I wish that all doctors would take the time to listen to you rather than clock watching, waiting to move onto the next client. Fortunately the cognitive therapist at our son's school was patient enough to allow us to describe the huge list of worries we have surrounding our son's behaviour during an hour and a half long meeting on Wednesday. At the end he said that he feels that our son's problems are not language disorder related after all but in fact could quite possibly be connected to autism. He did not commit as obviously he will have to do further tests but we are going to see him again in two weeks. It does feel that we are slowly moving closer to finding out what the problem is with our son.

There were two things that the doctor said today which we found both reassuring and helpful. Firstly, he said that all the parents that he spoke to reported that their children were much worse at home than in other situations. In a funny sort of way. this was really positive from our point of view as we did worry that it might be us exasperating the problem. He also said that it is very important to pick your battles and that sometimes a battle is won by not starting it in the first place. Taking things slowly and gradually trying to modify our son's behaviour will be more productive than confrontation.

One top tip which seems obvious but which really helps, is to write a list before you see a doctor of all the points that you want to raise as when you get there it is so easy to forget the salient points, especially when you are faced with a 'professional' who is not as helpful as the doctor we saw today. My husband and I sat down the evening before and wrote a list of all our son's foibles, a list which ended up as one and a half sides of A4! It is amazing the little things that we see as our son's normal behaviour but in fact are actually quite unusual when you analyse it!

It really has been a weird month or so in our house. A few weeks ago we were nearly at the end of our tether, not knowing what to do with our son and feeling failures as parents as we felt that it was us that was doing something wrong. In the space of just a few weeks, we have seen or are in the process of seeing four different doctors. We also have a meeting tomorrow with a social work assistant to discuss various options for providing extra help. Even though the situation hasn't really changed, the fact that things are moving forward and that we feel that we are being more proactive, has really made a difference. We can only hope that we will get some joy at the end of what is bound to be a very drawn out process.