A short time back, I posted an article that the North Shore Pediatric Therapy sent to me warning against the urges to mask a diagnosis to prevent a child from being bullied at school. The article also stated some parents attempt to hide a condition like ADHD, ASD or Dyslexia because they fear their child will also be treated differently in the classroom. The article struck a nerve with me.
Of course, the article makes sense. It may even seem like a weird thing to remind someone of or warn against – until you’ve lived it.
My son starting exhibiting “off” behaviors that would lead to an eventual Aspberger’s Syndrome diagnosis when he was less than 18 months old. Things that seem so typical now were a mystery to my husband and I back then. The stacking, staring endless at ceiling fans, the inability to mimic any behavior… Sure enough, my behavior as a parent was “deny, deny, deny” while privately scouring the internet for symptoms. My husband acted the same way I did. He even kicked it up a notch by trying to disclaim some of my son’s strange behaviors in front of family. It sounds crass but it really wasn’t. We were unsure of what was going on and our defense mechanisms fired up.
Shortly after this stage, we finally received the official diagnosis – Aspberger’s Syndrome. Somehow the diagnosis sent us reeling even though we suspected something was amiss for years. After the initial shock, we came to the conclusion that we had to do “whatever it takes” to get my son to a point where he could attend kindergarten (he was light years away developmentally and way behind other pre-schoolers). This meant facing our fears head on to begin researching special education options.
Basically, we went from denial and hiding behaviors to attacking our concerns. It was much easier for us to try to mask or hide our son’s problems than it was to have special educators in our living room discussing plans for my son to enroll in a special education preschool. Admitting something was wrong was extremely difficult. We worried he would be singled out for being different or that his classmates would treat him differently if he was labeled.
Fortunately, my son’s special education program was extremely successful thanks to the hard work of everyone involved in his early education (you can read more about specifics and rapid progress in various autism diary). In hindsight, I’m positive my son’s path would have been far more difficult had we not attacked his Aspberger’s problem “head on”.
It may seem obvious or easy to tell someone that their child needs early intervention and treatment to better a condition. But, when I think about how my husband I felt while we were admitting there was a problem with special educators in our living room, it doesn’t seem as easy as it should. Admitting there is a problem is tough enough, telling others can be even tougher.
