Well my name is Kristy and the kids are A (son, 20), T (daughter, 16), L (daughter, 7), and N (daughter, 7). N and L are technically my stepdaughters, but I have been raising them as my own since they were 15 months old. See to put a long story short, I have my son at 16, the father and I did not stay together. Then I met my now husband, F, and we had T, when I was 20. We ended up getting married and I joined the military. Not to get into the gritty details, but we divorced a few years later, then we both remarried. He ended up having the twins with his second wife, though we kept on decent terms, for the most part. We finally figured out when the twins were a little over a year old that we still loved each other, but we didn't want to do anything as long as he was still married. But the twins bio ended up making the decision easier for us when she woke up one day and decided that she didn't want to be a mother and wife anymore, so she packed her stuff up and left, leaving the twins with F. He called me up because I did not live in the state, and within a week I had closed up shop in Texas and was on my way back to Virginia.
Once I was in the house with the twins I realized that something was going on with the twins. They weren't walking, they weren't talking, in fact at 15 months old they could barely crawl. So I contacted their doctor and started researching on the internet to figure out what was going on. That then started the cycle of doctors for the next 3 years. We went to psychologists, psychiatrist, neurologists, speech therapists, occupational therapists, DAN doctors, and a few others. It was to the point where my whole life was literally spent driving them from doctor to doctor trying to figure out what was going on. Finally they came to the conclusion that the girls had PDD-NOS and ADHD, which the PDD-NOS label was used up until last year, when it was finally changed to autism. N also has muscular hypotonia. Essentially it means low muscle tone, which she still has to this day. It's kind of freaky because she can almost literally turn all of her limbs in different directions, or touch her fingers to the back of her wrist. She claims it doesn't hurt, but it is certainly freaky to look at.
During all of this time we also had some testing done on T which showed that not only did she still have the ADHD, which she was diagnosed with at 3, but that she also has aspergers. Her doctor was really great though and put it down as autism instead of aspergers, because by that point in time we already know that the new DSM-V was going to get rid of the aspergers diagnosis and combine it into the whole autism category. Since autism is a spectrum disorder.
So I now have 3 children in the house that have issues. So we have the meltdowns, the tantrums, the stimming, the spinning, the hyperactivity, etc... Any other parents that have a child on the spectrum will understand completely what I am talking about. Some days are really good and other days you are counting down the hours and minutes until bedtime. But we are lucky in that our girls are all verbal, so that does help out quite a bit.
Once I was in the house with the twins I realized that something was going on with the twins. They weren't walking, they weren't talking, in fact at 15 months old they could barely crawl. So I contacted their doctor and started researching on the internet to figure out what was going on. That then started the cycle of doctors for the next 3 years. We went to psychologists, psychiatrist, neurologists, speech therapists, occupational therapists, DAN doctors, and a few others. It was to the point where my whole life was literally spent driving them from doctor to doctor trying to figure out what was going on. Finally they came to the conclusion that the girls had PDD-NOS and ADHD, which the PDD-NOS label was used up until last year, when it was finally changed to autism. N also has muscular hypotonia. Essentially it means low muscle tone, which she still has to this day. It's kind of freaky because she can almost literally turn all of her limbs in different directions, or touch her fingers to the back of her wrist. She claims it doesn't hurt, but it is certainly freaky to look at.
During all of this time we also had some testing done on T which showed that not only did she still have the ADHD, which she was diagnosed with at 3, but that she also has aspergers. Her doctor was really great though and put it down as autism instead of aspergers, because by that point in time we already know that the new DSM-V was going to get rid of the aspergers diagnosis and combine it into the whole autism category. Since autism is a spectrum disorder.
So I now have 3 children in the house that have issues. So we have the meltdowns, the tantrums, the stimming, the spinning, the hyperactivity, etc... Any other parents that have a child on the spectrum will understand completely what I am talking about. Some days are really good and other days you are counting down the hours and minutes until bedtime. But we are lucky in that our girls are all verbal, so that does help out quite a bit.
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