A Journey- How we finally were able to get a Diagnosis

 

Our path to getting Sophie a diagnosis was very, very long. We began to notice things were "off" when she was 2 years old. As a mother I knew something was not right, but I couldn't put my finger on it. We started out at Kaiser Permanente, in their Early Autism program. She bounced out because she was too "chatty". Our next stop was the Regional Center, again she talked too much. Many people told me to calm down. Other mothers said she is just a curious child,” Kids ask a lot of questions” one friend said. She was a pleasant child and appeared happy,  but only Bill and I had seen the fits of rage, the hitting herself in the head over and over, the obsession she had with smells and scents, the way she ate dirt and other non food substances, listened to her cry because her clothes were scratchy. One morning I found a baggie shoved under her bed full of metal pencil tops she had bitten off.
      She had several problems in Pre-school and I was told it was all defiance, a strong will and that she was just plain bad. A semester in Pre-K had me crying every day upon drop off and pick up. Every day when I picked her up the teacher would list her crimes and I would hang my head lower in shame at the terrible job I was doing to mother this child.  The very first day of Kindergarten the school principal called me. Sophie was in her office and had been acting out all morning. Back to Kaiser we went for another screening then to the Regional Center, but no answers. Sophie: a “naughty girl” still to chatty to be Autistic.

     In first grade we began our journey with L.A.U.S.D and their I.E.P process. The results Fights, Arguments, and Sitting in a room having people tell you all the things your child can not do. After years of zero help and Sophie being Passed along grade after grade we finally reached our breaking point with our lost and chatty Sophie.

In the summer of 2010 Sophie was practically non verbal. She would pull her sweatshirt over her head, she began having auditory hallucinations, severe panic attacks and started cutting herself. Her bad brain, as she called it, was telling her to kill mommy (it's always the mom, isn't it?) Her therapist suggested we call the partial inpatient pysch unit at UCLA and have her admitted. She thought Sophie either had early onset bipolar disorder or childhood Schizophrenia. Sophie was admitted to UCLA in September 2010, and, she stayed for a month.
Mid-way through the month UCLA called Bill and I into a family/team meeting. In this horrible yellow room they told us Sophie had an Intellectual Disability and Autism. My heart shattered listening to the doctor speak, tears flowing down my face. I remember looking at Bill and thinking this is not real. We cried, in the deepest part of me I knew this was what had been hurting my child. We accepted this because we finally had an answer. We stayed at home and we stopped seeing friends. Being my pro active self we soon found a school for Sophie which L.A.U.S.D would fund.  We searched for therapies, classes, groups, parent programs anything to help Sophie and about 18 months later we re-entered the world. 

She now has friends at school, goes to school dances and has even been in a play. She attends a social skills class built around a cooking course, recently began taking swimming lessons and is a group just for teens with Special Needs.