Autism Study

My son participated in a study today to help researchers try to determine the cause of autism.   He will be one of 3600 participants across six states.   My son shows no signs of autism or anything in the autism spectrum, but his (and my) data will be part of the study.

I've been involved in several steps of the study prior to today, including lots of paperwork and multiple long phone conversations answering question after question on medical and family history for both my son, my daughter and me.  After the first phone interview the information I gave was entered into their matrix and they determined we could participate in the study.   Today was the final step: the clinic visit.

My son and I drove to the research lab after school.  He answered lots of questions and played "games" while I filled out more consent forms, took bodily measurements and gave blood and saliva samples.  Then I went into a room with one-way glass and was able to watch the last half of the interview with my son.    He made me laugh at some of the answers he gave.  I was surprised at what he knew and the answers he readily gave.  I was also interested in what he didn't know or didn't want to do.

The next and final step was to get saliva and blood from my son.  He laughed and talked to the research staff while they swabbed his mouth and wrung out the saliva into a collection tube.  Next, we needed to get six vials of blood.   He's never had blood drawn before so they told me how to hold him in my lap, isolating his legs so he couldn't kick, his arm so he couldn't grab and his shoulder so he couldn't twist.    He did none of these things.

He did wail pitifully when she missed the vein on the first arm and spent thirty seconds trying to find it in his arm, probing deeper and deeper.   He didn't want to do the second arm and they would have stopped, but we came here to get blood and be a member of the study and by golly we were getting that blood sample.   He wasn't happy, but he was fairly stoic and honestly pretty brave about the whole thing.

When we were done he didn't want to go home.  The only thing he wanted to do was go back out into their waiting room and play in their play room for a while.  He saw all the toys in there when we arrived and didn't get a chance to play with them before he was called back.   I let him play for a half-hour before we headed home.    I told him I was proud of him for helping in the study to learn more about autism.

The Big Boy Update:   The researcher asked my son a lot of things today to learn about his development.  Most of the questions and tests he had fun answering.  Some of the answers made me laugh.   One in particular made me realize we haven't talked to him about money very much.   She put down some coins and asked first what the quarter was called.   He said, "American".  He told her the dime was also called, "American", and so was the penny.   The nickel however, was called "money".  Later she came back to currency, asking him what a dime was.   He answered, "boring" to which she laughed.   He does have good taste in cars it seems though.   She asked what a car was for.   He told her we had a family car and an awesome car and the awesome car was a Tesla and that he liked the family car but sometimes he got to ride in the awesome car.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  What does she want?   My daughter's birthday is rapidly approaching and we don't know what she wants.  She will, I'm sure, have many ideas and opinions as she grows older, but for this birthday, she just doesn't have any specific passions.   Today my husband took her to the toy store to see if she would latch onto any one thing.    She liked a lot of things, but not one thing over all the rest.   There was a large green bear she liked, but it may have been the huge amount of green.   Now that I think of it, green is pretty much her passion.   Now that I think about it, I think she's going to have a "Green" birthday party.  Green as in the color.