I guess I can’t deny it any longer.

Moose has autism.

When we saw the doctor that gave us that terrible diagnosis, I really didn’t believe it.  And the therapists that were working with him were pretty skeptical.  So, I allowed myself to believe that she was wrong–she saw him on a bad day, she didn’t have all the information, she had the wrong information.

But, he’s been in school for five months now, and while he is making good progress, it’s not the progress you’d expect out of a simple delay.  He’s also exhibiting a few more signs of autism, which could be imitation of something he’s seeing in school, but is more likely just proof that he has been affected by this.

It’s hard, because he doesn’t have a lot of the “traditional” symptoms of autism.  But that’s the bitch of this thing–it manifests in so many ways, that “traditional” or “typical” don’t really mean anything, because it’s a disease (disorder? what is the right word for it?) that’s based on being atypical, even within itself.

A part of me still hopes that one day he’ll have a big breakthrough, and we’ll laugh at ever having thought he was autistic.  But realistically, that’s probably not ever going to happen.