owen's world

Sweet Owen has been going through an emotional stage. He's super happy at home and around the people he is most comfortable, but he has been more attached and clingy of late.

To back up, in July we took Owen for an evaluation as part of the sibling study we are part of at Vanderbilt's Kennedy Center. At that time, he was diagnosed with PDD-NOS (pervasive development disorder, not otherwise specified). You can google it, but basically it means that he is registering on the spectrum at this point, but not enough to warrant any particular ASD diagnosis such as autism or asperger's syndrome. He is showing deficits in communication, social interaction, and has peculiar and obsessive interests (such as counting repeatedly). He talks constantly, and can say just about anything, but often echoes and repeats things over and over.

Despite that, he is making progress and is so far above and beyond where Lewis was at his age, that it gives us a lot of hope for him. Still, the report we got from the psychologist recommends 20-25 hours a week of intervention, which is rather overwhelming. He would have lost his First Steps services without the diagnosis (because of their testing standards), so we are grateful to still have that. And we were grateful he got into Big Red School this fall, and has been going one morning a week.

Poor kid though, he cried off and on the whole first day at school. This week they said it was more like 30 minutes. We have been singing the songs a lot and trying to keep him excited about it. Next week is fall break so he will have 2 weeks to work up his fear again. Hopefully he'll be ready to go back. We are also in the process of getting the same Medicaid waiver for him that Lewis has so that we can get a better home program in place. Owen responds great to any ABA type training we have tried, and seems to really enjoy it. If you clap for him, and say "Yay, Owen!" he'll happily do almost anything.

It has taken us a couple of months to wrap our brains around this diagnosis. He is so different from Lewis that we were just hoping he was a bit quirky. When we see him around typical kids though, there is definitely a difference, so we are grateful to know so early so that we can help him. While he doesn't tantrum or get super picky about his routine, he does struggle with new places and new people and especially those two things at once. All of that to say, we appreciate your prayers for Owen and for his progress and emotional state.

A couple of random Owen facts: His new favorite foods are dried cranberries and special cheese (cottage cheese). He loves to help me pick red tomatoes out of the garden and to count to ten in Spanish. He easily memorizes books that he loves and will "read" them to himself or to us over and over. He also is singing a ton lately, and has finally learned that his brother's name is Lewis, not Reeses. He still calls him Reeses sometimes, but is getting it right more often than not.