It's All Working!!!

SMILE saw yet another evaluator yesterday.  Hat's off to my little guy, too, because he's been poked and prodded a lot lately.  But this was for a "play" type test called the ADOS (I can't wrap my mind around what the acronym stands for), which is supposed to be the gold-standard for diagnosing autism. 

The only rule for DAD and I was that we weren't able to prompt SMILE during the test.  The evaluator tried to engage him in a variety of tasks (clay, puzzles, bubbles, etc) and watched his reaction to a variety of situations. Was he going to freak when he realized there was a piece missing from the puzzle?  No.  What about when she sang "Happy Birthday" to a stuffed frog?  Yeah, a little.  Will he react when the evaluator pretends to be surprised about something under the table? Nope, couldn't care less.  Smile was a bit twitchy and did the lobster hand thing a few times. He didn't want to stop talking about bubbles once he got the chance to play with them and, when he accidentally spilled a tray of letter blocks, he started repeating "D, D, D" over and over.

But  then...he made a butterfly out of clay, looked up, and asked the evaluator, "Do you like butterflies?"  I was a flurry of controlled and silent motion.  I leaned forward, eyes wide and immediately wet with tears, grabbed Dad's hand, looked into his just as wide eyes, and mouthed, "That was amazing!" He asked a question!  A real one that sought information about someone else.  Sure, he's done this with WINK, DAD, and I. He's probably done it with select extended relatives, too.  But THIS was a stranger and not prompted. THIS was great progress.

So....it's working.  The TSS time, the speech/ occupational/ physical therapies, the games DAD and I play, all of it. My little guy is coming back to all that potential he was born with. The evaluator spoke to DAD and I about expectations for the future and what we could expect for SMILE.  She referred to a piece of paper where she had charted SMILE's test results on a scale of 0-24.  She said something about his best chances for progress lying in the 0-7 area of the chart. That's not SMILE's box.  Neither is the next one.   But...these test results are fluid and they change all the time as the child receives more and more services.  Seven months ago, SMILE probably would have scored much higher.  He may have even scored higher or lower on a different day. 

So, we don't know much more than we did 24 hours ago but here's where MOM trumps all the professionals. He's going to be great. That's not wishful thinking, or sentimental eyes making that observation.  It's fact.  He will be great because he already is.