2 years old and feeling stuck...

My daughter turned 2 in April and that by the summertime she'd been fever-free and well for nearly six months since the massive terrifying meltdown of constant illness we had the previous fall. She still had maybe 8-12 words she used consistently and didn't care to learn any others.

We tried sign language. But she would get angry and refused to learn anything but the sign for 'more'. She liked that one. LOL, I wonder why. We found a speech therapist in the area and started taking her there twice a week. We went all summer and only succeeded in creating more frustration for ourselves and for my daughter.

Typical kids will mimic sounds and words that you say. My daughter never did this. She didn't make animal noises. She didn't want you to read books....but, she would take the books and go look at them alone in her room.

Anytime you tried to get her to repeat something, she would get angry. Imagine that twice a week with a therapist. Everyone once in a blue moon she would be in the mood to try a sound or look at a book with you. But I'm talking like...this maybe happened once a week.

She loved to watch TV. Veggie Tales, Mickey Mouse, etc. She would act out the parts, moving around the room like she was the characters in the movie. Every once in while we'd hear a new word pop out randomly so we let her keep watching them. It became the only time we would hear her interact with anything. She didn't want to talk to us. She also really liked to play on the iPad. At 2 1/2 she was perfectly capable of switching in and out of her own games and would play by herself giggling and laughing for hours on end. I didn't know what to do. She was happier with a TV show or the iPad than she ever was with me. So for a long time I just let it be and I became more and more depressed.

At this time my mother started bringing up the idea that maybe she was autistic. Or had developmental delays. Sensory issues. Something??? She read book after book after book and for a while I was really angry and I didn't listen. There was nothing wrong with my kid. She just couldn't TALK. That didn't make her autistic, ADD, ADHD, Aspergers, etc. It was really difficult for me and my husband both to get to the point where we did acknowledge that our daughter needed something more. During this time I also made talked with some awesome moms online who shared their journey with their special needs kids. It made all the difference in the world to me. I'm not saying it was EASY! Hell no. I had nightmares of never seeing her succeed at school, of her living with us for the rest of her life, never getting married, never having a family of her own. I was so terrified. I'll be honest, from time to time those feelings, doubts, and worries do come back.

Anyway, back to the speech therapist...
She made very little progress with our daughter and I ultimately ended the sessions due to mine and my daughter's frustration. Nothing she was doing in the sessions was anything we weren't doing at home to try and encourage her to speak and copy ANYTHING we said. The money needed to be spent elsewhere.

So moving on...
We found an autism specialist doctor and made an appointment that August. It cost and arm and a leg because it wasn't covered by insurance, but it was still worth it because it put us on the right path to helping our daughter. Within 10-15 min of seeing her, he told us she was on the spectrum. NOTE, he did not say where on the spectrum and he said not to worry about where she was right now. (meaning it didn't matter if she was ADD, ADHD, Autistic, Aspergers, Processing, Sensory, etc.) All treatment was the same for any color of the spectrum rainbow.

Wow! So that was news to us. We had no idea at the time that all these disorders were linked together. His first and foremost rule was diet change. Children on the spectrum are super sensitive to things that typical kids/people can overcome without much trouble.

1. Gluten

2. Dairy

3. Chemical Preservatives and Additives

That's all for now. I'll get into how we started the change and what we saw change in our daughter next time.

XOXO

Krystal