Introduction...

[Guest guest]

Hi.

My son's name is Ethan. Last fall, enough people finally came

forward to tell us they believed he displayed autistic tendencies.

At this point, he was 2.5. I have videotapes of him from birth

forward. I will be reviewing them to see if I can see language and

behavioral deterioration around his vaccines. He was always a

studious baby - able to concentrate for long periods of time - and

that has not changed.

Some history:

We first noticed that he was not affectionate around 18 months. And

we started him in speech therapy by 21 months because he was not

talking (said baby and peekabo). The speech therapist said he was

significantly delayed. We were able to get 5 months of free therapy

from this special program. I got 'mommy' by his second birthday, and

he seemed focus on the alphabet so we worked on that a lot. By the

time she left, we had 150 words. And he kept improving, but not at a

rate one would 'expect'.

Anyway, by last fall we had family and friends telling us his

behavior was not 'right'.

We took him off of cow's milk last September. We also began

cosleeping with him to improve bonding.

We have seen VAST improvements since then - so much that we began to

doubt our original assessment that something was wrong with him.

He began talking better within two weeks of going off of milk.

Within a couple of months, he began saying hi to strangers (ignored

their existence before). And he became more affectionate to his

father and me.

However, he was able to spell five small words and write them before

age 3. And his drawing abilities are very advanced. So, we started

to think that maybe he was just one of those smart kids that were

somewhat unusual and the milk had nothing to do with it.

But there are still those little signs. Something to let us know

that something is up. He still resists eye contact. His emotions

can get so out of control that he has complete breakdowns. He gets

obsessed about things being 'just right'. He can spend hours lining

up his trains.

About 2 months ago we started to drastically change his diet in our

hopes to stop the once a day diarrhea poops that were 'normal' for

him. Since removing gluten, all we have managed to do is to make him

poop once every 3 days, 1/2 of the poop is solid and the rest is

diarrhea. We are at wits end, and are just about to start a diet

that takes away rice and quinoa and buckweat and potatoes (I have

celiac's disease and these are OK on my gluten-free diet).

So, I started to do research (which is why we will start the diet I

mentioned above) and found all these links to autism and diarrhea.

My heart is crushed all over again.

But I am resolved to do what is necessary to help him. I will be

reading the archives and getting help from them, as well as future

posts. But I thought you all might want to know who I am.

Luster