Diagnosis for Daegan Part II

At my parent's home Patrick and I shared a room with Daegan. When we moved to our new home, he went into his own room and he slept through the first night we moved in. Looking back, it makes sense that he was unable to sleep in our room because Patrick snored (quite loudly which didn't get rectified until he had his tonsils out at 32!) and Daegan was always unable to tune out sound. In fact, it wasn't just sound, but people in general were overstimulating to him--he preferred to be laid down, not held and even as a toddler had a difficult time around lots of people.

Age two is when I really knew Daegan was different from other children. His speech progressed normally until about this age. I began to realize that Daegan did not understand directions if they were more than one step and that he was fixated on one particular thing: Spiderman. He would grow agitated in crowded places and became very disobedient particularly in public. His frustration with not understanding others came out in negative behaviors and as much as Patrick and I couldn't understand what was causing his learning delay, strangers and child care providers were even less understanding. The next few years would prove to be very difficult as we struggled to determine what was wrong and how to provide the best environment possible for our son.

Patrick and I were fortunate to have a nanny come to our home for the first few years of Daegan's life. He loved nanny Michelle very much, and she took him to "Mommy and Me" gymnastics to try to ease him into forming friendships and following direction, but gymnastics, like Sunday school, proved too much. Six months after Daegan turned three, we moved to new neighborhood closer to work and with better schools, but too far away for Michelle to continue to watch the kids. This was very sad for our whole family, but as Michelle had a new baby, it was time for her to focus on her growing family and for Daegan to enter traditional day care and face socialization head on.

During the time that he was in daycare, I had Daegan evaluated by Babies Can't Wait, a program in Georgia that seeks to help children with learning delays. They determined Daegan had a Significant Development Delay and would benefit from intervention in his day care (Hyde Academy) aimed at getting him comfortable with the daily schedule. During the time period that Daegan was being evaluated, the school was very accomodating considering his behavior was extremely poor. A typical day included refusing to sit and participate in circle time, growing very angry when required to change learning centers. He would throw chairs (child-sized chairs, mind you), hit, kick, scream, and bite. Eventually his inability to cope led to his hiding under tables or knocking over book cases. Hyde did what they could for us, but by the time he was almost four, they informed us that they really could not accomodate his needs. It was devastating.

It is hard to explain what all of this was like for us. Just a few days before we were asked to remove Daegan from school, his teacher had told us she was not giving up on him and would continue to work with him by putting the strategies Babies Can't Wait recommended into place. The quick turn about on the part of the owner left us spinning. Daegan has always been such a happy, beautiful, and loving little boy and to see such beauty tormented in his daily routine was crushing to me. We were so fortunate that God's plans were grander than we could have known and that his removal from Hyde would lead us to a wonderful woman named Ms. Rebeca Duyvelaar at Shiloh Point Elementary School. She was an angel who specialized in Autism Spectrum disorders, and while we didn't know if Daegan was autistic (his case presented much more difficult to diagnose), her ability to get his attention through creative means led to his growing more than we had seen in a year in cognitive ability and discipline.

All good things come to an end and Daegan was sent to his home school to begin what would have normally been his first year in Pre-K had he not been taken into the school system half a year early. His next teacher was new and chose teaching as a way to recycle her psychology degree from twenty years prior. Ugh--to sum it up. The year was not the worst it could have been (thanks to Miss Allison, the parapro), but Daegan did not flourish and really struggled in his class of thirteen kids and an inexperienced and not too patient teacher. The year ended, the teacher was fired (I'd LOVE to know why...but was never told), and I pulled Daegan out of Forsyth County and brought him into Fulton with me. Around the same time, I scheduled an appointment for Daegan to see a developmental pediatrician who would be able to see him a year later! Both decisions were the best decisions I could have made!

(Part III to be posted later--whew!)