Update from Ryan's Autism Eval

Well, unfortunately, we don't really have any more answers then we did going into the appointment. Ryan did great throughout the whole appointment. In fact, he was an angel. He interacted with all of the doctors and therapists and played games. He threw the ball, showed them how he could run and played blocks. Now this is all wonderful but for those of you that see Ryan on a day to day basis, know that this isn't always the case with him. I am happy that he did so well but I wish he would have shown them just a bit more of his "true colors".

The doctors were wonderful. They were in there with us for well over an hour talking about Ryan's past history and where he is now and what we are doing to get him to where he needs to be developmentally. The whole time we were talking they were listening but also keeping a close eye on Ryan. One of the aides came and got Ryan and Greg and did some play therapy and testing in another room so they I could talk with the developmental pediatrician and psychologist. They said we are doing all of the right things: attending occupational therapy, speech therapy and home therapies through MRDD and trying to get into a center. There are a couple of options for the summer that we can try to get into.

After getting all of our thoughts, they met just to the two of them along with the aide and came to a conclusion. From what they saw today, they are leaning more towards Ryan not being on the Autism spectrum. In order to be diagnosed with Autism you must be delayed in 3 places: speech, socially and have some sort of repetitive behavior. Today, they only saw Ryan having a speech delay. He socialized wonderfully with all of them. Of course, this is good news, but we feel our questions are still not really answered. We go again on Tuesday for more testing like today and we should know for sure. Greg and I are going to sit down and talk some more and I am going to be sure we write down all of our questions to be sure we walk out of there feeling we really know what we can do to help Ryan.