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

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We really started ABA at the beginning of last summer.

My son had his own teacher's aid in kindergarten, and the school told me less than two weeks before school was out for the summer that he would not have a teacher's aid in first grade. He was still having behavior issues, so I decided to bring in an ABA therapist to try to straighten him out over the summer break.

I think that her work with my son on his behavior has been helpful, along with use of manners DVDs, video modeling, Joy Berry books about different social skills, etc.

She has also turned out to be a good tutor and good occupational therapist. My son has multiple issues, and I'm willing to pay her rate of $ 30/hr. instead of trying to do it all. (I can do it all, but lack of help makes me tired and grumpy--no family around, my husband doesn't help, and my younger son also needs help.)

I'm glad that your kids are doing better--my youngest is going to pass up my oldest sooner or later due to being born with stronger abilities, so I know how that goes.

My son with classic autism, I think if I had sat on my tail and did nothing, he would be non-verbal, in special ed, and headed for life in an institution. I literally had to drill every single word and phrase into him. (I am a goal-oriented force of nature, though. If I want something to be done, then it will be done if it is possible).

I actually prefer the TEACCH program to ABA. Whenever I work with my older son, I use a whole lot of visual aids, keep everything very organized, etc.

The TEACCH program is cognitive based while ABA is behavior based. The main limitation that I found with just using visual aids, etc., is that it won't fix hard-core behavior issues--you can use visual aids to teach a child what behavior is expected,, but you might have to use an ABA-style reward system to actually get him to do what you want him to do.

I don't folloy TEACCH exactly--just looked into different programs after I started working with my older son and saw similarities between what I was doing and this particular program. Coincidentally, I added a video today to the "favorites" section of my Autistic Kids Channel where an expert discusses using visual aids/TEACCH style methods.

Yeah if I gave my son candy or ice cream every time he "manded" for it he would weigh 300 lbs by now.

What treatments have you been involved with that you felt worked the best? We are still trying to work all this out.

There is pretty much nothing available in Japan now...there were a handful of places that offered therapy in English but most closed after the Lehman shock and as far as I can figure the reset went out of business after the earthquake and many of the foreigners left.

I guess I haven't been following any book. I'm just following my own instincts. I'm doing a lot of the same things you are as far as videos, I'm a big fan of classic Sesame Street and They Might Be Giants too (elephants are made of elements and E eats everything!) ... most of his language has come from TV shows, so I'm OK with him watching the TV. (One un-educational thing I let him watch recently that he loves is Scooby Doo ... he's since picked up the word "Zoiks!", he uses it whenever he's surprised now which is pretty funny. ) Whenever I find something he likes I try to incorporate that into imaginative play away from the TV, the theme helps keep his interest and increases my chances of getting him to say things spontaneously. Recently a friend recommended a website Starfall.com which is an "educational alphabet/learn how to read" type of site that my son loves ... I have a Wacom Tablet and stylus that I let my son use to navigate the site (tapping the stylus is equal to a left click of the mouse) ... it was a nice surprise to see how well he's been doing with it. Right now I try not to let my son out of his high chair unless he says "pick me up" first, then once I have him I try to get him to say "put me down" before I let him go, for some reason even with prompting he usually says "open" instead, I guess he means that he wants me to open my arms to let him go ... but he's slowly getting it. Yesterday I was outside and tossed a water balloon, I thought my son would get a kick out of seeing it explode, but I didn't fill it enough and it rolled under my husband's car instead ... I was shocked because my son actually said "where did it go?" He's never said anything like that before.

Last edited by Washi on 11 Jul 2011, 12:17 am, edited 2 times in total.

Oh, and I forgot to ask, I read about the latest earthquake last night. Was any damage done? Was it noticeable where you are?

I really wish he was doing better...he still doesn't have much receptive language and this worries me a lot.

For example if I ask him to give me something he won't do it. This is something my one-year-old does...I am assuming the baby is NT at this point.

My autistic son has got the vocabulary but just doesn't use it for communication. There are maybe a half dozen food items he can ask for (just the single word.)

He did ask "where" three times last week and then I never heard it again. If I ask him a "what" or "who" question he will answer maybe 30% of the time. And sometimes when he doesn't answer I get the feeling he just doesn't feel like responding...after all, I'm just asking random questions just to see if he can answer.

