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

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MomofThree1975
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31 Jan 2013, 11:19 am

cyberdad wrote:
MomofThree1975 wrote:
I am so excited. I got the last spot! It's $588 for twelve 45 min sessions. I will take him there one day a week (I chose Sat since he will be well rested then). They said it is a grad student who will work with him, with a ST supervising. I don't mind the grad students, they are usually eager to prove them selves and most are in it to help the kids.


I've booked mine into a psych grad program as well (to start this year) but still waiting to hear back?


It's great because it is year round. 12 weeks Spring/Fall and 6 weeks over the summer. Since he has difficulty speaking to new people, I like that he will be forced to deal with someone different ever few months.

I hope you hear back from them soon. I like the grad students.



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04 Feb 2013, 4:04 am

We have ditched PECS and moved to using Proloquo2go on an iPod touch. My son wears it on a little belt around his waist. It is working with re-enforcement, although sometimes he will independently use it a lot. Here is a picture of our setup:
[img][800:728]http://imageshack.us/a/img687/2190/jamesbelt.jpg[/img]

He's quite happy with it around his waist, we've been using it for maybe 4-5 months like that and only stopped PECS several weeks ago. He can reach down and get the iPad out by himself, teaching my son the steps to do that independently took several months.

The only problem with a system like this is vocabulary, for everything there must be a picture. We can put lots on the iPod but then you have to have lots of subfolders, or perhaps just folders filled with lots of pictures, which entails a lot of scrolling and the attendant frustration that causes. My son also has one Makaton sign he knows - "more", which he will also use as "I want".

Spoken language is so convenient isn't it?!



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04 Feb 2013, 11:03 am

nostromo wrote:
We have ditched PECS and moved to using Proloquo2go on an iPod touch. My son wears it on a little belt around his waist. It is working with re-enforcement, although sometimes he will independently use it a lot. He's quite happy with it around his waist, we've been using it for maybe 4-5 months like that and only stopped PECS several weeks ago. He can reach down and get the iPad out by himself, teaching my son the steps to do that independently took several months.

The only problem with a system like this is vocabulary, for everything there must be a picture. We can put lots on the iPod but then you have to have lots of subfolders, or perhaps just folders filled with lots of pictures, which entails a lot of scrolling and the attendant frustration that causes. My son also has one Makaton sign he knows - "more", which he will also use as "I want".

Spoken language is so convenient isn't it?!


Looks cool and it's great he can use it.

My son is considered verbal because he has no problems phsycially speaking but he is still barely communicative at all. It doesn't seem to matter the method - speech, sign, PECS - the whole communication thing just escapes him. He will occasionally ask for a preferred food item (candy, cookie) but that's about it.

We are currently fighting a war with the school and insurance to get some home ABA services set up at home. It's taken a while but I think it will finally start soon.

Small breakthrough, my uncle brought some late Christmas presents over yesterday and my son actulally opened his without any prompting. This was the first time he's ever opened a present on his own...now that I think about it one of the first signs that something might be unusual about my son was that he was not interested in presents on his first Christmas...



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04 Feb 2013, 12:22 pm

Looks good, I'm glad to hear he's moved on to something more versatile than pecs!

Wreck-Gar wrote:
Small breakthrough, my uncle brought some late Christmas presents over yesterday and my son actually opened his without any prompting. This was the first time he's ever opened a present on his own...


I think this was the first year my son was focused enough to open all his presents, he started to get the hang of it last year but it was too much. It's a great feeling to see them enjoy opening a present! Since I've blocked YouTube on all our devices he's also stopped saying "kill" when he gets mad and his obsession with wearing his batman shirt only lasted about 2 weeks (though he still likes to wear it frequently, that's OK). And he's been letting me brush his teeth now (he won't brush them himself, I'm sure he could if he wanted to he just won't). That's been a big battle almost every night ever since he's had teeth, most nights the only way I could get them brushed would be to give the tooth brush to one of his favorite toys (like a Super Mario doll) and pretend it was the doll brushing his teeth. He's definitely verbal now but likes to repeat the same things over and over and usually doesn't know how to answer questions. If you ask him how old he is he'll tell you his name, if you prompt him further and say you're looking for a number he'll say his age.



