My son was the normal baby, reaching his milestones as normal babies do. When he was about 20 months old, he suddenly changed. He quit talking, did not want to be touched and seemed to be happiest when left alone in his own little world.

He was quite smart but did weird little things. He would watch a video and rewind a certain portion of the movie and watch it over and over and over. Finally, he would move on and before you knew it, he was watching another part of the movie, over and over and over. He was left handed and learned to play nintendo by the age of three and since he was left handed, he held the controller upside down so when he pushed the button to go right, little mario would run left. He was very good at playing and even would beat our teenaged daughter.

As he grew, he took on a love for dinosaurs and puzzles. He would study dinosaur books with pictures and drew dinosaurs on paper. He could put a puzzle together in no time at all. But, he still didn’t talk, make eye contact or want to be held. He hated loud noises, all food had to be cold because he would not eat it if it was warm and he didn’t like the way certain clothes felt. In fact, he hated wearing clothes at all. All the doctor could say was, “Boys will be boys”.

When he was four, we had a school test him since he wasn’t talking. He had a lot of ear infections as a baby and we thought maybe he wasn’t hearing well. They told us he was retarded. I couldn’t believe someone in the school system would even use that word! I found a psychologist because I knew something else was going on. After several visits and the doctor being amazed that he could use a bathroom on his own, brush his hair and teeth and of course, put together a puzzle in minutes, labeled him as “spoiled”.

I felt like I hit a stone wall. I knew something was wrong, but I couldn’t get any answers. Our family landed up moving before our son started school. In the new school distict, he started pre-school and he started to talk, but still would not look at you and his speech was so programmed.

He started school and his vocabulary increased, but still no eye contact and no hugs for mom or anyone. He had funny little quirks about things being the same and didn’t like when his routine was changed. But, we made it though kindergarten.

He started first grade and he had a lot of energy. If the kids didn’t listen, the teacher made them write ONCE, “I will follow directions the first time they are given”. Our son wrote those words everyday. He always had his name on the bad list. After Christmas, the rules changed and they had to write the rule TWICE. Our son lost it and went into a horrible meltdown. He argued the rule was suppose to be written once and he refused to write it twice. After 2 hours, the teacher gave up. We did videotape this session and I landed up taking him to another psychologist She viewed the tape and meet with our son several times. She told us he had asperger’s syndrome.

I had never heard of asperger’s but I wanted to learn as much as I could. I read all sorts of books and watched as many videotapes as I could get my hands on.

I worked with our son on making eye contact when he spoke to someone. I explained feelings and what different feelings meant. I worked on teaching myself to ask a question several different ways until I learned how to ask to get a response.

Our son is now 15 years old and besides the social problems, he is doing pretty good. He is learning to read peoples body gestures and facial expressions. He wants to be included and have friends and he works very hard on learning to have a two sided conversation instead of him just talking about what he wants to talk about. He struggles every day, but he is showing growth. He is getting pretty good about reading the expressions on my face and showing the correct emotions.

He doesn’t mind noise anymore and he will eat hot food. He understands jokes better, but not totally. He will not do homework. His reasoning is he works very hard at school and when school is out, school is over and he is done. I have come to terms with this and find maybe it won’t be a bad thing as he gets older. To many of us bring our work problems home and if we could just leave them at work, our quality of family time might be better.

The worse part is he will not accept that he has asperger’s and he just wants to be normal. He works so hard at trying to be normal. I worry about him going out into the world, but he will find his way. Anyway, I hope.