Lost & Found.

Following on from my duck post I have been thinking about stress quite a bit. It is 6 months ago today that HRH was diagnosed with autism. I can honestly say that the stress before the diagnosis was at much higher levels than it is now. In duck terms my poor little feet were probably on fire from the effort of paddling.

There was one day when I lost the run of myself altogether. Let me explain.

We suspected autism from when HRH was 18 months old.

We were sent for a hearing test. The audiologist told me that I was a busy lady. You know the story, 5 month old baby, 21 month old toddler and an older child too. She was unable to carry out the hearing test as HRH language comprehension was delayed and he would not understand what she was saying. She said that I was so busy that I probably wasn't talking to HRH as much as I thought I was. I didn't feel judged by what she said, she was very kind yet matter of fact. I did feel guilty and upset though. We were sent away for 5 weeks with instructions on what I was to do.

Now this is where I made a mistake. When people asked how we got on I told them what the audiologist said about me being a busy mum. Aside from family members, without exception the response was 'Middle Child Syndrome'. Somehow I believed their interpretation of the words 'busy mum' and completely took on board the blame and guilt of HRH's delays being my fault, that I had neglected him and this was the cause of his language delays.

I put enormous effort into spending more, more and more time talking to HRH. I did my utmost to help him understand words and short phrases. I was guilty, stressed, desperate and raging at myself because it was my fault he had Middle Child Syndrome. This went on for 3 weeks. Until the day I 'lost it'.

HRH got cross and threw a towel on the floor. I sat him down and told him to hand the towel to me. He didn't. I asked him to give me the towel. He didn't. I held out my hand and pointed at the towel, indicating that he give it to me. He didn't. This goes on for a bit so let's fast forward. I put the towel into his hand and he threw it away. I repeated the action, adding words. He threw it away. Fast forward again. He cried, screamed and got put on 'time out'. Then we started all over again.

I persisted at this for one hour and 45 minutes. By the end of it I was crying a lot louder than he was, and had been doing so for the last 45 mins. This is what I mean by 'lost it'. I had decided that I was to blame and that I was going to fix the problem I had caused. He was going to co-operate, end of story!

Until I realised that HRH didn't actually know that the towel was called 'a towel'. Then I cried even more because all of a sudden I wanted his problems to be 'Middle Child Syndrome'. I wanted it to be my fault and I wanted it to be something I could fix. I think this was probably the point when I realised that any little hope I had been holding onto that he didn't have autism, just went out the window. I felt like I had lost the child I thought I had.

This incident took place about one month before he was diagnosed. It was a private diagnosis as there was no way I could risk that kind of situation happening again, for both our sakes.


I don't beat myself up about it, it happened, it's over and it won't happen again. HRH was not upset afterwards, so it probably isn't as bad as I think it was. He is certainly too young to remember it, luckily.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing and I now know that I didn't lose my child that day, I found him. Now I know  how to help him, I know how to talk with him and I know how to ask for help for all of us.

So, ummm, yeah *cough* I wonder what the Doctor would have called me last August!