Okay, I can admit it, I’m biased, but he is mine and I’m allowed to be a little bit, right? But Noah is a really cute kid. Lord knows how he came from us, but somehow his big blue eyes and cheeky crooked smile lets him get away with absolute murder. I’m constantly being told he’s a delight which always confuses me because, being the chatterbox that I am, I don't understand how he manages to connect with people so well without speaking. He has an art of subtlety that clearly his mother never learned!
Aside from the fact that Noah was conceived through IVF (that's a whole other story for another day), my pregnancy and birth with Noah was completely normal. We brought home our little bundle of love and got stuck into parenting. Three of my closest friends all fell at the same time, so when the babies started coming they just kept coming, and the summer of 2018 was a haze of late nights, nappies and baby snuggles.
Initially, we didn't have any concerns about Noah’s development. He made eye contact, smiled, giggled, he used basic sounds like “ba ba” and “da da”, he could follow spoken directions, in fact I have videos of him clapping, waving and playing peekaboo on command. He began to bum shuffle across the room, pulling himself up and eventually started to walk upright.
And then all of a sudden, at around 13/14 months old we realised that our friends children were all starting to talk and link words together, some of them were able to recite numbers or correctly spot colours, whilst Noah had started to look at us less, say less, become disinterested in his toys or following instruction. He started to regress rapidly. We blinked and the development gap between him and his peers was suddenly a cavern. Whilst one of our friend's children was grasping two languages, Noah’s language was reduced to high pitched squeals.
I knew, in my gut I just knew something wasn't right. Whether it was a hearing issue, a learning disability or autism, I had no idea, but I knew we needed help. Enter Covid. Thanks universe, your timing is IMPECCABLE.
Have you ever tried to explain the unexplainable over the phone to a health visitor? I lost count of the amount of times I said “It’s really hard to answer that because he kind of does it but he also kind of doesn't” during his telephone 2 year review. Some things can go online in the face of a pandemic and be a huge success… Children's Services is not one of them.
I was told “try bubbles and I’ll call you again in three months”. Seriously? The notion that you can just get a child who doesn't engage with anything to sit and blow bubbles a few times and suddenly he’ll be fine made me feel completely ignored. Every single professional we have ever managed to see suggested blowing sodding bubbles as a magical cure. They work for some children, but for a lot of children they don’t. Bubbles can get in the bin as far as Noah was concerned! Of course, we gave it a go, we followed everything they suggested because we didn’t know any better, and we wanted to be the best possible parents we could.
Guess what happened three months later when she called me? That’s right, no change!
Getting our voices heard was probably the hardest, most soul destroying part of the whole process. Nobody wants to label children when they are so young, because the range for reaching developmental milestones is so vast, but the sad truth is, the earlier you intervene with additional needs children, the more successful they can be.
The health visitor eventually agreed to refer us to something in our area called the “Big Builders Team” which was meant to be group sessions with parents and children in our position, learning different techniques to try with Noah to help him learn to communicate.
Covid reduced that entire service to a single email pamphlet with, you guessed it - Try bubbles!
When there was no change in Noah’s communication another couple of months down the line, Big Builder finally referred us for a Speech Therapy assessment. FINALLY, someone was actually listening and this became the start of a really long process that led us to our autism diagnosis. I’ll go into more detail about different parts of the process in future posts, but for the moment let me tell you that whilst we were stressing about getting him some help, our little boy was developing an obsession with Hey Duggee, learning how to jump, spinning, flapping, squealing with delight, and discovering how awesome swings are! For all of our concerns, our little man could not have been a happier chappy.
If you are in the same position, struggling to be heard, PLEASE KEEP PUSHING. They will eventually listen, that referral will eventually come, that appointment will happen, and while you wait, enjoy your child and what makes them different. I spent so long in fear of what could be wrong, whether or not it might be autism and what that may mean for the future that I think sometimes I missed out on the opportunities to just be mum. Noah didn’t care if he learned any new words that day, or how many hours of research I’d done to help him, he cared about snacks, cuddles, and what noises his toys made when he whacked them on different surfaces.
It's a simple life when you’re 3. Remember, every day that they go to bed happy is a parenting win!
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