Aaron

Today I drove Kindergarten carpool. As I was dropping off the last child, I visited with his mom for a few minutes. When I got back to the suburban, Aaron had buckled the seatbelts to all three empty seats on the back row.

Aaron: "Mom! I buckled up my three imaginary friends!"
Me: "Oh, good job. What are your friends' names?"
Aaron: "Well, they are all girls and they have the same name--KaraElise." Kara Elise is one of his friends from gymnastics last year. He continued, "There's KaraElise #1 that I love, then there's KaraElise #2 that is good at sports, then KaraElise #3 that loves to play computer games!"

Aaron's mind fascinates me. He can think up the most random things on the spur of the moment and he can remember things so well. He is able to explain in detail how something works just because he saw it on a show once. He is creative and has an amazing vocabulary for a 5 year old. He truly is special. But as his mother, I see things in him that make me wonder just how "special" he is. Aaron exhibits certain behaviors that earn him the label of "difficult" from most people. He is a delightful child, but can also be incredibly frustrating and hard to deal with. I've wondered for some time if we were dealing with some sort of spectrum disorder. I've talked to a lot of people about it, and they've all reassured me that he's fine, that he just has a unique personality.

But now we've come up against a real problem. Fine motor skills. I knew he had a problem, but thought it was just a developmental thing that would just fix itself as he got older. But it's not getting better, and his teacher is concerned. He cannot hold a pencil, which makes it so he isn't learning to write. And he can't use scissors. His teacher had an occupational therapist come in and evaluate Aaron, and she agreed that he has a serious problem. His teacher told me that if it were effecting his school work in other areas, then he would qualify for school aid. But, he's such a smart kid that this is the only area he needs help with, so we need to get him private help outside of school. So, I've called a pediatric occupational therapist and am waiting for her to call me back about scheduling an evaluation for Aaron. My neighbor takes her daughter (who has moderately severe autism) to this OT, and she highly recommends her.

So now we are looking at adding therapy once or twice a week to our schedule, which I'm not looking forward to (since I'll have to drag Owen and Nate along with us, probably during the afternoon when Owen should be napping). I'm very anxious to get Aaron seen and evaluated, so I can find out if there is more that we are dealing with. I'm guessing he's got some sort of Sensory Motor Dysfunction going on (which is on the scale of autism). I really want to find out if Aaron simply needs to train his hand muscles, or if this is just the tip of the iceberg of underlying problems. And I'm really hoping that through Aaron's therapy I'll be able to learn things I can do to help him. I feel like I've come to adapt pretty well to dealing with his difficult behavior, but there are times that even I want to just throw up my arms and give up. If there are more underlying problems, I'm hoping I'll learn coping techniques to help Aaron, that will in turn help our entire family.