As a baby, Maddox was developmentally on track with his milestones, therefore I did not see anything wrong with him. I could not remember exactly how old he was when I noticed he was not expanding his vocabulary. I did not think much about it due to him having so many ear infections as a baby! He ended up getting tubes in both ears, while he was in surgery getting tubes, the doctor came out and reported that he had severe infections in both of his ears and called in antibiotic and ear drops. As a mom I felt guilty that I should have got his tubes done sooner, but I trusted the doctor’s recommendations and was hoping he would outgrow it.
He ended up doing fine with his tubes, but he did not progress with language. He would ignore his name being called, he would ignore environmental surroundings and just focus on what he was doing or was very engrossed in his cartoons. Every morning and in the evenings, he would jump and make yelling noise (stimming) as a professional I knew he had autism. When I brought this up to my husband and my mom, they were in denial. They told me I knew too much, and I was over analyzing him 😊
My momma gut told me there was something off and I started checking my boxes off from A-Z.
He started struggling at daycare, he had a lot of problem behaviors because he could not communicate his wants and needs. Transitions were really tough for him, as the youngest he was thrown in the car seat and was forced to go with the flow, but he was always crying and throwing a fit in the car seat.

When Maddox was a little over 3 years old, I called First Steps of Indiana but missed the cut off with his birthday. They directed me to go to my local school district.
I got Maddox evaluated, but not for a diagnosis, they just wanted to treat his language delay, so we started speech therapy.
We started with speech therapy for 1x week at our elementary school and it was a disaster! The teacher came out and told me that she could not work with him. He would not sit still, as a professional teacher over the years she has never had this much trouble. My momma’s heart was broken… I made some suggestions about what we could do to help Maddox. I started going into therapy and sat behind him in a chair. This helped him tremendously and eventually he got into routine, and I faded out of the process. The teacher had some health issues, and he received a new teacher! I was worried, but then I found out she was his teacher from daycare. Therefore, they knew each other! He did great with her, but it was not enough!
I had Maddox evaluated for speech & OT at Wee Speak. I filled out all the paperwork and insurances. They mentioned that my Anthem insurance was accepted.
They accepted him and then we started speech 2x a week and OT 1x a week. One month passed, we received a bill for 1300 stating insurance covered zero of the cost. I called Wee Speak and they told me that I needed to call our insurance company and ask them. I called down to my husband’s insurance company which is Union (pipefitter). The lady was so nice but told me they do not accept therapies due to a child delay, the ONLY way they would cover it was if they had a stroke! She felt so bad and advised me to get on the family support waiver so they could help cover the cost for therapies that my child needed!
As a family of five, we could not afford 1300 out of pocket every month to help my child with speech. Therefore, I wanted to start the process for applying the family support waiver, but with my background I knew he had to be diagnosed with development delay or disability. Life happens and I put that to the side for a little bit, but continued speech at our public school 1x week.
The following year I had Maddox evaluate his hearing at Purdue University to make sure he could hear. The hearing test was a disaster, the audiologist Dr. wrote in her report autism. While we were at Purdue, I applied for speech language pre-school. He was evaluated and was accepted into the program fall 21. She speculated about autism in his report also. During the meantime I had seen his pediatrician, she was the one that put in a referral for hearing and speech. We were also on a waitlist at Riley to get a diagnostic testing done but they were 6 months out to a year.
Maddox started preschool Monday through Thursday from 8:30-11:30. I would drop off the big boys at school then headed down to take Maddox to preschool. I had so much anxiety for him and was so hopeful he would do good, and it would all work out. Long story short Maddox progressed but he was having a tough time during free time and was overwhelmed, so after his one-on-one therapy session was over, I had to pick him up at 11. Then they asked me if he should not come back the next semester due to his behaviors and that he needed a developmental preschool. As a behavior consultant I knew you could not get any better with speech-based preschool! I knew he was behaving because he could not express himself verbally. HE COMMUNICATED through his behaviors by crying….
Here I am making phone calls to our Frontier school system that has developmental preschool, we decided to go there, I felt like I had no options at this point. During that time, I made some phone calls to some friends/coworker of where I could get Maddox diagnosed faster than Riley?? I went to full Spectrum, she had Dr. Kania contracted out and was doing monthly community evaluations in Crawfordville.
I got that set up and went there. She diagnosed him with high functioning Autism, having the confirmation gave me relief!! Knowing there is a confirmation, we were not guessing what is wrong with Maddox.
It saddened me as a mom, but I knew it would all be okay! I was not scared of Autism; I mean this is my professional job working with autism and other disabilities. If anything, he will Better Me!
Everything is a process and takes time for everything which is so frustrating when you are trying to seek early interventions to help your child!!