Autism

Ben and I noticed that recently Michael has been ignoring us and avoiding eye contact.  He is more difficult to engage and has become more withdrawn.  Not that he was ever outgoing, but he was making progress and now seems to be backsliding.  One of my friends noticed it too.

His ECI therapist also noticed the regression on Thursday.  He wasn't responding to his name or making eye contact, but was hypersensitive to some background noises (like the washing machine running or my cell phone going off).  I asked her about revisiting the autism diagnosis, and she said that she's definitely noticing some stronger signs now, but again, it's still too early to say for sure.

That was still hard to hear.  I feel at fault based on my poor gut flora, my antibiotics at birth, the full vaccination schedule we had him on, his and my sub-optimal diets, and so on.  I suspect no one who is possibly reading this is sympathetic of my point-of-view here, which I guess is a good thing for once, because it means the only person who blames me is me.  I'm not sure how hard I want to convince anyone else that the causes of autism are quite possibly environmental, but here is an article that mainstream science (the American Association of Pediatrics) is starting to recognize the connection between gut and brain.  So yeah, this makes me feel rather terrible.  Naturally I want to give Michael every advantage in life I can and to think that I did something detrimental to him is devastating.

His therapist said that she recommended we remove from his sight anything that makes noise or has a battery (including music).  I balked a little -- even though we've never bought him anything that makes noise (unless you count the Kindle Fire), his relatives have gotten him noisy toys and he does seem to love them.  And his music!  He always needs to have a CD going in the background.  But he kept ignoring us during the session and turning on his battery-operated toys to have a constant stream of sound.  She then suggested we at least limit his exposure.  He's having sensory overload issues and would rather retreat into his own world with his noisy stuff than interact with us.  I asked why he goes out of his way to avoid eye contact (as in, if I keep trying to stick my face in front of his eyes, he'll avert his gaze so he never makes eye contact with me) and she said that eye contact can be intense and a lot of information for someone like him to take in, especially if his system is worn out from processing all the other input.

Since Thursday (so two days now) he's still getting quite a bit of his noisy toys and music, but much less than he had been.  We're slowly phasing it out.  His eye contact and interaction has been improving the last two days -- not perfect, but on the right path.

On an unrelated note, Michael can now run up the stairs without holding onto anything.  It's a little scary.