Caelun’s First Day Of Pre-School At Cedar Trails

We had felt since about age 2 that Caelun’s speech and language and his motor skills weren’t developing at the ‘normal’ rate. Now I know that ‘normal’ has a HUGE range but this felt out of that range to us. As educators whose job it is to teach and spot folks who need extra help with learning issues and as people who both have learning disabilities ourselves that weren’t diagnosed until we were adults (me with dyslexia and Clint with Asperger's) we are probably hyper sensitive to such things. While not possessing the traditional  signs of hyper sensitivity to sensory stimuli the speech and language and the motor skill delays accompanied with some social awareness issues seemed like red flags to us of someone on the autistic spectrum. We brought it up to our pediatrician at his 3 year old well child visit but she needed some convincing. At the four year old visit she agreed to send us to a specialist, a behavioral pediatrician, for testing and the specialist agreed he is on the autistic spectrum. He is only on the spectrum by a few points, what used to be called Asperger’s and high functioning even for that, but he is on the spectrum and thus eligible in the state of Michigan for services through the public school system. This meant the second week of September he was enrolled in the ECSE (Early Childhood Special Education) program at our local public school. He receives speech and language therapy, physical/occupational therapy, and behavior therapy along with classroom academics.  This is him meeting Miss. V. his teacher on the first day. Hooray for the ECSE Preschool!