It's official

Today was a very strange day. We didn't spend much time together as Mummy and me had to go to the clinic to meet with Yael (or as you call her, "go to number six, see Ariela) the Communications Therapist to get the communications diagnosis, then an hour and a half wait where me and your mum went off to Aroma in the Canyon HaSharon to have coffee, almond croissant and a long chat about Yael's findings.

You woke at 4.15am. I brought you straight to bed with us, I couldn't face the getting up and down game. I've read enough to know that when you start the diet, sleep becomes a bit erratic at night. Possibly withdrawal symptoms. Not sure. So when it got to 7.10am, and we needed to leave at 7.20am to drop you at Safta's, you were soundly asleep. We woke you and you were in a very good mood, popped some shoes on you, grabbed all the things we needed for the day and headed out the door. You were oddly telling us to hurry, and were again very compliant with our lift - I just pressed -1, and with Safta's. I just picked you up, explained we were in a hurry and pressed 14. We didn't even have time to say a proper goodbye, and we waited outside for you to kick off, but you didn't. Still, we were still late for Yael!

I'm going to post up here a translation of your assessment when I get time to sit down with your mum and do it. It will be good for Nanny to see. Yael basically said that you had all the abilities we said, and saw lots of them herself. She saw your deficits as we pretty much saw them, and was pleased to hear we had been working on eye contact and joint play as she had requested. She was also pleased to hear that you asked me to give you five, called yourself Ben, nodded and said 'yes', amongst other things. You're articulation is fine, she never heard any problems with vowels or consonants, but you had deficits in receptive language (ie what is said to you) and with your output. She also said like most children with a communication disorder, you didn't master the pre-lingual stage of gestures and pointing and showing. We'd be working there to start off with.

We told her we'd started the diet, and she said with some interest rather than skepticism "The GFCF one?", it is a different world here to the UK. I'm not sure if the UK is not open to interventions that are peer-led, I actually suspect that there are very few options for parents. I went onto a forum www.raisingkids.co.uk, onto a busy Autism and Aspergers sub-forum and it seemed comprised of parents who were just looking at it head-on, almost no-one had heard of the diet, or were skeptical. Someone had huge success and were met with nothing - no "how did you start, how do I start". Just one guy saying he tried it and it didn't work (I'm always very skeptical of people saying they 'did it'. Being veggie, I know how hard it is to get other people to pay attention to ingredients). I was just shocked at the gathering of miserable souls just posting 'I've had a hard day'. I am damn sure they did, but - at this stage of our journey - I've no idea how people can keep having hard days but not do their sums and realise that they have to plug the leak in the roof. Time may make me be one of the people who just live with it too, but time might also make me a Manchester United supporter. Highly unlikely.

Anyway, back to Yael. She sent a curveball, and after a bit of reflection I still feel the same as I did at the time. She said that your level of language is better in English than Hebrew. This I really do not know, and I actually don't instinctively believe. She said you have a communications disorder, which is 100% right. She said that you are bilingual, again right. But if you were to increase your communications we needed to work in one language, and in Israel that should be Hebrew. Except I am the main care giver, and I don't speak enough Hebrew. And with you maybe not going to nursery till September so she is frightened your exposure to Hebrew is going to be minimal, and eventually lag behind. Normally she says just drop the foreign language, but since that is Ben's best language (in her opinion) is English. So she said, basically, I need to speak English, and Mummy needs to speak Hebrew and we do our floortime with you in our native language so you get exposure to both. Now, I have reservations about this. I am concerned she doesn't know how good your Hebrew is (or that I think it is better than it is). I am concerned that she doesn't know quite how clever you are and how quickly you'll pick up Hebrew (you've only been out of nursery for two and a half months). I'm concerned I am questioning someone who knows - definitely knows her job. She is university educated, she isn't someone who did a three week course at night school. I'm also concerned the shock of changing your mum's language, or the impact on an ever closening relationship if her theory is right is maybe not worth it. Especially if you end up in nursery soon and then get more exposure to Hebrew than English. I'm going to reflect on it.

