When my daughter was 8 weeks old, she developed severe stranger anxiety and, until she was two or three years old, she would scream when most unfamiliar people would speak to her. At my daughter's first birthday party, it was warm, she had on shorts and her aunt set her down on the grass. My daughter had more than just a meltdown-it was like she had been set down on a bed of hot coals. She was talking at nine months and could read a few words at age two. At age three, on top of her anxiety issues, I started to notice that while her vocabulary was much larger than other children her age, my daughter's language and social skills did not come close to the other children in her pre-school.

Several other idiosyncrasies started to appear as well. My daughter would develop odd fears, such as disliking objects that were orange. She was terrified of butterflies, then developed a fear of flowers because that's where butterflies congregated. Her language was often scripted from television and books, and she constantly put her hands over her ears because certain sounds almost seemed to cause her pain.

What did her pediatrician say? "Oh, she's just spoiled." I was told to read a book about difficult children. Finally, at my insistence, we were referred to a pediatric neurologist who diagnosed my daughter, at age four, of "mild autism," a slight language delay and sensory integration disorder (SID). He also mentioned something about a disorder called "Asperger's Syndrome." This was in 2000 when very little was known about SID, and the fact that there is an autism spectrum was not known to most of the general public-even educated parents such as my husband and I.

The neurologist had very few recommendations, so I got online and researched. I contacted our local Autism Society and was referred to a local psychologist who specializes in autism spectrum disorders. My daughter received a comprehensive evaluation, and it was determined that she was borderline mildly autistic. The psychologist also told me that because my daughter was so verbal and seemingly intelligent, she would most likely fall into the Asperger's category.

Because most of what I read about Asperger's seemed to describe my daughter, I took that diagnosis and ran with it. We immediately qualified for special education services because of the autism diagnosis; we moved to an area where the school had the best resources, and we've been fighting an uphill battle since then. Starting with kindergarten, we've had to deal with school personnel who think a child with autism is a non-verbal child who would be happy sitting in a corner all day. Now that she's in the sixth grade, things have slowly improved, but much more training and awareness is needed.

Surely, this beautiful little girl with her obsessions, routines, spaciness and anxiety must just have bad parents. No, she doesn't have bad parents; she has autism.

Learn more about this author, Terry Evans.
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