The diagnosis

The official diagnosis came in the form of 4 ladies coming out to my house to talk to me about how Tallie did with the evaluation. There was the school psychologist, the speech pathologist, a special education teacher and a lady who is in charge of the autism program for the Omaha Public School system.
They all came into my home and sat down and proceeded to talk to me about the signs that Tallie displayed that made them believe that she falls on the autism spectrum. Some of the things that they pointed out were that she walked on her tip toes, she doesn't point to things she wants or is interested in, there is a lack of eye contact, she has a speech delay, she doesn't follow a two step command, she doesn't display joint attention and so on. Some of these I thought were a little crazy, for example, the walking on her tip toes one. My oldest daughter did that when she was Tallie's age a lot more then Tallie has ever done. So I asked them about that. They told me that it wasn't just one of the things, it was the combination of all of the things she was doing that made her fall on the autism spectrum.

That's the other thing that I have learned. There is a whole autism spectrum and there are no two kids that are exactly alike. Some kids are more highly functioning than others and some have issues that others don't have at all. There are also several different types of autism. It has been mentioned that Tallie is highly functioning, but no one will go into that much detail about it. I think partly because of her age and also because this is an educational diagnosis, not a medical diagnosis which I learned more about later.

So from here they recommended that Tallie be enrolled in a Toddler Autism Program (TAP). This is a school setting that meets on Monday and Wednesday mornings for 1 1/2 hours. This goes through the summer and then in the fall she can start preschool that will go 5 days a week for 2 1/2 hours long.

I was on board, sign us up. I wanted to do anything I could to help Tallie start talking. I think at this point I just wanted her to start talking and prove everyone wrong. That she wasn't autistic, she just had a language delay.