by Eleanor O'Donnell

Created on: November 02, 2009   Last Updated: August 11, 2010

I'd thought that my son was autistic for some time before he was officially diagnosed by a paediatrician.  I'd always known that something was very different about him, but I knew nothing of autism prior to his third birthday.  With that in mind, I hope you can understand why I felt plain and simple relief when he was diagnosed as autistic just after his fourth birthday.  I was a little confused, a little disappointed that I couldn't fix my son's behavioural problems with better parenting after all; but largely what I felt was relief that I finally had some answers to the myriad of questions I'd accumulated throughout the course of his unusual early development.

The first four years of my son's life were more emotionally strenuous than I can put into words.  He was a gorgeous little baby, with some amazing intellectual gifts.  He was funny, cute and very unique.  But he behaved in ways that reduced me to tears at times.  When he couldn't get his building blocks to stay together, he would smash his head repeatedly into the nearest hard surface until I raced in to restrain him.  When he was hungry or thirsty or wanted a toy he couldn't reach, he'd scream at a blood-curdling pitch and flap his hands like a bird.  He didn't gesture or point or even look at the thing he wanted doing as a toddler - he would just scream until I figured it out by a process of elimination.

I became particularly concerned when these behaviours marked him out as being completely different to his peers at playgroup.  They'd call his name and he'd either ignore them or hit out at them for interrupting his games.  He wanted to do what he wanted to do - and that never involved other children.  If they sat where he wanted to sit, he'd scream at them and flap his hands - as if he expected them to know that he had wanted to sit there.  If the adults didn't give him his snack first, he'd hurl himself on the floor crying, clearly not understanding why he had to wait.  To anyone outside looking in, my son was a selfish little boy with no regard for anyone but himself.  He was irrational, he was quick to temper, and he could scream at a pitch that caused real physical pain to those around him!  I sat in on a session when he was just coming up to his third birthday and it broke my heart to see him behaving so 'badly' when I knew what a good little boy he could be.

Finding out he is autistic was a significant turning point

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