I am writing this blog to write about my son and our family’s journey. My plan is to start from the beginning, but you’re going to need some background information to understand. My name is Jessica and my sons name is Kannan (k AI - n uh n) he is 2 years old and a huge blessing, I also have a wonderful husband whose name is Trent. 

So here is where the story begins. Kannan was a full term healthy baby with no problems. He developed normally compared to other children his age. Every milestone that the doctors said he should of been hitting he was he did all the average things, the cooing, rolling over, sitting up, crawling, walking, so on and so forth. After a year old Kannan didn't have any words that I can remember besides momma and dadda which he didn't use correctly. Those words were just babbles. I don't feel that they were used correctly.

By 16 months Kannan still didn't have any functional words and it didn't seem like he was trying to talk. He was no longer babbling or even making baby noises. This is when I started getting really concerned it seemed like Kannan was starting to fall behind where all the other kids his age were. I started voicing my concern to his teacher (Kannan attends an early head start program). At the time I remember that we talked about trying to get him to talk some more and it didn’t happen.

About a month later Kannan’s teacher Amber referred Kannan to a program called first steps. First steps is a program that helps children with developmental delays like speech. Here is a little more about the program http://www.up-in-ky.com/pages/EarlyInterventionProviders.cfm . So Kannan was evealuated and started speech. At first I was told that he would probably just need a few sessions to give him a jump start and then he would be talking up a storm. Well unfortunately that wasn’t right. Yes, Kannan was beginning to say more, but when he was learning a new word he would lose an old word. I was really getting worried, this just didn’t seem very normal to me. On top of losing words when gaining new ones he was also not learning any functional words. The words that he was learning were words like cat, dog, pig, and the sounds that the animals make.

I would say that about 4 months into Kannan’s therapy his therapist told me that she was seeing other things that were red flags to her. There was a long list of things and honestly I wasn’t really noticing all of them and the ones that I was noticing I wasn’t putting much thought into. I was just worried about why he wasn’t talking. This list of concerns included little to no eye contact, no peer interaction, sensitive to the way certain things felt, aggression, and several other things. When she told me about these things I first felt like a horrible parent for not noticing these things, but I was not prepared for what she had to tell me next. She then told me that she thought Kannan might be showing signs of autism.

First I felt like I had been punched in the chest. All I wanted to do was cry, but I realized that if that was the case that God wouldn’t have given me this awesome child with whatever is going on if I couldn’t handle it. Since that day Kannan has been see his pediatrician and does have all the warning sings to be referred to have an evaluation done. Kane has also started DI therapy. The evaluation has been scheduled for February 25, 2014.

The evaluation date is getting really close and I have noticed some improvements in Kannan, but he still isn’t where he probably should be. I’m terrified to go and hear what the doctors have to say. I do not want my child to be labeled with something if he doesn’t actually have what they say he does or not be diagnosed when he really does have something going on. I am also scared about him actually being diagnosed. I do not want people to think of him differently.

This is a blog that I am writing to get support, maybe hear things from other families that have been through this, and I would like to do a little venting about the good and the bad times that we have. Thanks for reading!

Psalm 28:7-8

The LORD is my strength and my shield; my heart trusts in him, and I am helped. My heart leaps for joy and I will give thanks to him in song.  The LORD is the strength of his people, a fortress of salvation for his anointed one.