...sense and sensibility...

The backstory: Last year I met Stacy at the school the mister man attends. We bonded nearly immediately and became fast friends...hopefully for life. She has two boys...one close in age to the mister man, and one 2 years old. Two year old M. has Down's Syndrome, and four year old N. has a speech delay. N. gets VERY upset if his clothing gets wet...as little as a single drop of water on his shirt triggers tantrums, crying and general discord. In addition, he has a few other sensory issues...mostly related to touch...though noise seems to bother him occasionally also. At any rate, I had suggested to Stacy that she fill out a sensory profile on him through the school's resources, and she called today to tell me that the results were normal. Frankly, I was suprised. I had rather expected that they would have found he had some form of Sensory Intergration Processing Dysfunction, or something similiar. I went ahead and suggested that Stacy do some research on her own, just to see if any of the techniques recommended for SIPD might help N. It was only after I hung up that I realized how telling that was of what kind of a parent I am.
Here's the thing...I understand that doctors go to school for a long time, learn a lot of info, memorize a lot of techniques and are generally supposed to be far smarter than I. But at the end of the day I hold firmly to the position that I know both myself and my child far better than any doctor. It's not necessarily that I disregard doctor's orders or advice...I just believe in research. To many times in my life I have gotten the 'one size fits all' diagnosis or cure...and found it lacking. The fact that I know more about autism than the pediatrician is somewhat appalling. The fact that I have, on occasion, been prescribed the same dosage painkiller as a healthy adult male is somewhat appalling.
Maybe it's the fact that my son is on the spectrum that has made me more of a 'think outside the box' parent...or maybe I was just made that way to start with. Either way, I believe that if I am observing a certain behaviour or symptom than I need to look into what can be done about it. I guess my whole point is, I believe that one should follow intuition...even if it goes against what the professional says.
To quote Jenny McCarthy, "my son is my science". I'm not all about curing autism or preventing it or even changing my son. What I am about is making sure that he has the right tools at his disposal to be as happy and functional as he wants to be. And that means trying what I think might work, even if the doctor or therapist or teacher disagrees.