Isaac-Boy update

As many of you may know, over the course of the last two months we have been in the process of having Isaac evaluated for Asperger Syndrome. A few weeks ago, when we did the follow up appointment, the psychologist we were working with confirmed a diagnosis of AS and ADD for Isaac. Neither is even a little surprising to us at this point, now we just have official documentation. The struggles and challenges we face with him haven't really changed, only the direction we can look to for guidance and assistance. It's actually nice to know for sure, and to have a direction to go in, where before we felt like we were just making guesses all the time, educated ones, but guesses all the same.

We don't plan to use any medication at this point for the ADD, but are looking into removing gluten from his diet on a trial basis this summer. We had such positive and definitive results when we removed dairy, that we felt we should try this before anything else.

We're also in the process of having him re-evaluated by the Henry Ford Autism Center, as they use a team of pediatric specialists and seem to give more support to parents for how to help the child more. With our psychologist, we only got a diagnosis, but we really don't know what else is out there. We'd like to know more about how his brain works, and they do a very thorough, day-long evaluation...unfortunately,they don't have any openings until September. We're praying for an earlier cancellation.

In more recent Isaac news, his impulsiveness and lack of a sense of danger have earned him a broken foot! He decided it would be good to pull down an upright-standing 8ft 2x10 pressure-treated board, and not realizing how heavy it would be, lost control of it. It landed squarely on top of his left foot, creating a break in the largest bone in his foot. He'll be sporting the bright orange walking cast for a month. I guess it's better now than in the middle of summer!

All in all, Isaac is doing pretty well. Young 5s this year had been great for him: he's reading on his own, he's much more observant and can put those observations into words, he's learning to be a little conversational, too! We're going to try to get him into some speech therapy this summer, to help him with the pragmatics aspect of communication. Looks like another busy summer!