The night before, I did the thing every mom does before a big appointment: over-prepared for something I couldn’t actually control. Picked out Milo’s shirt like it was picture day. Wiped his face down twice in the morning like a clinician was going to judge us on skincare and not, you know, the actual point of the appointment. Put his favorite dinosaur on the table next to where he’d be sitting “just in case” — like a plastic stegosaurus from the dollar bin was going to help anyone.
Milo is almost five, adorable, the love of my life. But he has his… quirks, I guess you could say. He lines up his cars by color. He has exactly one pair of socks he’ll wear without a meltdown (the seam on every other pair sits wrong across his toes). He repeats lines from his favorite show back at me instead of answering my question sometimes — and not in the typical, “I loved that show” way, in the way that makes you tilt your head and wrinkle your brow.
For a long time I told myself that that was just him. Personality. A phase. He’ll grow out of it.
Whatever.
But at his four-year well-visit, Dr. Stamler asked a few extra questions, then gently said it might be worth having him evaluated. Of course I nodded, said “Sure, we’ll look into it,” and then didn’t, for months, because I wasn’t ready to hear it yet. Eventually, though, it was me, my gut, and all those signs I couldn’t unsee anymore that pushed me to make the call.
Five looong months on a waitlist
We’d been on a list with a local clinic for five months. Five months of “we’ll call you when there’s an opening,” while I sat there doing math I hated doing — kindergarten starts in September, ChatGPT says an IEP takes time to put in place, and every month on that waitlist was a month closer to him starting school without whatever support he might need already lined up. But when I found an option that did the whole evaluation virtually — from our own living room — I’ll be honest, my first feeling wasn’t relief. It was suspicion.
Would this actually get us accurate results, or just a shrug and a check-back-in-six-months?
Would the whole thing be a miserable hour of him refusing to look at the camera while I sweated through my shirt?
And if virtual is so easy and so good, why doesn’t every single clinic do it that way?
Suspicion is one thing, and a five-month waitlist is another, though. This one had no waitlist, and a timeline of weeks, not months.
I just couldn’t wait anymore, not after doing that kindergarten math one too many times. So even half-convinced I was about to waste everyone’s time, I booked it.
I won’t claim to have been confident
Admission time: I kind of wanted to cheat. Parents are people. Some of us walk in wanting a specific answer, whether that’s “yes, get him the services he needs” or “no, tell me he’s fine, I’m being paranoid” (me, all right). What was to stop me from Googling “what does autism look like” the night before and coaching him through it, or just prompting him to answer the questions however I wanted them answered? If it’s all happening on a screen in my own house, who’s checking any of it, anyway?
But underneath the cheating worry was a simpler one: would the whole thing just be a miserable hour of him refusing to look at the camera while I sweated through my shirt? We’d stopped doing telehealth with our pediatrician years ago for exactly that reason — he’d wander off mid-sentence to go find the dog, forgetting the doctor was even still on the screen. I pictured the same thing here: some clinician talking to an empty room while my kid took apart the remote somewhere off camera.
And if virtual works this well, why doesn’t every single clinic do it this way? That one I actually asked out loud, mid-appointment. More on that in a minute.
The actual logistics (because I know you’re wondering)
A few days before our appointment, a tablet arrived at our door, already set up for what we needed — no downloading an app while also trying to keep a five-year-old from emptying the cookie jar. Before the actual testing day, someone walked me through it and did a quick check of our space, mostly to make sure Milo had a spot to sit and do the activities without me knocking over a lamp trying to angle the camera. Small stuff, but it mattered — no fumbling with tech in real time while also trying to soothe a kid who’s not easily soothed.
I also got sent some questionnaires ahead of time, about how Milo does in different situations, how he plays, how he talks, that kind of thing. I filled them out at 11 p.m. with a glass of wine, like a true professional.
What the session was actually like
The morning of, I kept refreshing my email for the video link like it might disappear if I looked away too long. Milo was sorting through our cutlery, completely unbothered, while I was already rehearsing what I’d say if he just refused to participate at all — full meltdown, arms crossed, the whole shebang. Then the call connected, and there was just a person, smiling, saying hi to both of us like it was any other Tuesday. Not what I’d built up in my head.
The clinician asked him about his socks. Not in a clinical, note-taking way — genuinely, like she wanted to know. And he lit up. Told her the whole seam situation, unprompted, in more words than he’d said to me all week. I sat there half laughing, thinking: nobody has ever cared about the sock thing before. Every other adult in his life has just tolerated it, if at all. This was someone who cared.
From there it moved through picture cards, some pretend play with little figures, a question about how he’d feel if a friend wouldn’t share a toy. It looked almost like play — if you didn’t notice how closely she was watching every single response, how she’d gently circle back to something he’d said ten minutes earlier like she’d been holding onto it the whole time.
This was also the moment the cheating question I’d had going in answered itself. There’s no way I could have coached him through half of what she was actually watching for — how he played, not just what he said, the things he did without thinking about them at all. Turns out you can prep a kid to answer a question. You can’t prep him to just be himself for forty minutes.
At one point, during a break, I actually asked her — half joking, half genuinely curious — why more places don’t do it this way, if it works this well. She kind of laughed and said we’re not the only ones who’ve wondered that. A lot of practices are still running on paper intake and old scheduling systems built for a different era, and it’s not like flipping a switch — those systems are tangled up with insurance, records, staff training, years of habit. Made sense, honestly. I was just glad we’d found somewhere that had already made the leap.
I sat close by as what they called a facilitator, which basically meant I was there to help him stay on task without ever answering for him — yes, I had to actively sit on my hands here. There were structured activities, some conversation, some genuine play mixed in. He got fidgety around minute forty, which felt like exactly the kind of thing I’d have been mortified by in an office but was able to just laugh about since we were at home. Nobody blinked. She just adjusted, gave him a break, then kept going.
After
We didn’t get an answer that day — testing doesn’t work like a home pregnancy test, one line or two — but a little while later we had a call to go through everything: what they found, what it meant, what comes next. Someone sat with me on the phone and actually explained it, slowly, let me ask the dumb questions twice.
I won’t pretend I wasn’t a wreck when they confirmed that yes, my darling not-quite-baby is on the autism spectrum. I was. But it was a different kind of wreck than the one I walked in with. Before, I was carrying a maybe. Now I’m carrying an answer, and a plan, and — weirdly — my kid, who is exactly the same kid he was the week before, sock opinions and all, except now I understand him a little better. And so does everyone helping him.
And that brings us to now
If you’re where I was — desperate for answers, but half-convinced a screen can’t possibly do this right — I get the skepticism. I had it too. But the virtual test wasn’t the shortcut I was braced for. It was just… the same thing, done from our couch, with my kid allowed to be exactly as weird and wonderful as he actually is, instead of struggling to act “normal” in a waiting room under fluorescent lights for forty-five minutes first.
I won’t pretend everything’s resolved. Milo still won’t wear those socks, still lines up his cars before he’ll name their colors, still needs a minute — or ten — before a new room feels okay. There are some things a diagnosis doesn’t fix, and I’m not sure I’ve fully made my peace with all of it yet, if I’m honest. Some days I do. Some days I still cry in the car for no reason I can point to. But I’m not carrying the maybe anymore, and most days, that’s enough.
