Damon said "mama" and "dada" at the usual time for babies.  But Damon did not say much else.  He did have a fascination with numbers and letters, and by the age of two he could count to 30 and he could say his ABCs.  He also could name all his colors and shapes, but he still was not saying words in a conversational manner.  Damon did communicate.  He would come up to people and try to carry on a conversation with them, but it sounded as if he was speaking Chinese.  We also noticed around this time that Damon appeared to be deaf when you spoke to him.  We thought he might have a hearing deficit, so we took him for hearing testing.  His hearing tested out fine.  The doctors then suggested that he was just tuning us out.  The doctor also suggested that Damon wasn't talking because his big sister never allowed him to talk (Hannah is 14 months older than Damon, and I think she was born talking).  Damon went to two year old preschool.  He did well with his numbers, colors, shapes, etc., but he could not follow directions.  He did seem to make friends, but he preferred playing alone.  His pediatrician insisted that nothing was wrong with him.  It was at this point that we changed pediatricians.  We took him to a pediatrician who was Damon's Sunday School teacher.  This man knew Damon and witnessed his developmental deficits first hand.  He suggested that Damon might be autistic, although he said that Damon did not have many of the characteristics.  Damon is and was very out going, never met a stranger, always smiling, and eager to please.  The new doctor reccomended that we see a child psychiatrist.

The child psychiatrist suggested that Damon was highly gifted.  She said he was a bit odd, but that often came with high IQ.  She said he did not meet the DSMIV criterea for autism.  She said he labeled things and talked about things, just not in words people could understand.  She thought food allergies could be playing a part in his problem, and recommended we see an allergist.  She did offer one label - Central Auditory Processing Disorder.  I began to read up on food allergies, and came across information on autism and milk and gluten allergies.  We took Damon off all dairy first.  After two weeks of being off dairy, Damon was potty trained, and Damon was talking!  We then took him off gluten, but noticed no change at all, so we reintroduced gluten into his diet after four months.  Around this time, Damon was in another preschool 4K class.  The teachers there reccomended having him screened by the public schools for PDD-NOS and getting him in the special education preschool.  We did, and Damon was labeled PDD-NOS.  Damon completed 4-K at the public elementary school.  He made huge improvements, and the next year was placed in transitional kindergarten.  During his reevaluation, they labeled him high functioning autism/Asperger's syndrome.

Damon completed transitional kindergarten and did wonderfully!  He progressed so much that at the end of the year he was promoted to regular 1st grade with pull-out services for speech and special education to work on his social skills.  Today Damon is in 2nd grade.  At the end of 1st grade, his IEP team decided that special ed. pull out services were not what was best for him, so he now has the special education teacher come to him for 30 minutes daily.  We will reassess how this is working at his upcoming IEP and decide then what services will best suit him for next year.  Academically he is above grade level, but he still has difficulty with socialization and disruptions to his routine.

Damon is a wonderful, smart, and active boy.  He continues to be very extroverted.  He loves reading, talking to people, playing video games, and playing with his friends.  He sees himself as a normal kid.  In fact, he thinks the kids others would label normal are the ones that are weird.  Damon has a best friend, Matthew, whom he loves to play with.  The two of them are so fun to watch.  They completely understand each other, and when the two of them are together, you do not notice that they are both different.  Matthew also has been labeled by the schools as high functioning autistic.  He is also above average academically, reads like crazy, and is very outgoing.  Damon and Matt's world is a world where they are the normal ones.  They are two beautiful little boys who bring joy to the lives of others.

We are now at a point of trying to get an official medical diagnosis.  I believe Damon has Asperger's Syndrome overlapping with Hyperlexia.  We are in the process of yet another reevaluation and rewriting his IEP to get him the services best suited to his needs.  Matt's mom and I have started DAWGS to help ourselves and other parents out there that have gone through the challenges that come with having a child on the autistic spectrum.  It's a very frustrating thing to go through.  For so long people believed autistic children were mentally retarded and could not improve that very few people in the medical fields are willing to listen.  We have seen vast improvement in our children.  Damon has completely outgrown many of the autistic behaviors.  He now plays properly with toys and other kids.  He no longer flaps his hands or twirls in circles.  He is a normal kid who needs help learning how to make sense of spoken communication and body language.  I have great hopes for Damon's future.  He is a wonderful writer and artist.  He already writes and illustrates his own comic books.  He says he wants to be an author illustrator when he grows up, and I know he can do it!