AEIOU News
Seth's Story
Fri, 23 Nov 07
Seth was born 11/1/04 a big beautiful boy, what more could we have hoped for?
As Seth got older he did everything on time - sitting up, talking, crawling etc. He was a happy, healthy baby. We didn’t realize anything was wrong. Seth was very active and boisterous but at around the age of 18months or so he seemed to stop developing and he seemed to lose his speech. But we still didn’t realize that there was something wrong.
In Easter of 2006 we were camping with family and a few of their friends when one of the guy's asked my sister in-law if Seth was autistic? She quickly said no why? He said that his daughter was autistic and that Seth did a lot of the same things that she did, like flapping, screaming, endless energy. Jodie finally came to me and said what this bloke had said to her. I didn’t thinks so I told her as I was told by friends, family and doctors that boys talked, toilet trained later so I never really worried. So I made an appointment to see a doctor and got a referral to a paediatrician. The whole time I was thinking he's going to think I’m an over reacting mother and tell me nothing was wrong and Seth would get there in his own time. When the doctor came out he got down to Seth’s height and said "can you say crocodile? I laughed yeah right I said.
After what seemed like an hour of questions with Seth on his best behaviour NOT climbing on me bitting pulling my hair, destroying his office, I said to the doctor so what do you think? Never in my wildest dreams did I think he was going to say he was" autistic". What did this mean, what was autism? I hadn’t really heard anything about it. All my dreams and hope's for Seth had been ripped away from us.
The doctor told me that Seth would not have anything like a normal life, and with that I left his office with Seth's little hand in mine, a number to contact DSQ and a diagnosis of ASD. I was devastated, confused, didn’t know what to do next. So we went home and I had to then tell Seth's dad. Chris I think went into shock and stayed there for about 12 months. It left us both angry and for a long time nothing seemed to matter any more we really lost our way for a while. But as time has passed and the more we learn about autism the more hope we have for Seth, and we now know how wrong that doctor was. With early intervention a lot of love and support and never giving up on him he will have a wonderful life no matter what path he takes.
Seth had to wait a while to get into an SEDC centre which he could only go to for 2.5 hours at first then he was eligible to go for half a day a week. and DSQ could only offer 1 hour a fortnight of OT and speech therapy combined it was no where near enough he just wasn’t progressing.
Then we heard of AEIOU and I got on the net then gave them a call they had not long opened a centre at Bray Park and were looking for another pod of 12 kids to start the following term we put Seth’s name down and not long after that we got the best phone call to say Seth had been accepted into their program.
We were so happy we hold a lot of hopes and dreams in AEIOU . Seth goes there 4 days a week and we and others are noticing wonderful improvement’s in Seth . He is coming out with more words. He is starting to echo words that we are saying. He's not as stressed as he has a bit better understanding of what is expected of him in different situations. Seth still has a long road to follow but along with the beautiful staff at Bray Park and the whole team at AEIOU and of course Jaymee his sister, Chris his dad and me, he will make it.
Thank you for your time - Seth is only one of the many kids with autism that need support!
Thanks,
The Rouhan family
