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

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I had somone reveiw my son's IEP and they said it was fine, no red flags, not need to hire lawyers/advocates or anything like that.

We have a neurology appointment for my son on Tuesday...I wonder how it will go?

We use PECS and they are all either actual pictures of the objects or activities or they are representative drawings. But yeah moving from that stage (which is really useful for us and our son) to that whole sentence building thing..looks a long and painful road.
The number of pictures is bad enough now!

Full-sentence PECs like you describe does not sound very usefull. Why not just use written words instead?

We make our own using pictures that we take of things or places or get off of online grocery shopping sites. We paste the images onto an MS Word table, print out using colour inkjet, cut out into individual squares, laminate, cut out again, then stick velcro on the back of all the little cards.

Posted: Sat Dec 15, 2012 8:43 am Post subject: My newly diagnosed 2 year old son
Hi. I'm new to this forum and also new to the world of Autism. I have 2 year old boy /girl twins, my daughter is typically developing (though she has a few mild sensory issues) and my son was just diagnosed with autism in November. The thing is, I'm having a hell of a time finding much information that seems to really relate to my son. What I mean is I find loads of accounts of children that are severely autistic, a good amount of info about aspergers, but not much about children diagnosed with autism on the mild end of the spectrum. I'll paint a quick picture of my son: he is nonverbal, he does babble a good deal and has various noises he makes for excitement or irritation but no real words. His stimming behaviors are some spinning and clapping, though he doesn't stim often. He is very social, and if someone new comes over he quickly warms up to them, but if we're out and someone corners him (like if he's in his stroller and buckled in) he doesn't like it and turns away. He has great eye contact and smiles a ton. His biggest challenges besides speech are calming down from a tantrum, and attention span. He has a very hard time sitting still. When we had him evaluated the therapists recommended 35 hours a week of ABA therapy. After speaking with them a bit more I learned that this would mean he'd be largely separated from his sister and me for much of the week. I can't even fathom how this would work, since as twins, he and his sister do everything together. Even his speech and occupational therapy, which he has once weekly, incorporate her. My husband and I want to do what's best for him but we're wondering if this amount of ABA might be overkill? We have found a preschool that is run by a speech pathologist and has a mix of typically developing and special needs kids, and we're thinking of enrolling both kids 3 days a week. Would that, coupled with speech and OT be enough or is the ABA really the best way to go? Are there any parents out there who have kids who sound similar to my son that might be able to give me some idea of what to expect? I'm just so confused, and the more I research, the more confused I get. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

One thing I think most of us have done that has had a positive impact on getting our children to talk and understand language is to let them watch a lot of English as a second language videos and other things of that nature. An ipad is also a good investment.

Hi! I'm new here.

I have two boys, 12 and 15. The 12-year-old is PDD-NOS. He was originally diagnosed with HFA at 2 1/2, went to sped preschool, had a one-on-one para in kg and 1st grade, etc etc... His last eval they changed him to PDD-NOS because he no longer has a significant enough language delay to be autism. He was more like Aspie but couldn't be Aspie b/c of the history of speech delay. Not that it's going to make a difference here shortly, I guess, everyone will just be ASD.

I have been divorced from the boys' father for two years now. No need to do a re-hash at this point, but he did say under oath that he thinks there's "nothing wrong" with our son, so you see where there might have been a problem. My oldest lives with his dad most of the time, odd dynamic with all of us combined with the attitude of a typical 15-year-old.

Anyway. DS is in regular classes at school, except for one hour of social skills class. The school has an autism person, real nice guy, and DS has sort of a peer group now, a group of a half dozen or so boys all kinda HFA/ Aspie, in social skills with him. He has a para in one class, for now, only because he so detests writing (and subbing a keyboard, he didn't fall for that at all, he still won't write, even though he can navigate a computer like nobody's business) so she is there only to scribe for him. It freaks me out still, to think of him navigating junior high.

I seem to have come to a crossroads where I'm not sure what to do. He's come such a very long way. I still remember speech therapists sitting on my living room floor teaching him to say "mama", and then roughly 8 years later, a long 8 years but still, having a diagnosis change because he no longer has enough speech delay. That was huge for us, and I left the evaluation doing a happy dance from the "upgrade". The things he needs to work on now are more social and "growing up". Self-sufficiency and life skill things. I realize I have pretty much the next 8 years to get those things put into place. But I'm not sure how, really.

As an added side note, I'm having a heck of a time finding a date. Suggestions welcome.