I don't remeber the exact date, but it was sometime in the spring of 1996. Teddy had just turned 5 years old.
Theodore Donald Hughes was born on May 28, 1991. He came into the world kicking and screaming and weighed in at a healthy 7 pounds 12 ounces. When the Doc handed him to me I couldn't believe that I had created something so adorable, so vibrant, so....BIG !
I had done babysitting but I was the youngest in the family and there had never been a baby in my house. We struggled thru jaundice and breastfeeding, 2am feedings and the decision to switch him to the bottle. OH, the guilt !
He grew and grew.I had wanted a baby of my own for so long I couldn't resist hugging and cuddling and snuggling my baby all the time.We loved him so much.
2 years went by. He walked at 14 months, he could do puzzles and build trains and color. At his 2 year old check-up the Doc asked me about his vocabulary. "How many words does he have ?" I thought about it. I said "I guess about 10" "That's not really where he should be, let's get his hearing checked"
That was the first day I ever suspected something might be wrong.We got the ball rolling. I called social services and arranged for a bunch of evaluations. Physically everything was ok. By the time he was almost 3 we decided to enroll him in a special education pre-school. He got speech services right away and his speech improved dramatically. At the age of 2 and a 1/2 he was going on a school bus !
In special ed it's all about the "classification" what the dr's and teachers have determined is the basic "problem" . Ted went through pre-school being classified as a child with a speech delay.When the time came for Kindergarten, a new classification was needed. A new set of evaluations were also needed. I tookTeddy and my giant, pregnant self over to Stony Brook Univesity for the evaluations. Driving to Stony Brook that spring afternoon for the results,We had no idea what to expect.
We sat down at one of those kiddie sized tables while the psychologist (who had a regular sized chair) gave us the results. "Your son has Pervasive Developmental Disorder. It is a form of Autism, it means that Teddy doesn't communicate with children his own age. He is more interested in older or younger people, than his own peers. He has no desire to to play with other children, he can't figure out their social cues. he doesn't notice subtle things like eye movements and hand gestures. These hings will get harder for him to interpret as he gets older.We suggest a small class and lot's of idividual attention. Speech therapy and small group play is important, too"
They explained abolut the Autism spectrum. how someone can some parts of Autism and not be totally "Autistic".I had a vague idea of autism. I had seen "Rain Man", but Teddy wasn't really like that. Suddenly it all started to make sense. Teddy used to constantly play the same game over and over.He would repeat lines from movies, and repeat a sentence he had already said.He could play for hours with the same toy or watch the same movie 3 times (or more) in a row. His favorite thing to do was roll a train or Matchbox car down someone's leg. He could do that over and over and NEVER get bored of it. Driving home that day, we kept waiting to feel disappointed, lost confused.We didn't. Finally, at last, we knew what was wrong with our boy. There were people out there who could help him. We bit the bullet and sent him off to Special -Ed Kindergarten in Suffolk county BOCES.
He thrived there. He made friends. He started to talk all the time. He was fun and funny and animated. He learned how to read and write his name. He went to a special program arranged by the Genesis-Eden II School in Plainview. ABA is short for "Applied Behavior Analysis" It is a treatment plan to help autistic children break the pattern of self stimulation. "Stimming" is something that many autistics do. It is repetitive motion that they do for either comfort (most common) or just to entertain themselves. They get very little stimulation from other people. Hugs, contact, play are not interesting to them They would rather entertain themselves. Teddy's favorite stimming behavior was to wave his hands to imitate a train going down the tracks. he would also make train sounds (loudly) and repeat lines from movies out of the blue. The Gemini program helped him with all that. I don't have the typing ability to explain ABA Therapy here, but it is a long, drawn out process. To be honest, I never could have taught it to him myself, I would have gone nuts !
In May Teddy will turn 21.In June of 2010 he graduated from High School.In a class of 82 kids, he was 45th in his class. Right in the middle. He has been working with his dad every day after school since he was 12. Instead of college, he now works full time with his Dad testing fire alarms. He is lucky. He has found a job that uses his strengths.He doesn't get bored doing the same thing over and over. He is a hard worker and a terrific young man.
On that spring afternoon way back in 1996, it could have been all bad news. It wasn't. He wasn't sick, he wasn't a lost cause. he was just going to need extra love and patience and we knew we could do THAT.
