Introduction

My name is Brian and God has blessed me with a beautiful wife (April) and two amazing sons ages 3 and 5. Our oldest son is named Cameron (can you guess I am a huge Duke fan) and our youngest is named Samuel (one of my wife's favorite Biblical figures).  Samuel has recently been diagnosed with Autism.

Cameron was born one day shy of our first wedding anniversary.  He has always been very healthy and developed at a "normal" rate.  Before he was 10 months old he would say words like "hey da da", "hey ma ma", "bye bye".  By the time Cameron was 15 months old he was speaking in sentences.  Samuel was born when Cameron was 20 months old.  Although Samuel has been overall a healthy child, we did have a few scares with him at first.  Like most baby boys, he was circumcised shortly after his birth.  Following the procedure he had some minor complications.  It was nothing serious, but when he had to remain in the nursery for several hours while recovery from this "minor" procedure.  When he was five weeks old, Samuel was found to have a condition called pyloric stenosis, which occurs in roughly 3 out of every 1,000 babies.   In layman's terms, he had a blockage that prevented milk from entering his stomach, thus resulting in projectile vomiting.  The only cure is surgery.  After the surgery he had no complications and seemed to be doing fine.  He began crawling at 9 months and in general everything seemed to be going well.  However, April would make comments to me occasionally saying she felt something was not right with Samuel.  I noticed that he seemed to be developing overall at a slower pace than Cameron had, but many had told me not to compare the two, so at first I really did not think too much into it.   However, from 9 months until 15 months there appeared to be very little developmental progress. The only word Samuel would say was 'no' and he started having these uncontrollable fits of anger.  As time passed, our biggest concern became his inability to walk.  Our pediatrician referred us to the local CDSA who determined that he needed physical therapy due to low muscle tone.  He began having weekly PT sessions at 17 months old.  These sessions were extremely helpful.  It took a couple more months but he did learn to walk at 19 months old.

A few weeks after learning to walk, his PT sessions were concluded and I was very hopeful that he would soon catch-up with peers.  Our pediatrician did not seem too worried about Samuel's limited speech, saying that learning to walk was a big stage and some kids can only concentrate on one thing at a time.  He also indicated that Cameron was probably doing a lot of the talking for Samuel.  However, through his 2nd birthday and approaching 3 years old, his speech remained very limited.  We also started noticing that he would not look us in the eye, he became extremely attached to a blanket, and he would get overly excited about credits being shown at the end of a TV show.  Most concerning, fits of anger started becoming more frequent and it would sometime take upwards of 30 minutes of rocking him before he would calm down.  After doing some Google searches, we were preparing ourselves for the news that our baby was autistic.  At his 3 year old check-up, our pediatrician referred us to an autism specialist.  Following an evaluation, the specialist concluded that he was on the autism spectrum.  She referred us to our local school system to begin the process of early childhood intervention. Since October he has been attending school in a mainstream Pre-K class.  His class has a total of 17 students with two teachers.  These students range from ages 3-5 and most of them do not have developmental delays.  The hope is for him to interact with these children so he can better understand how to behave in society.

We feel very fortunate that he was identified with this condition at an early age.  Many children are not diagnosed until they are 8 or 9 years old.  Our hope is that by identifying his condition early, we can provide Samuel with the assistance needed to allow him to fully function with his fellow peers.  We can already see progress being made with his speech and other developmental areas.

I decided to write this blog because it often seems that daddy's do not express their hopes and fears of parenting like mothers do.  My goal is to post updates a few times each week.  Samuel is the sweetest little boy that you will ever meet, he just thinks differently than other children.  Parenting in general is difficult at times, but I feel incredibly blessed that God has provided April and I the opportunity to raise two incredible young boys.  I look forward to sharing our experiences and hope that other fathers (and mothers too) will feel free to join us by expressing your stories as well.  Together we can learn from one another and provide our children with the best opportunities possible!

Merry Christmas!