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20 Mar 2013, 12:55 am

Great pity this thread has come to a grinding halt. I guess the regulars here have started their own discussion group.



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20 Mar 2013, 2:23 am

I haven't, I still check here periodicly. I felt like I killed the conversation. I've been wondering how everyone is. Also I've been preoccupied with my own special interests lately so I haven't been active because of that. Update for me is that my son will eat plain spaghetti (I think thanks to the Super Mario Bros. cartoons) now and yogurt popscicles ... Sort of, he eats a small amount of them before they get melty. He's still obnoxious in stores, yesterday he insisted on playing with the blood pressure machine at the grocery store for 20 min. and had a fit when we tried to check out, I had to escort him out of the store just so my husband could bag the groceries and pay. Thankfully he has stopped saying "kill". I've overheard him several times saying fairly long scripts he's apparently memorized in what sounds like Japanese. He's on the Power Ranger website a lot, I think some of it is from that and I think he memorized an Asian candy commercial, he had on headphones and was talking while it was playing. I couldn't figure out how to replay it so I could hear for myself after he turned it off. I've tried to record him a few times but he always sees what I'm doing and stops the script.



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20 Mar 2013, 6:56 pm

My sons going good. We now have a live in Au Pair (I think you call it) who helps us out, makes life a lot easier.
We got lucky, her interest and intended career path is working with children and adults with Special Needs and is living with us for free board in return for helping with James, taking him out for activities, doing some ABA with him and general house-hold help like cooking dinners etc for a set number of hours. Actually more like we hit the Jackpot there :)

We had a try out with a dog and it went well. Here is a video below. This is James walking/being towed up a hill which he normally steadfastly refuses to do. This was the most challenging part of the walk, the rest went really well and he just trotted along. We should get our dog by Christmas hopefully.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbl4Tu9OpeQ[/youtube]



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20 Mar 2013, 7:59 pm

I'm glad to hear you're doing well, I bet the extra help is great! My son is talking now and understands a lot but he still does the same sorts of things whenever we have to walk together, constantly pulling at me, running off, sitting on the ground.



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21 Mar 2013, 1:02 am

Washi wrote:
I haven't, I still check here periodicly. I felt like I killed the conversation. I've been wondering how everyone is. Also I've been preoccupied with my own special interests lately so I haven't been active because of that. Update for me is that my son will eat plain spaghetti (I think thanks to the Super Mario Bros. cartoons) now and yogurt popscicles ... Sort of, he eats a small amount of them before they get melty. He's still obnoxious in stores, yesterday he insisted on playing with the blood pressure machine at the grocery store for 20 min. and had a fit when we tried to check out, I had to escort him out of the store just so my husband could bag the groceries and pay. Thankfully he has stopped saying "kill". I've overheard him several times saying fairly long scripts he's apparently memorized in what sounds like Japanese. He's on the Power Ranger website a lot, I think some of it is from that and I think he memorized an Asian candy commercial, he had on headphones and was talking while it was playing. I couldn't figure out how to replay it so I could hear for myself after he turned it off. I've tried to record him a few times but he always sees what I'm doing and stops the script.


LOL! my 7yr old daughter has discovered youtube and has started using four letter words after watching Disneyland posts from some less than refined kids with i-phones. ironically she is more than likely to copy speech from youtube than listen to other kids her age.



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21 Mar 2013, 2:42 am

Yeah ... my son almost never lets me teach him anything he gets very oppositional, but he absorbs whatever he's watching on the computer or TV.

Question for WrekGar if he's still around, what does "Ko kai ja" mean? I don't know how it should be spelled. It's something from Power Rangers my son says a lot (along with a lot of other stuff I can't remember), I tried looking it up but didn't figure it out.

Edit: I just figured out how my son has been accessing Japanese videos. On the Power Ranger site the videos just end or continue with an American Power Ranger play list when you play them ... unless you switch the language. All the other languages open a window to a Nickelodeon site ... except for German, my son keeps switching it over to German because when the video ends there it bypasses my block on YouTube and brings up YouTube's suggestions so he's been watching Japanese versions of the show that way.



