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⎯ diagnosis ⎯ what we built ⎯ Dylan, now
The day everything changed.
I knew something was off when Dylan was one. He'd stopped responding to his name, stopped responding to loud sounds, even though every other milestone was still there — walking, curiosity about texture and sound, all of it. The doctors told me it was typical behavior. I kept looking anyway.
Before his diagnosis, they suspected he might be deaf. I remember researching the best hearing specialists for toddlers in my area, praying, genuinely hoping, that the test would come back positive for hearing loss — because I already understood what it would mean if it didn't. When the results came back clear, my heart broke, because I knew what came next.
The doctor who diagnosed him wasn't warm about it. It was a routine checkup. I waited in a small room for what felt like an eternity. My heart breaking every time I looked over at Dylan curiously reaching for everything in sight. The doctor asked about the words Dylan repeated most. My voice started shaking before he'd even finished the sentence. None. He told me, directly, that he was autistic. I left with two referrals and no idea what I was supposed to do with either of them.
That drive home was forty-five minutes, and it was one of the longest of my life. I cried. I felt anger. I felt lost. I got home, opened my laptop, and searched everything — and what I found was the worst of it. Meltdowns. Worst-case stories. I looked at Dylan, closed the laptop, and thought: if you're going to spin in circles, I'm going to spin in circles with you.
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What we built instead.
We moved to Florida for better state-level support before I even fully understood how much support we'd need. I fired our first ABA therapist after one session — the therapist restricted Dylan's access to me until he'd repeat a word, something Dylan could not do at all. The screams got louder, and I caved. I couldn't do that to him again. I tried a daycare once. It lasted forty-five minutes before something told me to go back, and I found him crying in a corner, exactly where I'd left him. I never left him anywhere like that again.
I stopped working a regular job and started doing photography instead, because it let me keep him close and stay flexible for the therapy that kept multiplying — ABA, speech, feeding, OT, physical therapy, equestrian therapy, music therapy. Anything that offered a window into his world, or a way to show him I was trying to meet him in it.
A few of the moments that mattered most.
Bubbles.
Dylan didn't speak at all until he was five. I heard his first word — "bubbles" — through a door at speech therapy, and I had to run to the bathroom and shut it so he wouldn't hear me fall apart. It felt like a door swinging open onto every possibility I hadn't let myself hope for yet.
Fourteen, and still becoming.
Dylan is fourteen now, verbal, not fully fluent, but able to tell me what he needs, what he feels, what he wants. He talks about driving, living on his own, having a job, having a girlfriend. We've also been through aggression, regression, years without solid food, sedation just for dental cleanings, and self-harm. Both of those things are true at the same time.
Everything else, we've already walked through.
ABA clinics, speech and OT, public school, private school, day programs, scholarships and funding, holistic and alternative therapies, medication, military-family life through deployment, all of it. It lives on the blog, so you don't have to ask me to relive it out loud.
How to use this space
When Dylan was diagnosed, I went looking for information at midnight and found nothing that felt like it was written for where I actually was. This space is organized so you don't have to start there. Read our story if you want the whole arc. Otherwise, go straight to whatever you're actually facing.
I. Read our story.
Start here, if you want the whole arc before anything else.
II. Search the blog by what you're facing.
ABA, schools, funding, therapies, all of it organized so you can find your specific situation without wading through mine.
III. Reach out if you need to.
Not required, and never expected. Just here if it helps.
