something new...

Now it has taken me some months to write about this, I think I didn't know when to start. Part of which is I needed to take the time to digest the new normal for us. For a long time I had this box of symptoms that didn't fit the diagnosis that we had already discovered about my boy. In the beginning I had thought it was all related to the anxiety and the impact that Selective Mutism had on his early childhood and how it had impacted his social, emotional and every type of development. But I had always mentally logged away certain behaviours and symptoms until they reached the point where I couldn't put it down to anxiety any more. It felt like we had gotten the anxiety to a point where it was somewhat managed that it wasn't as life controlling as it used to be, and that is where we began. 

Amongst the complexity, we hadn't even considered it until after discussions with our son's teacher made us think about it. You see at our old school we were kind of given the impression that there was nothing actually wrong everything we were experiencing was completely normal and we were trying to get our children help for which there was nothing wrong. A lot of the time it ended up that we were given the impression that indeed it was a problem with us the parents and we just needed to get more organised and there was really no problem at school we were the problem. Hence we weren't able to see the forest for the trees and got nowhere. 

Now in a new environment, it was easier to see things a lot more clearly. Firstly my boy was so much more relaxed and the symptoms that I had put down to anxiety didn't seem to fit the bill anymore and so we began. We spoke to our trusty psychologist about that we thought our boy had ADHD, after some intense testing, in itself was quite revealing. I needed to sit back and let my boy fidget, let him move not talk to him so that you can see what he was like for the purpose of the assessment. That was pretty hard, but it did make me think about how many times I needed to say something. However at the end of that session it was pretty clear that we had finally figured it out. After which we needed a questionaire from the teacher and then it was all collated. Then it was full steam ahead, we had the reports sent to our paed and the recommendation was that medication would be of benefit. 

Luckily we had an appointment booked for the following Monday, and it all fell into place. We actually didn't think anyone would actually agree with us, and then they actually did. To be honest it was a relief I knew who my son was, I knew his character, his personality and it didn't add up to what we were told eg. it was our parenting that was the problem. But then it meant it actually was something that was forever, till now we knew Anxiety could be something that he could eventually master to some degree, but this type of diagnosis was forever. It felt like our journey was only just beginning.