I am the mother of identical twin sons. They turned two in November.

At 12 months, they seemed to be moving right along in their development.  They were walking, starting to say words; everything seemed fine. I was a little worried they were late in talking, but they were talking, so that was something.  By 15 months, they still had very few words but they were both doing some signs and also had a full repertoire of “action” songs in their arsenal. By 18 months, there were no words.  None. No signs. No action songs.

Everything was easily explained away as a boy-thing, or a twin-thing, or an identical-twin thing.

We tried not to worry.

Friday, they had their first visit with Early Intervention. I wanted to get their speech back on track as soon as possible.  Language delays were our number one concern. Of course, in the back of our mind, we’d thought about autism, but we weren’t going there unless we had to. It’s too difficult.

After thirty minutes of watching the boys “play,” and watching their interactions with me, the Early Childhood Development teacher and the Speech Pathologist, there was an early diagnosis of sorts.  They weren’t as concerned with the language as they were all of the other things: they didn’t really play with their toys, they didn’t really interact with, well, anyone in the room.

Early Intervention wanted to proceed with autism evaluations.

The next thirty minutes involved me, sitting on a chair nursing my four-month old.  Trying to not to break into an ugly cry, trying to keep it together and sound somewhat intelligent until I could get all of these people who just brought my whole world crashing down, out my door.

My sons are perfect.

And I don’t know how to fix them.