He didn't like his hands dirty and from about 18 months old had been lining toys up in a straight line (blocks, cars, little people). He was finally starting to learn to play with toys "the right way". Ethan also didn't like any pasta, even mac n cheese.

Over the course of following year, he started playing with others a little more, talking even more and still attended preschool 2 days a week. About 5 weeks before his 4th birthday, I announced that he was going to start going on the potty. Within 3 weeks, not only was he going on the potty during the day, but he stayed dry all night! He's only ever had a few accidents since then.

We took Ethan to a pediatric developmental specialist, who ran some tests and asked us lots of questions and evaluated Ethan in his office. At that time Ethan was diagnosed with a communication disorder/speech delay.

In September 2006 we moved home to Ohio. At the time we lived for about 4 1/2 months with my inlaws. I wanted to wait before we put Ethan back in preschool until we had our own place, preferably in a different school district. The one we were in only had 3 public preschool programs and they were all in not-so-good areas of town. In February we found a rental and moved to a better school district. In April Ethan started preschool and got speech and occupational therapy for his behaviors that were starting.

He would get frustrated and throw toys, he didn't want to color, he couldn't put his coat on. All of this was hard on him. We worked on all of this and he started to seem more adjusted to school.

Ethan started getting interested in maps and directions. He would spend hours scouring over atlases and then drawing the maps out.

In September '07 Ethan started Kindergarten at a great school and seemed to do great. We had a wonderful IEP in place and his behaviors weren't too bad. We moved at the end of December back into the other school district and had to send him to a different school. He struggled because the school wasn't "aware that he had an IEP" even though I had given it to them. The class was bigger and his teacher had several students who had behavior problems (fist-fighting in kindergarten? seriously? that's bad!). After 2 months, everything finally got straightened out and they started his speech and OT. Things calmed down some but he had a few days where he couldn't settle down and had to come home.

This year, we are sending him to a Catholic elementary school and he seems to be learning alot.

Ethan likes:

• Maps, drawing them and looking at them
• chalk cities- sidewalk chalk on the patio blocks
• building cities from blocks with his brother
• reading books
• running around with his friends at soccer
• mac n cheese and spaghetti!!!

Lately Ethan has been trying new things. For dinner the other night I made couscous and he ate it! We've never had it before. He will usually try at least one bite of most anything. Before he wouldn't. Also he doesn't seem to mind as much being dirty. He brushes his teeth by himself and gets himself fully dressed belt and all! He even gets his clothes off the hangers for school. Just the other day he learned how to zip his sweatshirt completely by himself. He was struggling with the little thing, getting it hooked together right. He can't tie his shoes yet (but I couldn't either and I hated to until 3rd grade! Did I ever mention I took speech therapy for my R's? Yup, couldn't say them, sounded like W's for a long time)

Ethan has some sensory integration issues. Loud noises and strong smells (cabbage in the kitchen at church before the festival this summer!) really bother him. He starts crying or yelling about it, although it has calmed down some. At his cardiologist appt, he said the echo wand was hurting him, and genuinely seemed as though it physically hurt, though I'm sure she was not using any pressure!

He told me that he has a hard time paying attention to the teacher because everybody is talking and it distracts him. He's having a hard time tuning out background noise (kind of like someone else I know *mom raises hand*). He yells and gets upset when things don't go his way and can be disrespectful to his teacher by yelling at her, "NO!" when she asks him to do things.

Ethan reads at a 3rd or 4th grade level, but understands at a 1st grade level. His understanding of plot, characters, reality and pretend has come a LONG way. He plays pretend with his brother all the time, playing house, tea party, school, sleepover, all while using their stuffed animals as friends. His math skills are outstanding. He can add and subtract low numbers in his head and when you put some objects in front of him, he doesn't do the typical," one, two, three, four, five" he just says "there's five apples" or whatever. Although the teacher said he needs to work on counting objects in sequence. Um, isn't the way he's doing it beyond that?

Ethan's spelling is great, he's gotten 100% on every test so far. However his handwriting isn't so good. It's getting better, and he's not fighting so much at school with it. At home he does great!

They have a contest each month to name the walk they do on the last day of the month. For October, Ethan came up with Harvest Hopalong! Isn't that cute?

His attention span isn't the same as other kids his age and he gets distracted or upset by things that wouldn't bother you or I or other kids.

At Ethan's last soccer practice, a kid came over and asked me why Ethan cries a lot. I said, well it's kind of hard to explain, but some things bother him differently, that's all. Then he said "well isn't it cause he has a different brain than us?" Now I'm not upset with the kid, he just repeated what he's heard. I know that for a fact. But it was also misunderstood. Ethan's teacher (who had no right btw) told the class that "Ethan's brain works differently than ours." Ethan told me this a few weeks ago and I just kind of let it go. I shouldn't have. Then the other day I asked the teacher if maybe I could come in and talk to the class about Ethan and Autism and stuff and she said "Sure. We haven't really talked much about it other than I told them Ethan's brain works differently than ours." OOOH I was hot. I smiled sweetly and said OK and walked away. After all I was in a Catholic school building and besides I want to set a good example for my children and be a good Christian. Now I know his "brain works differently" or something like that. But to tell a bunch of first-graders that, who may or may not understand what that means (who, from what the little boy at soccer who is in Ethan's class told me, DON'T understand or interpret it the same way) is not okay. Ethan likes many of the same things, he wants to make friends and play. I don't want the kids to treat him differently or not be his friend.

Anyway, I've been seriously thinking about going up there and talking to the class and trying to explain it to them a little bit better. In the process, I've found two books I want to take with me and read.

The Autism Acceptance book: Being a friend to someone with Autism

Since We're Friends: An Autism Picture Book