How we started our journey on the spectrum.

My son Aarian was born on November 4, 2005. From the beginning he was a very quiet baby, rarely cried. In the beginning, Aarian almost hit all his milestones and there was never a cause to worry. I think the first signs of something is not right started when he turned 1 even though I and my husband did not notice anything unusual at that time.

Aarians grandmother is a special needs teacher and it was she who bought it to our attention that he might have autism. Aarian started showing some early signs of autism around 18 months of age like he loved to be alone, there was no eye contact when we called his name, he rarely played with toys walking on his toes. .He babbled a little bit but there were no words its as if he went silent and there was no verbal speech. Around the age of 2, he started regressing. That's the time Aarians grandmother bought it to our attention this looks like autism as he was demonstrating classic signs. 

I immediately booked a visit with his pediatrician and bought the concerns to his attention. the pediatrician referred us to the Early Intervention Services in Toronto .we took Aarian to this visit. it was me and my husband and a couple of Early Interventionists in the room. They tried to engage with our son and asked him to do some simple tasks like rolling a ball, stacking blocks., put pegs in pegboards, and many more skills.  Aarian was unable to do most of the skills as by the time the regression had started and he started losing skills. After the visit, they told us something is definitely wrong but by law, they cannot tell us what it was and we have to wait for a formal diagnosis which in Canada can take a year to diagnose as there is a long waitlist.

After that visit, I started to research everything about Autism on the Internet even though we did not have a confirmed diagnosis. This continued for a year till he turned 3 and we got a confirmed diagnosis. Aarian got diagnosed with moderate to severe autism at three years of age. It broke our heart and we started questioning as to why our son got diagnosed with this lifelong disability and how we are going to help him as a family. We were told the prognosis did not look good for Aarian and there was not much we could do.  I must say almost a decade later our son has come a long way which at the beginning of the journey looked impossible to the doctors. 

I took it upon, myself at that time to help my son in any way I can to give him a chance to have a good meaningful life, to be his advocate, and do everything in my power to help him. Thus we began our journey on the autism spectrum .looking back today we are indeed very blessed to have Aarian and raise him.