Today was a good day.
I took C to an evaluation with a psychologist, the objective of which was to test his cognitive abilities. The good doctor was very surprised — and a bit disappointed — that up to this point, no one had tested C's intelligence or cognitive skills with traditional tools like the Stanford-Binet IQ test. He was concerned we were only getting a "partial picture" of our son.
We've always known that C has good to very good cognitivie abilities. He's a fast learner; he has a great memory; and despite being just three, he's started sight-reading, counting to 100, and spontaneously sounding out words, to name just a few examples. While we won't know the results for a few weeks, it seemed like C was acing almost every question; we had to really work to get him to focus, but when he did, even the doctor was impressed.*
Yes, the psychologist noted the very troublesome areas — focus, social reciprocity, repetitive / stimmy behavior, etc.
However, he believes that because of C's cognitive abilities, he might very well be able to learn to compensate for these deficits to some degree, or at least learn behaviors that help offset the deficits. In other words, he was extremely positive about our son's future.
I'll say it again: today was a good day.
* It is only fair to note that C has made huge strides in his abilities to focus and perform exercises over the past year due, in no small part, to the incredible efforts of the therapists who work with him daily.