Confereneces and steps forward

It's a new year in Owen's life, so that means a new color for my posts.

Conferences were a couple of weeks ago and my conference with Mrs. Savage (O's teacher) was very enlightening. Over the last three years I had noticed things about Owen that made me kinda sit up and go, "Hmmm." I wasn't sure if what I was seeing was normal (or within normal) or if there was something else there. Things like his ability to very quickly master puzzles, the sensory issues he seems to have, his mastery of number recognition (100) and counting ability (120+) six months ago, his inability to be still, how he verbally obsesses on certain subjects (My touch my piggie's belly, for example). Mrs. Savage mentioned to me that due to his very low fine motor skills (mentioned also by his day care teacher last year) and the verbal obsession thing, in addition to other things, she was suspicious that he may be high functioning Aspergers. Remember that I said that I had noticed things? This thought had occured to me before she said anything. I had no basis for comparison, though, so I decided to let it go until he got into a formal school setting. Other people I know agree that this is a definite possibility.

One of the benefits to Owen's birthday being in the middle of October is that conferences also fall at the middle of October. He turned 4 four days after the conference, and our annual check-up with the doctor was 11 days after the conference. In that time, I put together a list of things which lead me to be concerned about Asperger's. The list ended up being 2 pages long. The pediatrician (who is fresh out of her residency - his appointment was the first time we met her) agreed that it was worth digging into a bit more so she gave us a referral to a specialist. As it stands now, I have received and distributed a stack of surveys to each of five different people (two family friends, Mrs. Savage, the PE teacher at school, and Owen's day care teacher from last year) plus filled out my own stack. The parent surveys (done my the family friends and me) are in to the specialist as I hand-delivered them on Tuesday. I have the PE teacher's survey to hand deliver this week and Mrs. Savage put hers in the mail the day I got it to her. I am just hoping that his day care teacher from last year has hers finished and in the mail. I guess it can take up to two weeks for the office to get the mail once it's been delivered to the hospital due to the routing and filtering.

I talked with the intake nurse for this same doctor's office (the specialist) yesterday for 20-30 minutes and she sorta got a feel for Owen and my concerns regarding him. She also suggested that we do a speech eval since people have some difficulty understanding Owen at times due to mumbling.

When I dropped off the parent surveys this week, we at least got some sort of an appointment set up for him. Because he does not have and IEP (Individualized Education Plan) and is not receiving any services at this point, we have an appointment for an assessment to be done on December 21. This appointment will take 2 hours. Hopefully the appointment with the specialist won't be too long after that, though it could take anywhere between 6 and 8 weeks after they get all of the paperwork (surveys) in for us to get an appointment...they'll call us once everything is in to schedule the actual appointment with the doctor.