Fostering The Love In Kansas

Over Christmas break, I got a call from KU Med Center Childhood Development.  We had an appointment set for March but over break, I got a call that there had been a cancelation and could we come in.  YES!!! So, of course, the day of our appointment was a huge snow storm.  KU Med is an hour away on a good day.  This day, it took us over two hours. And I was totally stressed out. What happened was a total of an hour where they asked me about Little Man and "observed" him.  What I was expecting, was to have something definitive or something I can now assign to him. What I got was that he is NOT autistic.  He's social.  That's what ruled it out.  He makes eye contact, he talks to people, he loves people.  That is what ruled it out, the only thing that ruled it out. I guess, in order to be diagnosed with autism, you have to fill all three criteria.  I don't know what the three criteria are other than the social one. I'm kind of unhapp...

I realize that some days 5-year-olds have rough days.  Today was one of the roughest days so far, for Little Man. He woke up in a good mood, we went to school in a good mood.  For all intents and purposes, I thought he would have a good day - like every other school day. Around noon, I received an email from one of his teachers asking if something had happened over the weekend because he was being very disruptive. When I went to pick him up after school, I was pulled into the school and spoke to both of his teachers. He kicked one teacher, tackled another kid in assembly, yelled throughout the day, had to be removed from the assembly and was pretty much a complete a-hole to everyone around him. I made him apologize to the teacher and then we tried to talk about what happened.  Tried being the operative word. Trying to talk to Little Man is like talking into a canyon and getting your own echo back.  He will repeat the last word or two when you talk to him but ...