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

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That's worth a try. So far we just sit him on the toilet, but nothing happens...

Also we are going to have him evaluated again now that we are in the US. His teacher seems to think he's PDD-NOS, not the full-blown autism...

Bah, it's all autism. Isn't that label being done away with like Asperger's is? (Googles) Ah hah ... http://www.dsm5.org/ProposedRevisions/P ... spx?rid=98

Hi, I'm new.

My little son turning 4 next week has just been diagnosed with autistic disorder and global developmental delay.

We have a recommendation for ABA therapy that I am going to see about on Monday, and he went to special needs pre-school (and did pretty good) for 3 weeks, but now he is out until after his IEP meeting, that will be in two weeks. So kind-of a holding pattern here.

I looked back a few pages and saw someone else's child is also climbing fences. My son does this, too. What we have done, a) is really gone over the boundary to the street. He is very good about streets (after a lot of hard work) with lots of showing him the boundary and also taking him in if he ever goes in the street. I don't really enforce anything for his usual thing, which is to climb the fence and then act very pleased with himself for getting in the front yard.

Separately I have not found anyway for him to think running away is anything but a game. So basically I don't chase him, and with him being good about not going in the road, he is not running too far. I can out run him still, though. We tend to go to places that are pretty safe, though, he does not have good road safety away from home. We do a lot of fenced parks and things like that, and I hold his hand or put him in a cart for parking lots. For a long time I kept him in a stroller but I have gotten away from that.

I have got two other kids, a twin daughter of my son mentioned above, and a 7-year-old son. Right now I am very focused on not making them think that they miss out on things b/c my son. I don't want them to have feelings like "we can't have a dog b/c little brother has autism." Yes, they want a dog, lol. So I am trying to make my reasons not be anything tied to his behavior. I want them to be close siblings. They do pretty well together.

My little son does not play with other children, I realized he had autism when I tried to take him to pre-school this September. I had had some thoughts but talked myself out of it. But he needs special pre-school for sure and so I am "all in" for trying to do the most helpful things for him.

Okay, that is not quite true, I had got a referral in for his evaluation early in the summer, but I thought they might say he didn't have autism. After seeing how he did in pre-school I changed to feeling "we need to get him diagnosed so he can get help and not have a miserable time in pre-school."

Welcome to the group,

I had mah epiphany about there being this communication thing when I was eight or nine. I learned the concept from picture books in which there were two people talking to each other with word bubbles. There were these pictures on almost eberry page. They said things like "hello" and "hi" and "how are you" and "I'm fine, thank you". Then, the teacher and another student would say these things to each other, practicing these greetings, while I watched. Then, it was my turn to practice with the teacher, and I would say the words by reading them off the page. Then, after about a year of doing this and figuring out over time what this communication thing was, I started to smacktalk mah unfortunate parents, mostly about the eggsac length of the Nile River and stuff like that. During times when I was not with the teacher and there were no picture books around me and you asked me if I wanted some chocolate, it would have been good idear to hold up a cue card with one of these communication-related pictures on them to remind me to answer instead of me going on like no one had said anything to me.

What did you do before this? Because my son (age 4) can speak but he just does not communicate in any way shape or form. Words, pictures, sign, doesn't matter. He can do all these but does not use them for communication.

I was like your son. I didn't communicate. It was not my instinct. Not through words or gestures or pictures or anything. My mother anticipated my needs and left me alone to pursue my special activities. Maybe I was just not ready to communicate at that age. My mother says that I made zero communicative approaches before I had mah verry merry berry slow epiphany about communication. I remember not responding to my name. I heard and understood my name, but the idear of responding never occurred to me.

Based on my educational eggsperience before the communication epiphany, I would say that a lack of communicaton and socialization has little negative effect upon the cognitive development of an autistic child with high non-verbal intelligence and some language foundation of words I knew how to read and write, but only at the single word level. I started to learn to speak at age eight, then started to speak for communication at age nine.

I should add that I had few needs. I only needed to pursue my special activities, eat, sleep, go to the bathroom, stim, keep all objects in the same location and orientation at all times, go to a certain park eberryday as part of my routine, and follow eberry other routine eggsacly.

Have any of you read "Trackers book"?

http://asdstuff.com/grats.html

I'm going through it now, seems to explain things really well.

Yeah I read it a while ago, it's very informative. Also kinda makes me wonder if I am on the spectrum myself...

Hi Bunny-R

Thanks for your comments. I don't mean to pry but do you mind if I ask you a few more questions? My son's "special activity" is basically to write the #'s 1 to 100 over and over. He can also read and spell some single words.

The school is mainly worried because he can't really keep still, doesn't sit with the class or anything like that for more than a few minutes at a time. So because of this he's gonna have a hard time learning anything. Even at home he pretty much runs around all the time.

And when he does try to communicate like I said he hardly ever uses words, usually screams, cries, moans, or flops down on the floor.

Again I don't mean to pry but does this sound familiar at all to you? Do you have any sort of "insider perspective" that could help us out? We are getting very frustrated with his behavior.

