Edit: whoops, butchered the title.I made a post here a ways back that got a bunch of replies, about me thinking my son was autistic and how to cope. It was super helpful but for some reason I decided to delete the post. I don’t remember why I decided to delete it but I did take screen shots of a lot of the helpful responses luckily.Now my son is a little over 2 and a half and was just diagnosed with autism by a developmental pediatrician. I appreciate all those other replies I got but this is still such a hard thing for my wife and myself to hear and nothing prepares you for it.My kids handsome, smiley, loving, happy, and not as bad with eye contact as a lot of kids with autism, so naturally friends and family would tell us there was nothing wrong and that he’s just speech delayed. But I always knew there was something more wrong. From his inability to communicate well verbally, to his love of cause and effect toys and shutting doors and climbing up and down stairs, to his inability to or unwillingness to follow most instructions, and his lack of desire to play with other kids instead of toys. I knew this day would come.He’s such an amazing kid, but I am so terribly scared for his future. And so far raising him hasn’t been hard. He has an older sister who is 4 and if anything she’s been the more difficult one. But I know as he gets older we have challenges ahead. It does scare me and make me feel a bit selfish for my self when I read things about how “the most amazing parents are the ones parenting kids with autism” to hear so many people say that makes me deeply wonder what I’m in store for.I love this little guy so much, but I am stuck in this thought pattern of thinking there was a version of him that has all of his good qualities but none of his challenges (autism) and that he was suppose to exist in that way but something happened to change that. I know it’s probably not true but I can’t help but feel that way.He is having OT, speech therapy, and development intervention once a week each (so 3 sessions per week total with 3 separate therapists) they all seem awesome and he seems to be making strides but sometimes I feel like they’re literally just playing with him with a bag of toys and I don’t know if it’s helping.I just don’t know where to go from here and what to expect. I’m glad we live in a good school district. People rave about the special education for the little ones and he’ll be able to go when he’s 3 in September. I just hope he continues to progress. I am very confident that he is not low functioning and the developmental pediatrician has basically told us as much, but I also dread and worry about setbacks or losing skills which I’ve read about happening to some autistic children and I think I’ll always have that fear in the back of my mind that things could go backwards and he could end up low functioning. All signs seem to point to him being moderate or higher functioning so far though but they said they won’t have a really firm understanding of that until he’s 6.Anyway thanks for listening for anyone that got through all of this. via /r/Parenting http://bit.ly/2IQUwFP
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