But anyway I am taking your advice and modelling language for him, just asking questions and answering them myself. I tried finding ESL-type videos on Youtube like this but all I can find are ones with "What is it?" I wanted to find things like "Where is it?" ; "I want..." etc.

Were you using your slide shows before your son with classic autism could really understand them? Just repeating them over and over? How long did it take to get him where he is today, language-wise?

Yes, we felt it. Ceiling lights were swaying. It felt kind of like a big truck was going by. During the big one, we didn't have any major damage here but it was strong enough that cars were bouncing around on their suspension.

I'm glad to hear that you're OK and that no damage was done.

Sounds what we are doing is very similar, aside from the TV thing. He's not really interested in TV shows. He likes music/songs, though. Maybe I can use songs he already knows to help him build vocabulary. One thing he likes to do is, if I sing one part of a line, he can finish it off.

My son has occasionally come out with random complete sentences (that don't appear to be echolalia) which gives me hope. Once he pointed to a book on the counter and said, "I wanna get that book." I was floored by that.

I wonder what these kids will be like a couple of years down the road.

Whenever my son says something new I get hope too. I seem to recall his neurologist saying he had a 1 in 3 chance of being able to adapt and be independent as an adult.

Mine just said he can't predict the future.

Anyway he finally started writing numbers on his own without having to hold my hand. I was wondering if this was an advanced skill for a three year old.

Were you using your slide shows before your son with classic autism could really understand them? Just repeating them over and over? How long did it take to get him where he is today, language-wise?[/quote]

Actually, the material on the slide shows was not all made at the same time. I also have a lot of material that is not on the slideshows. I took a lot of flashcards that I already had, fed them into a scanner, and used a movie-making program to make slide shows with it.

I made the slideshows in the spring of 2010, when my son was starting to slip behind his peers in the regular classroom in speech and reading. He was not able to learn much of anything in the regular classroom. He was able to catch up enough by the end of the school year that they took the teacher's aid away--not my intent, and I was pretty mad.

I made my first set of flashcards--the type with my own drawings--when he was about 3.5 and had pretty much learned mastered all of the flaschards available from the local teacher supply store and all of the material on various speech DVDs from the net from Babybumblebee.com, teach2talk, and the Standard Deviants ESL series. He didn't just start picking up words after learning all of the info in these materials. He still needed help.

I started cutting out pictures from books and magazines to make flashcards and homemade books in order to keep increasing his vocabulary. The average person uses about 10,000 to 12,000 words. Most picture-word dictionaries have around 2,000 words, usually the same words in different dictionaries.

I understand what you mean...my son likes the picture dictionaries but it's just the same stuff over and over again in those books. The homemade flashcards and books sounds like a good idea. Maybe I can try showing him some family photos...we have tons of those, showing various activities.

The family photos would be excellent.

If you really want to make them into a great teaching tool that you can use over and over again and that would promote reading at the same time, you can buy a roll of adhesive labels and markers somewhere and put labels on the pictures. Or you can put the pictures in some kind of an album that has a place where you can affix labels.

You can label objects in the pictures and you can also write questions/answers under the pictures.

Written labels is more time consuming, but a lot of kids with classic autism learn to read words by sight more easily than with phonics. Even if phonics works for them, if they have classic autism, sight words combined with pictures will often work a lot better and help with comprehension. My older son learned phonics via videos and I put my person efforts into teaching him to read by sight.

Further, if you use labels, if your son sees the word "dog," for instance, on several different breeds of dog in his flashcards and picture books, he will learn that a dog is not just a black terrier.

Sometimes, if kids do not use enough different flashcards or other visual aids, they have trouble understanding that a table or other object can look several different ways, etc.

Also, you mentioned using Starfall.com. This is a good free phonics website. My three-year-old also likes Zoodles.com, and both of my kids like the PBSkids website.

If you do to the last page of my website, www.freevideosforautistickids.com, you all can find links to sites with free ebooks for kids and free games to play on the net. The first link will tell you how to access the TumbleBooks library (hundreds of books) via the Austin Public Library system without a library card and without a $ 400/year subscription.

Cool, thanks for the tips!

My boy investigating straight edges yesterday. They fascinate him, if he can find two things of the same sort or similar sort he presses the edges together, all the while looking intently and making noises and running up and down. Not so long ago it was making triangles out of things like forks, straws, sticks; anything he could find and grab that were three straight things.
In this photo he is holding his breath and making noises in the back of his throat.