Parents of children with Autism - not an Aspie

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Looking for those parents who's children are on the spectrum, not an Aspie or any other secondary mental diagnoses. It is difficult to get a good idea of what my child may go through or not go through when the diagnosis is very different. Maybe we can chat and compare notes. Where ya at?! !!

Hi,

I have two full-syndrome autistic daughters (twins). The are considered high-functioning, but are not Aspies. Also, they're only four years old! Not sure if this could be of any interest to you

What sort of information are you looking for?

My son (7) is a moderately functioning Autistic.

I am an aspie, so I may not be the person that you're looking to talk to.

PM if you have any questions.

My oldest son is 6 and has Moderate Autism (but is high functioning compared to when he was a toddler). And youngest son possibly has AS or PDD-NOS if not, non-autistic with quirks.

Massachusetts General Hospital's BrainTalk communities has a really active forum for autism http://brain.hastypastry.net/forums/

Hi, My oldest son is 11 dx with PDD-nos. He was dx at age 3. I have a 7 yr old now being evaluated for AS. I'm unsure if my 11 yr old would be considered high or low functioning. His last IQ test was completed at age 6 with a score of 70. The school didn't want to do another one in fear the gap is bigger and basically he would be labled MR.

Trying to get an idea of what methods some of you used to get your children to speak? Currently my 2yr old is starting her classes for autism and we are using the signing time dvd's. What other methods can you suggest? How long did it take for you child to speak and understand and where there any of you who's child never spoke?

Also I notice that some of you mention high-functioning as oppose to low-functioning I guess. I'm not sure what my child is. Should I have been told when she was diagnosed? She was only diagnosed with ASD thats it.

My 2 yr old has autism. He is going to be 3 in April. They told me that he was high functioning. He actually started talking very early and then when the symptoms started appearing, he stopped talking. Baby J has individual words now and he's working on combining 2 words through Speech Therapy.

He also uses a PECs board.
Here's a link to some basic info about it:
http://www.polyxo.com/visualsupport/pecs.html
We made our own PECS board. We used bristol board with strips of velcro, and laminated pictures with velcro backing so he can easily remove them from the board.

We didn't really try to use sign because I get super-confused with signing. (I confuse left and right, up and down and mirror images)

My 11 yr old started in early intervention at 2 1/2. When he turned 3 he started an all day pre-k mon-fri for special needs, Which was wonderful. We started teaching him sign just for his basic needs(drink, eat, play, ect.) He received speech at the school and he also went to a private ST 2 x per week. He started talking around age 4 1/2. I took him to K screening and they couldn't understand anything he said so I kept him in the pre-K one more year. It was great, my son was lucky b/c the school closed the last year he attended due to funding. My son started ot at age 3 1/2 and is still receiving ot. He has always received special ed. through the school, I just recently transfered him to a private school and things are going alot better.

For those of you whos kids talked late but are now much older - how is the communication now? My girls were late talkers. They had some functional language at three, but not much. Between 3 and 4, the language really took off, and now, at 4.5, they talk non-stop (a problem in itself!).

They still have lots of pragmatics issues, though. They jumble word order, mess up verb tense, sometimes mess up pronounds and small verbs (is/are) that sort of thing. Sometimes they get these things right, but often they get them wrong. It seems random. It kind of sounds like a foreigner who is trying to learn English, but is not yet fluent (minus the accent). Their articulation is good.

How is language for some of your older kids who had delayed speach/lingering pragmatics issues? Does it continue to improve over the years, or will there always be these pragmatics isse due to the disorder?

Squaretail,

I can't answer for all children, but my 11 yr old still has speech issues. Some days are better than others and I notice it is worse depending on his stress level. If I ask him what he did at school, It is always "nothing". He repeats the fist two words of a sentence anywhere between 2 to 7 times. He will at times repeat a sentence he just said under his breath. He seems to either forget what he wants to say or he just can't find the words. He is still learning letter sounds, which he started learning in K. Some days it takes alot just for him to communicate through speech.