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

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Anyone else on this thread have an older kid and want to trade ideas and compare notes?

Heather is 19, functions as a 12-13 year-old, and is every bit a sassy drama queen.

Anyone out there in the same boat?

AFAIK our kids in here are around age 4-6, but speaking for myself I'd love to hear any insites you have, things you might have done differently etc.

Not there yet myself, but you might get more responses posting this in the main part of the parent forum as a new thread.

I'll be haunting the forums quite a bit; I'll definitely pop in if/when I have similar experiences to share!

Hey do your kids have melt downs? I actually don't know that my son ever has. I mean he has got upset or mad, but nothing extended that I would call a melt down like what I read about in the forum. And when he has got upset he can be calmed by taking him away from whatever is upsetting him (being in a particular place etc).

Well he gets angry/upset when he can't communicate his needs (this actually happens a lot) but nothing I'd call an "autistic meltdown."

Thing is, I think the word "meltdown" gets used much too casually on forums like this and it gets used to describe any sort of tantrum.

I thought that question was for the newcomer. Yes, my son has meltdowns frequently but they're mercifully short lived, most of them blur the line into tantrums these days but they're mostly completely overblown irrational reactions to everyday events.

Yeah I know what you mean. My son threw a fit this morning because he dropped a toy. I would not consider this autism-related.

My son probably thinks I can read his mind and screams if I don't do whatever it is he thinks I should be doing. If I notice he could use a drink and fill a sippy cup for him if he sees me doing it and doesn't want a drink at that exact moment he'll scream and throw himself around as if I were abusing him when all I'm doing is getting him a drink that he's free to take or leave as he pleases. He's that way with just about everything. It's half tantrum but it's still an autism thing.

Ah, I think a lot of kids have that issue. Not mine though. His main screaming/crying fits are when he's either hungry or tired. I am hoping these will stop once he learns to communicate better.

Mine is starting to show a lot of improvement in that area I think, at least half of what he says makes sense these days. He even introduced himself and tried to make friends with another boy at the playground last week (the other boy and his sister may have been spectrum too, hard to say they were all doing the same things as my son and didn't say anything). How is the potty training going? Mine has started to refuse to use public restrooms when initially he was using them willingly for months. He's only had two accidents over the Summer though, once I took him to my Aunt's pool and he peed on her deck rather than wait for them to unlock the door and let us in their house and another time we took him to the boardwalk and when he asked to use the potty we took him to a private restroom, it should have been perfect ... it was clean, private, quiet, no automatic flusher and he because he refused to sit on the toilet he peed all over me and his pants instead. I had brought a spare change of clothes for just that purpose but had no intention of having him go in the ocean, but his Dad had insisted and already had soaked one outfit so I was out of spares.

Toilet training? He still doesn't really get it at all...lately he's started to take off his paints and diaper when the diaper is dirty so I guess that's a step in the right direction...

Glad your son is starting to be able to be understood. Mine still does not really communicate much...I'm starting to thing that he really won't until he has some sort of epiphany that there's this thing called communication...

That probably is a step in the right direction, he's aware of it at least. My son did that a few times with poopy diapers (and horribly made a mess with it a few times) just prior to my training him. Also, somehow he managed to figure out how to use voice recognition on the ipad/iphone for YouTube, if he says something clearly it brings up his search results for him without him having to figure out how to type it in which is pretty cool because it's an instant reward for saying clearly what he wants.

Do you have a potty in his room? Although my son uses the big potty most of the time I keep a potty in his room too because I keep the bathroom door shut and he can't always get in there when he wants without asking. He usually uses the little potty to poop too.... if your son knows how to take off his clothes and diaper, if the potty is always available maybe one day he'll surprise you and use it. You could put a rug with a rubber bottom or a tarp of some sort underneath if your worried about messes.

Well at this point he only wants to go into the bathroom AFTER doing his duty (doodie) but hopefully he will follow in the steps of your son and be trained soon!

I did take a pretty tough approach to it though, it took about a month and I had him pantsless for most of it so I could see when he was going and put him on the potty the moment he started to have an accident. I also let him play outside near the house in big-boy underwear so that when he wet himself it would go all over and be unpleasant. Then he'd have to go inside so that he would know why using the toilet was important.