Apples. If I understand this diet correctly, you eat what your brain is telling you you need. Your brain is craving wheat and milk, you ask for it, in any form. Maybe coincidentally, you would also eat a large amount of corn shnitzels in breadcrumbs before the diet started, and lots of kids on the diet have trouble with corn. So if the corn protein is not being digested properly, getting through your leaky gut (if it is indeed leaky) and taking a trip up to your brain once it has been absorbed into the bloodstream, sending you into some opiate fog, then we'll be giving up corn soon too. You don't digest it, that I know, it comes out the other end whole. Not sure anyone does though. And since starting the diet, you've been apple-mad. Two or three a day. I know that there are lots of kids who have issues with salicylates and so do kids with hyperactivity. A few people have told me you are hyperactive, which to be honest, I let them think. Hyperactive sounds better than autistic, not that I personally care, but other people will behave differently on hearing the word autistic. They think retarded, they think Rain Man. Hyperactive makes them think food intolerance and E-numbers. And who knows if you are, your mum thinks you might be, I think you might not be. And at the end of the detox period of this diet, and after some successful therapy, who knows where we'll be. I don't really care about where we are now, I'm more worried about where we'll be soon. But the apples and corn have made me think. But I bought some apples anyway. I'm working with a nutritionist, I'll take her lead. She is fully aware of the various problems ASD kids face, she works on them one at a time. So will we. I think she has gone for soy first because the protein is very similar to that of wheat (I think) and therefore is a better one to start with.

We met with the social worker, Vered, after we came back from the cafe. Vered told us that we would have to wait maybe 6-8 weeks (by law 90 days) to get Bituah Leumi (National Insurance) to approve the paperwork for us to get a teaching assistant, benefits etc. It is all a bit complicated, but the form she gave us has to be handed in to Bituah Leumi. They will review things, and then we can go to the council and see if we can get a place for you at nursery now (unlikely - though we learnt that Alutaf nursery places are still allocated by the council), or a place for next year (certain) in a communications nursery. They will also decide on when, whether and for how long you will get a teaching support for a regular nursery this year if there are no spaces in nurseries specialising in ASD. She told us to get a course on Floortime in the Baker Centre at Bar Ilan University and to contact Beit Lauren to get as much information as we can. Because there has been so many families in the last few weeks she said she is working on setting up a support group and getting Beit Loren to come to Netanya.

We went straight in to see Ayelet, the psychologist who compiled the most comprehensive report. It was as we expected, and again, I'll post up a translation when I can. I didn't disagree with her findings at all. I think the nonsense we were told about getting a second opinion is really not what we need to do. Pay lots of money to get some report that says the same thing (or worse, something different, since this is almost on the money). There were a couple of points, which Ayelet didn't know you could do. We told her you could play symbolically (pretend play with a empty cup and saucer) but we added that you can play symbolically with one object and pretend it is another. I told the story of you standing astride a broom like a witch and running around the room saying "aviron", plane. She was very pleased as this is a much higher level of imagination. She was interested to know how we feel, and it is difficult to say. I think this might actually sum up the positions quite well between your mum and me. Your mum said she felt the impact of the first meeting very badly, the confirmation, despite the fact she knew for much longer than me. I think she was very scared about the officialness of it. I didn't think you were on the spectrum when she did, but I was keen, almost eager to get the assessment behind us, so we could either move on putting it behind us if you weren't, or get on with the job in hand if you were. It hurt both of us, when we saw Dr Pozner, but my pain was a little different to your mum's. It's funny though, she has been absolutely brilliant with you, and you are very lucky to have someone who loves you that much. I've seen and read about other mothers, other fathers. They aren't all so willing to learn and work, some still need to get on with their lives and their jobs. Your mum is pulling up trees here.

We drove to Tel Aviv after we picked you up from Safta, and you didn't fall asleep - we needed to pick up my laptop, some calcium citrate for you from the pharmacist, and we tried to go to Beit Lauren (but it was closed). You didn't fall asleep the whole way there, and we managed to get some Floortime in while I was waiting for Mummy to come out with the laptop and calcium. I changed your nappy on the bench - almost if not formed this time, difficult to say if you'd been sitting on it. No struggle, and very well behaved. Let's hope it stays that way. We didn't get much other time to interact, but all the improvements, including less echolalia, less obsessiveness (or actually it would be truer to say more acceptance that an obsession has to come to an end), less flapping and stimming etc were all clearly still much better than, say, last week. But on the way home, you dozed off. And for love nor money we couldn't wake you. You wouldn't wake in my arms, on the chair, on the sofa. It was 4.40pm. At 9pm we figured that was you done for the night. No dinner, no bath, and probably up at 4am.

Today's Food

Breakfast: Cornflakes and Rice Milk, plus a banana and date smoothie.

Snack: Chocolate cake (surprise surprise!), banana, half an apple

Lunch: Two spoons of Lentil and Peanut Bake. Notice it wasn't one spoon. Safta thought it was a disaster. Mummy and me observed it was definitely not one spoon. Two is not a mistake, and I have no idea if tomorrow you'll refuse it or go for three, but onwards and upwards.

Snack: Nothing!! Bite of a banana maybe, I can't remember if you had a bite before you gave it to me.

Dinner: Hard to eat when you are asleep.