An Adam Update

We had a very nice lady from the county come to the house yesterday and do some follow up testing on Adam. These are not medical tests but tests that see how well his cognitive functions are functioning. :) These tests were designed to check on everything from attention spans to intelligence to how he problem solves or processes information.
And it pretty much looks like playing.
She was really nice and Adam took to her right away. She understood his speech VERY well. Better than anyone but me! It was truly amazing to have her sit on the floor with him and have him answer questions and do tests for her. She was so easy going about everything. If he didn't want to do something and told her "no thanks" she would just move on to something else that caught his attention. If he wandered off, which he did several times, she just observed him and took notes and talked to me about things she was seeing or asking me questions about how he acts in certain situations.
At one point he even headed upstairs to play with the girls, and she was not stressed at all about having him hurry back to her to move on. Eventually he came back and joined right back in with what she was doing.
She picked up on so many things just by playing with him and watching him interact with the world around him.

She of course, is not there to make a diagnosis, she said, that is for the doctors to do. But she shared some of her wonderful knowledge with me. She says that she doesn't think he is "classically" autistic. She said he seeks out interaction and affection, which is absolutely opposite what most children with autism do. The are typically very withdrawn, wont make eye contact, avoid touches at all costs.
She said, though that she does think he is on the autistic spectrum, just really high functioning. More than anything she thinks he has sensory integration problems. (Which he certainly does!) It is essentially that his brain and nervous system cannot process the senses the way most people do. Light, is extra bright to him, loud noises cause physical pain to his ears. Having a haircut and having all the tiny stray hairs on his face and neck feel like needles poking him. Standing in the shower hurts. And there are many more examples. She referred me to a web site and book from a leading authority in this field. I went to the web site and read around some, and it is ADAM! So I ended up ordering several books and plan to read up as soon as they get here.
Another thing she observed was that he cannot really answer questions. I have known this for quite a while and have been trying to work with him on it. She thinks there is some cognitive issue (she had a fancy name for it, that I can't remember) that essentially means his brain cannot figure out what you are asking and how to answer. Right now he has "echodidactic" speech, which pretty much means he will repeat back the last word or phrase that was said to him.
Like if you ask, "Adam, what color is that?" He will answer, "color" instead of red. But he is VERY intelligent, he knows his alphabet and all the letter sounds and is trying to sound out words, he can count and recognize numbers up to about 20. He knows most shapes, even more complex ones like octagon and hexagon. And his knows his colors well, even white, black, gray and pink. She said being hyper intelligent is actually pretty typical for some kids on the autistic spectrum.
She also suggested that I should look into and research a gluten and casein free diet. She said that 10 years ago she would have totally passed that off as a bunch of garbage, but she said that she has observed children before and after being started on a gluten and casein free diet and has seen "miraculous" improvement.
So I have found some books to read up on it and a cookbook to help us get started. I think it will be good for all of us. We are going to start avoiding High fructose corn syrup as well.
So hopefully I will have wonderful results to report back on soon!!!