New: Parents to an awesome kiddo, wish to understand him

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FanBoy11
Hummingbird

Joined: 17 Apr 2016
Age: 1947
Gender: Male
Posts: 22
Location: Boston

22 Sep 2016, 6:27 pm

Hi! We are non autistic parents to a wonderful, loving and intelligent 5.5. year old boy who is autistic. We adore him and we want to do right by him in trying to understand a respectful place where we can join him. We would like to connect with him more and hope that at some point in the future he will be able to tell us more of what he needs.

In the meanwhile, we are really hoping some of the wonderful autistic adults here can shed some light on some of our little man's behaviors and patterns. While he is of the generation no longer formally diagnosed as "aspie", we were told by his devlop pediatrician that he profile is more "aspie". This surprised us because he has a significant language delay but we were told that speech development is part of the "diagnostic" criteria, rather it is the "absence of clinical symptoms before the age of 3" that is used to diagnose Aspergers. Doesn't really matter to us what the "term" is, he can decide that for himself when he is older- we just want to try to understand him as much as we can while he is unable to tell us that.

He has recently developed an unusual physical movement where he will swipe the floor with his foot or back track on his steps. It seems to be a ritual but no pattern that we can discern, nor is he visibly more upset when he does it. It does not look like any of his "happy stims" like looking at things peripherally or verbal stimming. Would any one have any ideas why it happens? I say happens because it appears to be kind of involuntary.

It's nice to be here
MZ

yelekam
Veteran
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Joined: 18 Jan 2013
Gender: Male
Posts: 591

23 Sep 2016, 1:22 pm

welcome to wrong planet
I am reminded that there are some good writings by William Stillman autistic theorist on autism, on things like communicating and understanding autistic children and their behaviors. Particularly his book Demystifying the Autistic Experience.

FanBoy11
Hummingbird

Joined: 17 Apr 2016
Age: 1947
Gender: Male
Posts: 22
Location: Boston

23 Sep 2016, 2:34 pm

Thank you so much, will add that to the stash- currently reading Uniquely Human and just finished Neurotribes

AnonymousAnonymous
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Joined: 23 Nov 2006
Age: 34
Gender: Male
Posts: 72,388
Location: Portland, Oregon

23 Sep 2016, 4:04 pm

Welcome to Wrong Planet!