Last edited by Washi on 21 Mar 2013, 3:56 am, edited 1 time in total.

claudia
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21 Mar 2013, 2:56 am

Hello everybody...
I've been away some months, fighting my battles to help my son improve his speech.
In my country I don't have any considerable professional advice so I kept studying through the nights. I got acquainted with the only ABA research group in Italy, in Parma University, but they only do research, they can't do early intervention. They gave me an huge help giving me research material I can use to help my son, so he only has 6 hours of intervention weekly, he has some speech therapy and the remaining time Stefano is with me and I just apply things I studied in the "natural" enviroinment.
He started speaking in sentences just a week ago, he is now 5.5.
I'm really proud of him. In Italy kindergarden is for 6 year old children, but special needs kids can delay an year, so I will do this to give him time to start kindergarden with the right skills.
I got acquaintance with some other parents too, and I have the challenging goal to introduce in italian schools the right education methods for autistic children. They are sadly underestimated here in my country, and even if we have an inclusive school, teachers don't know what to do with tis children and they give up early, also because they are told by professionals that there is not so much to do.
I learnt on WP that your children reached many goals, so I thought, why can't we do this also?

I'm updating because I read what you wrote about mainstream school. I agree that inclusive school is better and they have to interact with nt peers to progress properly. It's like I have the other half of your problem: inclusive school but improper teaching (but it's not teacher's fault).



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21 Mar 2013, 5:48 am

claudia wrote:
Hello everybody...
I've been away some months, fighting my battles to help my son improve his speech.
In my country I don't have any considerable professional advice so I kept studying through the nights. I got acquainted with the only ABA research group in Italy, in Parma University, but they only do research, they can't do early intervention. They gave me an huge help giving me research material I can use to help my son, so he only has 6 hours of intervention weekly, he has some speech therapy and the remaining time Stefano is with me and I just apply things I studied in the "natural" enviroinment.
He started speaking in sentences just a week ago, he is now 5.5.
I'm really proud of him. In Italy kindergarden is for 6 year old children, but special needs kids can delay an year, so I will do this to give him time to start kindergarden with the right skills.
I got acquaintance with some other parents too, and I have the challenging goal to introduce in italian schools the right education methods for autistic children. They are sadly underestimated here in my country, and even if we have an inclusive school, teachers don't know what to do with tis children and they give up early, also because they are told by professionals that there is not so much to do.
I learnt on WP that your children reached many goals, so I thought, why can't we do this also?

I'm updating because I read what you wrote about mainstream school. I agree that inclusive school is better and they have to interact with nt peers to progress properly. It's like I have the other half of your problem: inclusive school but improper teaching (but it's not teacher's fault).


Claudia your son is doing really well if he is speaking in sentences at 5.5 yrs. Once the children start then there is a cascade of words and sentences that will come. I started doing ABA training in Febraury but had to stop because I restarted work.



claudia
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21 Mar 2013, 6:04 am

cyberdad wrote:
claudia wrote:
Hello everybody...
I've been away some months, fighting my battles to help my son improve his speech.
In my country I don't have any considerable professional advice so I kept studying through the nights. I got acquainted with the only ABA research group in Italy, in Parma University, but they only do research, they can't do early intervention. They gave me an huge help giving me research material I can use to help my son, so he only has 6 hours of intervention weekly, he has some speech therapy and the remaining time Stefano is with me and I just apply things I studied in the "natural" enviroinment.
He started speaking in sentences just a week ago, he is now 5.5.
I'm really proud of him. In Italy kindergarden is for 6 year old children, but special needs kids can delay an year, so I will do this to give him time to start kindergarden with the right skills.
I got acquaintance with some other parents too, and I have the challenging goal to introduce in italian schools the right education methods for autistic children. They are sadly underestimated here in my country, and even if we have an inclusive school, teachers don't know what to do with tis children and they give up early, also because they are told by professionals that there is not so much to do.
I learnt on WP that your children reached many goals, so I thought, why can't we do this also?

