RE: Kids w/ Classic Autism, PDD-NOS & Speech Delays

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Great news! my 6 yr old prefers to say "this is?" and then waits for an answer. However she prefers to only focus on objects or pictures where she thinks she knows the answer but waits for verification from an adult.

Hoping she will get to the "what is that" stage soon!.

http://www.freevideosforautistickids.co ... swers.html

Above, you can see that I made a whole bunch of question and answer sets for my son with classic autism when he was between three and five. Asking and answering questions was very hard for him to grasp. The "what" question format came first, and the "why" questions were the most difficult.

I actually have many, many more question sets that I did not make into slideshows.

A few minutes ago, I was putting adhesive labels with my questions and answers in a picture book about American government. Each page has too much information, but I'm using the book anyway because my son is going to have to learn a lot about American government and economics for third grade, and my picture book options for these subjects are limited.

My younger son uses question and answer flashcards from superduperinc.com. You can also get them from difflearn.com. Babybumblebee.com has one question and answer DVD, which can usually be found used on the Internet. Teach2Talk.com also sells question and answer DVDs which may be found used on Amazon.com.

I hope that you all do not mind me telling you about things that I've used successfully with my kids. I think that it is absolutely wonderful that the kids are making progress with asking questions!

No feel free, that's what a forum is for, to freely exchange ideas in a friendly congenial manner.

My daughter has gone really well after a week on Prozac, although today she used her new found language skills to explain to the teachers and aides at school that she should go home!! When they didn't comply she proceeded to scribble all over her work book. Passive aggressive stuff now rather than tantrums.

I'm so glad that all is going well. Maybe now that she's calmer, behavior will be easier to address.

When my older son first got on meds, certain problems (selective mutism and meltdowns) immediately reduced or went away. However, other issues--speech irregularities, learning issues, fine motor skills issues, social skills delay--became more obvious.

I hope that everything is going well with everyone.

My younger is son is doing well on his increased dose of Prozac (40 mg/day) --more relaxed and the potty training going well. He also takes .1 mg/night of Clonidine.

My older son is also doing a little better now that he has added 1 mg/day of Intuniv each morning to his other meds (24 mg/day Prozac and .1 mg/Clonidine at night).

I've been super busy, though--too busy to keep up with the online discussion forum. My older son with the classic autism gets out of school in three weeks and will be out for three months, along with his younger aspie brother.

I've been pulling together lessons and finding about local summer activities and classes, and my kids' therapist has been out sick. Also, my parents have decided that they don't want to help pay for a part-time private therapist anymore anyway.

I will probably look around for a student or someone less qualified through an online nanny service to help out instead while I'm here. I have a ton of supplies and ready-made materials, and I've done this before, so this will work fine. The major issue will be that psychology is not my strongest area--OCD and major behavior issues will be difficult to tackle without a professional therapist. If all else fails, I will change my sons' health insurance $$$ at the beginning of next year in order to get more psychological services/ABA coverage and lower insurance deductibles.

Got to go now.

Well, as part of my kid's preschool program we are getting an ABA therapist to come over to the house for 2 hours a week. We didn't even ask for this, it's part of the program.

Is this service free, subsidized or built in to the cost of pre-school?
Here in Aussieland we have to pay around $25/hr for three hour sessions which is not too expensive. My wife and I did the ABA training so we do around 2hrs with our daughter each day.

Hi B.A. 40mg/day is quite high for a small child isn't it? I understand 60mg/day is considered high for adults


I'm waiting on details for the new disability insurance scheme being rolled out in Australia in 2013. The premium is supposed to cover disability services such as psych, speech therapy and even financial protection for the child if parents pass away.

I am impressed! We did the ABA for a while ourselves I just find it hard work. We do reinforce all his learning though. We pay the same rate and our son gets around 12 hours a week, so it adds up.

Loevaas recommends that parents delegate the ABA therapy to a trained third party. However, we benefit over the flexibility to deliver intensive ABA when we want to, nowadays there is virtually no behavioral modification exercises, I largely do reading with my daughter while my wife does math and writing.

This is all part of the public school system. I wasn't really expecting any of this, and the district we are in is considered mediocre at best. We just closed on a house and will be moving after the school year ends...the schools in the town we are moving to are considered "good" so I wonder what will happen...

It can only be beneficial for the parents whose kids attend these schools to implement these plans. Back here we are still negotiating with our state education department to allocate brief visits from a government speech therapist and psychologist, the emphasis is still on us to provide our own private services.

I can officially say my son is hyperlexic now. I know at his preschool, they've been trying to teach him to write his name, so I wrote it down to see if he'd recognize it. He did. So as an experiment I wrote down a bunch more words and he was able to read about 8 out of ten...and the ones he got wrong, he read as similar sounding words. Gonna have to inform the school about this...

Welcome to the club...hyperlexia is a good sign. Although not recognized by the psychology fraternity as a diagnosis, it automatically means your child will have less problems dealing with alpha-numeric characters at school.

I've also never heard of a hyperlexic kid that never learned to communicate verbally.

Time to send an email to his teacher...

I've never fully understood the difference between dyslexia and hyperlexia, so I just googled the Wikipedia page on it ... actually autism with a verbal communication delay is the norm for hyperlexia! This sounds exactly like my son too. He can read quite well and it's mostly self taught through videos since he doesn't cooperate long enough to be taught as much by me. He reads better than he can communicate verbally. He completely scrambles our names, he calls me and others by his own name, he'll call strangers his name or Mom and Dad....