Har, you figured out the Bunny in my username.

Is your son going to preschool now? Or grade school early?

I spent a year in preschool from three to four, and all I did all year was walk around in a small circle doing nothing. The teachers thought that I was ret*d until they noticed that I knew how to read and write words and numbers. I used to do this similar behavior to your son of writing or drawing the same things all the time. It was fun and all about making the marks repetitively instead of comprehending or communicating anything. But it was really enjoyable. All of my reading and writing of single words was a giant repetitive sensory-seeking activity for about six years, but they also set the foundation for me learning to use these words later.

I am wondering what the kids do at your son's school, because I remember that preschool was eggstremely unengaging and stressful for me, and I was so overloaded with all the lights and noises and activity of people all around me that I couldn't do anything eggsept walk around in circles, wander around the hallway, have toilet-related mishaps, or try to eggscape the premises. Is your son's school a sensory hell? If it is, then he probably has to move all the time and walk around the room just to feel OK. Any group activity that is going on is probably eggstremely boring for him, and he is not going to engage with those. It is like physical torture to sit in a group doing a boring meaningless activity at school. But then he also runs around all the time at home, moar active like a boy, while I was a moar sedentary girl. Your son sounds like an autistic kid I know. He also runs around all the time, and it is hard to get him to sit anywhere to learn some words for ten minutes. So teaching him is like start, stop, start, stop, start, stop. Teach five words to read and type in a short spurt, then play with truck for 3.5 minutes. Rinse and repeat. But those short spurts of learning are getting through, and this kid is going from totally non-verbal to speaking words for communication, including making up his own terms for things that he wants. This occurred over more than six months. I work at an autism non-profit where we are trying to figure out how to teach any autistic kid, regardless of severity of traits or lack of this or that or low IQ score.

Does your son get one on one attention in school? I think that he needs it. Since he is not getting the learning in school, I recommend a private tutor to try to teach him things by adapting to his behaviors, no matter how frustrating they are for the teacher. The teacher must adapt first to the child, even if it is teaching in short spurts and running around, before the child can learn. Right now, your son is used to running around, but he does have to get used to sitting and focusing, but that will be a process over months at least, and it has to start with a one-on-one teacher willing to adapt to his behaviors right now. And he has to be taught something that engages him, and he has to become good at it and want to do more of it. Let's say that you are trying to teach your son to speak sentences. Maybe your son can learn to say, "He is driving the car" while running around the room. He doesn't have to sit still to learn that at home. I learned to say, "He is driving the car" from seeing these words on a page and reading them out loud. There was a picture of a person driving a car to go with the sentence. That was reading comprehension beyond the single word level. Your son can learn stuff like that too, maybe going through flashcards with words and pictures or sentences and pictures while or in between running around. No matter what, don't let the school label him as intellectually or learning disabled just because he is not "classroom-ready".

As for communicating, I don't think that your son can think of using words when he wants something, like this idear does not occur to him, and the more frustrated he gets, the less he can think of it. The only way out that I know of is to start to teach him how to use language for communication. If the teachers and therapists can't do it, then you will have to do it with him yourself. A good resource is books for foreign children learning English as a second language. There's all the vocabulary and sentences and communication concepts in there, with pictures that your son can use to comprehend the verbal stuff. The verbal stuff are just labels for the pictures. For communication, I had to see it on a page and in the third person before I could do it in the first person. I could not go straight to the first person. The reading and the third person were intermediate steps required for me. I think that is why it is so hard for therapists to elicit communication and language from autistic children. They are missing the intermediate steps and going about it like the autistic children are neurotypical children.

Yes, I was not fooled by that cat pic!



He is 4 1/2 and in a special needs preschool. They do have group activities but a lot of it is one-on-one. They bring him to a cubby hole to do the one-on-one stuff.

He loves writing numbers 1-100, over and over. He even makes his own fonts. If he has nothing to write on, he traces the numbers in the air with his finger. He likes letters (and sign language) too, lately he's been getting into the letters more. School wants him to do PECS but I am not convinced this is going to help. He had these at a previous school and they just ended up a big mess on the floor.

As for sensory stuff his big issue is tactile. He likes to be in motion. Loves cars, trains, etc. We got him a beanbag chair, rocking chair, yoga ball at the suggestion of the school and he loves these. Also loves jumping on the bed. Sometimes I wonder if his focus on all this sensory stuff is distracting him from learning communication. At least the school is not saying he is ret*d. They said that at this stage he can't be tested. Though honestly I have this fear of him being 35 years old and still doing nothing but writing #'s up to 100 over and over.

I actually used to teach English as a Second Langage, and we are showing him playlists on Youtube for ESL students. He seems to like these. Most kids would think they are totally boring.

I remember what you said about seeing characters talking in a book with the word balloons, comic book style. The Mrs and I are working on some vidoes based on this idea (idear). I will post them here once they are done.

I just popped in here to say thank you for this link, and to the person who wrote this book, of course.

Very insightful.

That's brilliant...thanks for your contribution, feedback like this is gold for parents like us.

I am so sick of telling my son to put on pants.