I'm updating because I read what you wrote about mainstream school. I agree that inclusive school is better and they have to interact with nt peers to progress properly. It's like I have the other half of your problem: inclusive school but improper teaching (but it's not teacher's fault).


Claudia your son is doing really well if he is speaking in sentences at 5.5 yrs. Once the children start then there is a cascade of words and sentences that will come. I started doing ABA training in Febraury but had to stop because I restarted work.


Maybe I can do something for autistic children in Italy, I wish I will do something. I read about Alex Plank documentary about France. Well, it's not like that in Italy, but refrigerator mum theory is not dead here. I don't care of what neuropsichiatrists think of me, the problem is that they focus on me and not on how to help my son. He's considered hopeless or, if he progresses, I'm told that it's not because of my beloved early intervention.



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22 Mar 2013, 1:44 pm

Washi wrote:
Yeah ... my son almost never lets me teach him anything he gets very oppositional, but he absorbs whatever he's watching on the computer or TV.

Question for WrekGar if he's still around, what does "Ko kai ja" mean? I don't know how it should be spelled. It's something from Power Rangers my son says a lot (along with a lot of other stuff I can't remember), I tried looking it up but didn't figure it out.

Edit: I just figured out how my son has been accessing Japanese videos. On the Power Ranger site the videos just end or continue with an American Power Ranger play list when you play them ... unless you switch the language. All the other languages open a window to a Nickelodeon site ... except for German, my son keeps switching it over to German because when the video ends there it bypasses my block on YouTube and brings up YouTube's suggestions so he's been watching Japanese versions of the show that way.


Hi, I'm still here but I haven't been posting...I can't really answer your question without any context. Maybe it's something the Ranger characters say when they attack or something? It doesn't sound like any word I know, though "kaiju" is the word for monsters like Godzilla or the ones that appear in Power Rangers.



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22 Mar 2013, 2:28 pm

And the reason I have not been posting is because I'm too depressed about my son's progress over the past year since we returned from the US.

We were expecting he'd flourish once he was in an English-only environment. He also goes to the special-needs preschool full time.

We are trying to get home services set up but all we are doing so far is fighting with the school system and the insurance companies.

Aside from a few small things here and there he really seems the same as he did a year ago. He still rarely speaks except to ask for preferred food items.

Still in diapers.

A neighbor reported us to DCF because my son got out of the yard.

My wife is stuck at home and cannot work because there is no one to watch the kids. We cannot afford daycare and my parents refuse to babysit.

We had a neuropsych test done. It came out inconclusive as he didn't really participate in the testing...the doc realized this but said at face value the results could mean ID/global developmental delay.

He is getting bigger and stronger now and it's hard when he resists things like getting off the school bus.

He turns 5 in a couple of weeks.

I have no idea what to do.



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22 Mar 2013, 4:38 pm

Wreck-Gar wrote:
It doesn't sound like any word I know, though "kaiju" is the word for monsters like Godzilla or the ones that appear in Power Rangers.


That makes sense, I'm watching some of the clips and haven't heard anyone say that yet but think he's mostly watching Korean dubbed versions of the show now, so it might be Korean.

I'm so sorry to hear things aren't going better for you right now. I'm stuck at home too and no one watches my son but me, I don't drive. He has to start school soon and I'm both looking forward to the break and filled with anxiety. He can be very challenging.... he's apparently inherited my short stature and he doesn't have much upper body strength right now so I can still manage him, but if his behavior doesn't change in a few years I don't know what I'm going to do if he doesn't want to get on the school bus or decides to run off ... even though he's small he's still likely going to be bigger than me (I'm 4ft8 and weigh roughly 85lbs....). Just getting him to put his shoes and socks on to go the the grocery store can be a big ordeal. One second he wants to go, the next he's taking his shoes off or screaming and kicking because I'm trying to tie his laces etc. He still likes to stay up half the night, I think school is going to be a traumatic change for him. I also think his size combined with some of his difficult behaviors might make him a target for bullying. We also have to catch him up with vaccinations. Not looking forward to that at all.



Last edited by Washi on 22 Mar 2013, 5:14 pm, edited 1 time in total.