A partial list of disorders Alex might be afflicted with:

Sensory Integration Disfunction (more recently Sensory Processing Disorder):  A neurological disorder causing difficulties with processing information from one or several of the five senses (vision, auditory, touch, olfaction, and taste), and/or the positional sense.  For those with SPD, sensory information is sensed, but perceived abnormally.

Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder:  Self evident.

Hypokalemic Sensory Overstimulation Disorder:  The most prominent feature of hypokalemic sensory overstimulation is the feeling of sensory overstimulation that is characteristic of attention deficit disorder.

Dysarthria:  A motor speech disorder resulting from neurological injury, characterized by poor articulation. Any of the speech subsystems (respiration, phonation, resonance, prosody, articulation and movements of jaw and tongue) can be affected.  Dysarthric speech is due to some disorder in the nervous system, which in turn hinders control over, for example, the tongue, throat, lips or lungs.

Apraxia:  A disorder caused by damage to specific areas of the cerebrum, characterized by loss of the ability to execute or carry out learned purposeful movements, despite having the desire and the physical ability to perform the movements. It is a disorder of motor planning which may be acquired or developmental, but may not be caused by incoordination, sensory loss, or failure to comprehend simple commands.

Autism:  A disorder of neural development characterized by impaired social interaction and communication, and by restricted and repetitive behavior. These signs all begin before a child is three years old.  Autism affects information processing in the brain by altering how nerve cells and their synapses connect and organize.

Pervasive Developmental Disorder - Not Otherwise Specified (PDD-NOS):  A pervasive developmental disorder (PDD)/autism spectrum disorder (ASD). While those with it have some characteristics of disorders on the autistic spectrum, they don't fit the diagnostic criteria of any of the other disorders thereon. While PDD-NOS shares similarities with autism, it tends to be milder.  PDD-NOS is sometimes referred to as "atypical autism" by autism specialists.

Quotes occasionally stolen from various web sources without attribution.  Needless to say, this is totally fucking terrifying on multiple levels.  Despite his accelerated physical growth timeline, he's long since fallen behind his fellow classmates in speech skills, motor functions (specifcially running and the manipulation of small objects with his fingers), cognition of basic concepts (he constantly confuses red with blue, seven with two, nine with six).  There are so many indicators in all the above disorders that he demonstrates (slurred speech, inattention at calling his name, singleminded fixation on one form of entertainment, the requirement for constant physical sensory input, inability) that the only reaction I feel like having is punching a hole through everything in this office.

This is based on an assessment by a NY State DOH-authorized developmental evaluator as part of their Early Intervention Program.  He will now be subjected to a series of physical and neurological and speech pathology examinations.  The result of these exams will determine whether the State is willing to provide gratis individual developmental aid at his day care facility or whether I will be privately funding the platoon of doctors, specialists, therapists, and educators involved in properly rearing a child with a developmental or neurological disorder, if one medically exists.  There remains hope that he's just a two-year-old and he needs some time to grow into his body and brain.  However, when faced with the above list, there is no other available emotional response except panic.

It's there at every level.  There's just a core human desire for your child to be healthy and bright and become a successful international sports playboy or Nobel laureate, so facing down the news of the wide spectrum of mild to existentially fucking severe developmental roadblocks hits that parental bone with just the appropriate resonant frequency to trigger every overreaction and internal doomsday processes you possess.

And if you can squeeze in a few seconds for empathy between the minutes of totally mindfucking abject terror, you realize these are all cognitive disorders that affect the filter through which you process your environment and existence.  From a philosophical standpoint, I can't really think of anything scarier than a disease fucks with your comprehension of reality, whether via sensory translation or spatial awareness or even fucking self-awareness or another dozen cagetories of the neurological conduits between your brain and your body.  And that's just from the adult POV.  And now imagine this from the POV of a two year old boy who can't use a fork to eat and occasionally runs into objects and walls because his brain got distracted by something while his body happened to be walking or running, and now can't have conversations with his equally aged classmates who are finishing full sentences, in context, and the what's now likely (internally) being identified as confusion over why you aren't like the other kids and why you can't play with toys they way they do, or ask for toys the way they do, and how much rage and resentment and misery must be nascently generating from the whole situation.

I've been stuck on this paragraph for about thirty minutes trying to sum everything up, but there's no summary coming.  Every aspect is totally FUBAR and represents a genetic or parental or nurturing failure somewhere along the line, and that's just psychically devastating.