The Top of the Roller Coaster Hill

"When your child is first born, it could all still be perfect." That's the line Steve Martin's character says in the movie, "Parenthood," and it's true. When our children are born, we have such lofty dreams and hopes for them. They'll be academics, movie stars, sports heroes and eventually they'll grow and start families of their own some day. But at the end of the day, I think most of us just want our children to be happy. At least those are the results of the informal poll taken amongst my parent friends.

My daughter came into this world on October 14, 2003, and the scenario wasn't perfect, but she sure was. Ten fingers and toes, pink chubby arms and legs and a scream that could knock down walls. Through the fog of the drugs and amidst the doctors putting me back together, I fell instantly in love. I couldn't take my eyes off of her as the nurses and my husband fussed over her and swaddled her up. She was born via c-section, I couldn't move my arms, so holding her was an impossibility. Instead, I drank her in with my eyes, fighting off exhaustion so I wouldn't miss a moment of her new life. Eventually, they took her out of the room, at which point I puked and fell asleep. Again, not perfect, but I'd do it all over again.

She grew quickly and it became obvious we had quite a firecracker on our hands. The scream she'd let out on her birthday was a good indicator of things to come. She was bright, silly and charming, but all that could change in a blink of an eye. The tantrums, it seemed, were just part and parcel of having a kid. No worries there. But around 18 months, her lack of true words started to concern us. Friends and family said it was nothing to worry about, but as a parent, sometimes you just 'know.' Our pediatrician confirmed that she should be saying more than she was at that point. Oh sure, she babbled on and on, but there were no 'real' words. Our doctor recommended we take her to a speech therapist for an evaluation, so we did. The results came back that her comprehension was at a 24 month old level, although her language was that of a 12 month old. With such advanced comprehension, they could not recommend speech therapy at the time.

We were partly relieved at this, because who wants to drag their kid to speech therapy every week? We continued to work with her, trying to engage her in more conversation and gradually, her vocabulary grew. In the meantime, I did some research on what could cause a speech delay. Besides hearing problem there was the 'a' word...autism. The first thing that comes to mind when most people hear that word is, 'Rain Man.' Well, certainly, my daughter was not Rain Man. She was very interested in other people, although she did just fine playing by herself as well. We had a routine she preferred we stick to, although, all the parenting books said that was what all kids craved. I couldn't deny she did fit with some symptoms listed on the Autism Society website, but how much of that was diagnosis and how much of it was I had a wild and wonderful 2 year old?

In October 2004, I picked up an extra day of work, so I could return to full-time status and get my benefits back and a much needed pay increase. A dear friend of mine agreed to watch my daughter for that one day a week. She had a son around my daughter's age and they were thick as thieves. That arrangement went great until midsummer. My girl started hitting my friend's son. Literally attacking him for no reason. I wouldn't have believed it until I saw it myself. She'd push him down and take toys from him, hit him and push him again. Time-outs didn't work, yelling didn't work, for me spanking is not an option, so we had to remove her from the situation. We eventually had to find a new babysitter, and we did. A former elementary school teacher with a home daycare and two children, including a son my daughter's age. It was the perfect situation, and at first everything went well. In a couple of months though, my daughter started hitting the babysitter's son with that same tenacity with which she'd gone after my friend's son.

I was horrified. How could my goofy, Spongebob loving baby girl be so aggressive and why was this happening? It wasn't just with other kids though, we could be anywhere and the slightest little thing could set my baby off in the most intense way. Meltdowns, we called them, for they weren't typical 'I didn't get my way temper tantrums.' Screaming, kicking, hitting, biting, you name it. She'd be inconsolable in the midst of one of her meltdowns, like she wasn't even connected to reality. Yelling didn't help, a firm grip didn't help...it's like she didn't even know we were there. I relayed all of this to our pediatrician. I wanted a reality check. Was it something we as parents were or were not doing? Generally she seemed happy. We were consistent with her, we disciplined her and praised her, played with her outside, limited her TV, but something wasn't quite right. Even compared to other kids her age, something seemed off. Our pediatrician recommended we see a developmental specialist.

A developmental specialist. My old fears about her speech delay filled my head. There would be three initial appointments. An interview, an observation of our daughter and a follow up where she explained her report. What would she say...our babysitter had mentioned something about Sensory Processing Disorder, which when I read about it, sounded an awful lot like what I'd read about autism, but again, didn't seem to fit my daughter 100%. We'd just go into the appointments and see what she said. Certainly, we were just blowing this out of proportion like our friends and family said. She was just a precocious, and demanding child. Now that she'd turned three, she'd probably chill out a bit. Right?