Once Hannah and I started doing some real research on what autism is, we really believed that it explained so much of what we were facing with the twins. Our next obstacle was getting them diagnosed so that we weren’t just the crazy parents who assumed that there was something wrong but were so afraid that they’d be wrong and then be out of excuses. Because we’ve lived most of our lives on faith since we were married (which is another way of saying we were too broke to have insurance) the only chance we had of getting a diagnosis was through the ECI program. We brought the suggestion to the ladies who visited our house once a week and were pretty well blown off. I can’t really blame them. All of this occurred before autism had really become the fad diagnosis it is today and awareness was pretty low. I feel the need to explain myself for just a moment: I believe that the reason we have seen autism move from a very rare, virtually unknown disease to the levels we see it out now (The latest numbers say something like 1 in every 80 children) is because of 3 things; 1. It was under-diagnosed for many decades, 2. Some environmental factor is causing its increase (see “Concerning vaccinations for my opinion on the matter) and 3. It is over-diagnosed now.
Regardless of the fact that autism is on a sharp rise, we were experiencing our initial part of the journey before there was substantial media coverage. After our first mention with the ECI program we knew we were going to have to move into obnoxious if we planned on getting anything done. I can do obnoxious. We mentioned it during every visit until finally they agreed to schedule an appointment with a child-psychologist “If it would make us feel better to rule it out.” It made us feel better.
And so we found ourselves sitting in a tiny waiting room with Jacob, Lindsey, Caleb, Andrew, Joel, Hannah and me hoping that we weren’t crazy. The doctor wanted to see each child alone with Hannah and me and evaluate them individually. We went in first with Andrew. One thing about children in general and particularly autistic kids is that they have good days and bad days. Hannah and I have always referred the particularly autistic days as the boys “being on their game”. They were on their game that day. The doctor asked us questions as Andrew wondered around the room licking every piece of furniture within reach of his tongue. Although his gross motor control level was about that of a one year old, he avoided physical touch from the doctor with all the agility of an NFL Hall of Fame running back. He walked on his toes and flapped his hands. He lay on the floor staring at the ceiling fan. He refused eye contact. Next Joel came in to build Legos up one piece at a time, and disassemble them one at a time. He rolled a car back and forth on the table watching the wheels spin. He got frustrated and punched himself in the face. He got frustrated and tried to punch me, but I was at least quicker than a 2 ½ year old. He tried to punch the doctor when he touched him. Did I mention Joel used to punch a lot?
Finally he said he was done with both of them. He sat there silently working with some paper work. He then explained that he had taken them through what’s called the CARS (Childhood Autism Rating Scale) and that both boys tested moderate to severe for autism. I’m not sure whether I felt joy or sorrow in that moment. It was a tremendous relief to know that we finally had some answers for all that we had faced over the past year. It was a crushing blow to now know for certain that there was something wrong with our boys, something big. We started asking questions about what to do now. He had very little in the way of answers. He told us that at their level the most likely scenarios were that we would need to either provide for them the rest of their lives, or institutionalize them. He handed us a photocopied article out of Time Magazine that covered the difference between “floor-time” and ABA (applied behavioral analysis) the two main schools of thought for “treatment” of autism and sent us on our way. In October of 2006 at 28 months old, Andrew and Joel Tate were officially a statistic of autism.
“What now?” we asked ourselves a hundred times over the coming weeks and months. Where we had once felt such empowerment in knowing our foe there only remained helplessness falling quickly into hopelessness. Fortunately I married a woman as stubborn as I am. It’s funny to me that when people ask what it was that helped the boys to have come so far over the past few years, Hannah credits me and I credit her. She says that because I didn’t check out, as so many dads do, and chose to stay in a position where I could be a constant figure in the life of our family that it made all the difference. I say that because she never quit, never stopped learning, never settled for less than better it opened our eyes to options that we would have never encountered. It’s funny that we credit one another, but I’m right more often than she is, so we’re going to assume that she’s the one who deserves all the credit.
The next week at our ECI visit we started asking questions. There weren’t many answers, but they were willing to find them for us. Sure, when we returned from the doctor with a diagnosis they told us they’d known it all along, but it’s not like I’ve never taken credit for something I’ve had nothing to do with before.
Great story
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