Since I’ve mentioned her quite a bit, it’s probably time to talk about my daughter, Ocelot, who started me on this journey.
Ocelot is not her real name. I want to protect her privacy, so I use a code name for her (and my son, who is known as Climber).
Even before she was born, I knew Ocelot was going to be different. And she was! I won’t go into details, but her newborn weeks were like living with a bomb explosion. But being first time parents, and never knowing many babies before, we thought this was normal.
When Ocelot was 3, we visited a friend with four kids, one of whom was seriously 2E (gifted, ADHD, Tourette’s). My friend had a collection of books on various learning differences, and she handed me Tony Atwood’s book on Aspergers. I didn’t see Ocelot in the pages — but there I was! I realized right then that I, and probably my siblings, were Aspie. [I didn't realize my husband has AS too until many years later.]
As Ocelot began school, we saw more problems, and began making the usual round of brain doctors. “She’s highly gifted, you have to wait for the other kids to catch up to her.” “it’s an attachment problem, you need to spend more time with her.” [I found this one hilarious, as I was draining myself spending time with her, and sacrificing time with her younger brother.] “Of course it’s ADHD-Combined, here’s a prescription, she’ll need drugs all her life.” [The drugs did nothing but keep her from sleeping; when I mentioned this, the doc gave me a prescription for sleeping pills.] Our school at the time was playing wait and see games.
For job reasons, we ended up moving to another state. After a disastrous 6 weeks at one school, where she was perilously close to being declared Emotionally Disturbed and sent to a classroom for the hopeless, we moved to our current school district, where Ocelot finally received a full Special Education evaluation. The evaluation came back that she was very gifted, but had a set of learning weaknesses that was consistent with a NLD diagnosis. [This was a public school evaluation, and schools are legally not allowed to issue medical diagnoses.] I started reading about NLD, and all the problems in Ocelot’s life began to fall into place. I shared the information with her (she was 10), her anxiety levels went way down, too.
As Ocelot began middle school, she had an IEP with excellent services. Her resource teacher and (part time) aide did a lot to help her overcome weaknesses, and she continued to mature. By the time she had her 8th grade evaluation, her visual skills improved to the point where an NLD diagnosis no longer made sense. She was clearly on the spectrum, but not NLD and not Asperger’s either, so she is currently classed as PDD-NOS.
She’s in high school now, in another great program for very high functioning Spectrum kids, and again doing well — mostly.
