We were told by the child psychologist that my son’s diagnosis would take six months and that it would not be prudent to make any judgments until the diagnostic process had been completed. Although everyone involved in this process understood the value to the parents of a name to whatever it was that was happening with my son, they wanted to be thorough in their investigating. That way there could be no doubt as to his “label”. This is a very grey area, but for me I felt that if it meant that we would get support and advice in his parenting then the “label” he was eventually allocated would be a help not a hindrance. From very early on in this whole process I have always felt that my son will have to live in this world. If I had the means we could all of us go and live on an island and live happy productive lives and never the word or thought of autism would enter our minds. And that to me is the challenge. He is a complete person, still young but his character is his and all of it is flavoured with autism. And it is this character that will live in this world. So we have to follow the rules.

All the aforementioned professionals then spent some more time with my son, and he had a visit to a special school. Now, if ALL children were taught like that ... Only six to a class with one teacher, one learning assistant, and a child psychologist on call. My god, what kind of world would we be living in now? Whilst this was going on his nursery teacher was also trying a technique; she would call his name and record how many times she had to call him before he answered. Amazingly it went from eight times to seven and so on till after about five weeks he was down to three calls. It was this that made me realize that he could make progress ...