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

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Theres a kids birthday party tomorrow. Some people are very nice and will invite my son, and we will go and he will probably enjoy it, but it always makes me feel wretched.

You are working hard with your son and should be very proud of that. Do not try to compare your son to the others. You cannot really compare any one person to another anyway--everyone is unique.

What makes me uncomfortable about birthday parties with "normal" kids is figuring out what to say to the other parents. Should I try to explain my son's behavior at the birthday party or pretend that nothing is wrong? What do I talk about when people start talking about their kids--Billy's piano lessons, Gina's ballet lessons, trips to a local amusement park, Boy Scouts, how well the kids are doing in school, etc.? I don't keep up with current events as much as I used to or get out so much to interesting places--too much of my time revolves around childcare and autism issues. If I start talking about autism, some parents will be facinated but not really interested in having my kid be their child's best friend. Other parents (particularly those in denial about their kids' own issues) will be put off or bored by the topic.

Really no point trying to compare your kid to other kids, no reason to set yourself up for disappointment.

Guess what, my son played on playground equipment close to normal today, for the first time ever! To bad I can't directly post pics here...

Great!

My 7-year-old will start second grade in about a week, and I'm feeling a bit nervous myself. Will the teacher be any good? How will she feel about having my son in her class? Will she try to help him and try to provide appropriate accomodations, or will she try just let him sit in her class and fend for himself? He is suposed to get special ed assistance as needed. Will he actually get it this year, or am I going to spend a lot of time after school working on math?

I posted my same thoughts on another place and had people say their children have never been invited to any parties, I guess I hadn't thought of that before. Also the main thing is James will enjoy himself!

Hi Everyone
Enjoying your posts...

To Nostromo hang in there! no need to benchmark your son against other kids (NT or autistic) , Our children our unique. just accept the differences and as long as your son is happy just keep working with him and enjoy the time.

Nostromo, how did the party go?

I'm really starting to get stressed myself about my seven-year-old starting second grade in a week! I've had some terrible experiences with the public school that my son goes to, but I cannot really afford a private school for autistic children without selling one of my investments (which support my family) and do not want to homeschool. (I do well working with my older son, but I don't get much respite with two children at home who both need a lot of attention).

The deal is that the school does not want to work with him unless he behaves poorly or really falls behind academically. However, the staff is not good at working with him and cannot keep him on grade level without my assistance. If I just dump the matter on the school, maybe they will work with him more, but he will definitely fall below grade level, perhaps too far to catch up. If a child gets two years behind, he is placed in a self-contained special ed classroom or sent to a school for handicapped children.

For goodness sake, if the school could just have a teacher's aid work with him on a regular basis with flashcards to learn his math facts, master handwriting skills, etc. Nothing is ever completely taken off of my plate--not the easy stuff that they just need a warm body to handle or the very hard stuff that maybe none of the regular staff members could easily teach!

No staff member (other than my son's teachers) ever checks my son's progress or makes sure that his individual education plan is being followed unless I make a complaint. This is another source of stress.

I know that my son will be okay, but I really do not want to be drilling my son with math flashcards again this year, spending a lot of money on resources that should be provided by the school, or harassing teachers to get stuff done. (sigh)

Good luck, that sounds like a nightmare!

They make me feel wretched too. I don't think my son particularly enjoys them, we went to one last year and he spent the whole party looking for an exit and there's no time for me to enjoy myself either - I can't take my eyes off him for a second. He's always on the move and forever getting into something he shouldn't be, I have to bring him his own food because he only eats a few things - it's just a lot of stress. I hope it went well for you.

Last edited by Washi on 15 Aug 2011, 1:25 am, edited 1 time in total.

That's great!

Yesterday he walked with me to the supermarket (we live within walking distance to many stores), followed me through the store, even through the checkout with no issues!

Well, there was one issue... An old lady came up and asked, "How old are you, little boy?" ... she concluded he was shy.

Our son runs off in stores. When strangers talk to my son he tends to either ignore them completely or responds in jibberish or with something abstract. Old Lady: "How old are you young man?" My son: "Sponge Bob Squarepants, zoiks!" They always look at me for an explanation of what he meant. Our playground is about a mile and a half away and we usually ride our bikes there ... there's about 7 turns and a short cut through the woods involved and one day his father decided to go for a walk with him and let my son lead the way, my son walked all the way to the playground without any direction from his Dad.

The party was great. I mean it was a cold wet day inside one of those indoor playland places, with many loud busy children, but he was totally fine he just rushed about doing things with me trailing at a distance behind to keep an eye on things.
He did elbow a little girl in the face that was trying to push him and made her cry, and another kid got a facepush who accidentally slid into him, also he in turn cried when I pulled him from the bottom of a slide he was trying to go up and he did some very loud squealing and crying and hit himself in the head, but that lasted a handful of seconds, and then he was off again. We were there 1.5Hrs and you wouldn't really tell him from a normal kid and he didn't seem to get obviously stressed. I think maybe its because he goes to a noisy busy kindy which he is used to now and has learnt to 'self regulate' as we've been told.
And he sat at the table at the party being very good and eating food (and eyeing his neighbours chips).

That's good. My son still wants to wander around when he's eating.

He used to grab other people's food, but I don't think I've seen him do that for a while. Now he'll just stand there being pretty obvious about what he wants.

Unfortunately there's still no real conversation with my son. He will answer simple questions like "What is it" but only when HE wants to. Otherwise he just ignores you.

That's cool your son could find the playground. Sometimes I get nervous about taking my son out for a walk because I've heard of autistic kids "not knowing what to be afraid of" and running into the middle of traffic. My son does not seem to have this issue, he actually seems afraid of the cars. He actually grabbed me when a really loud motorcycle sped past.

Although I'm impressed that he could find his way to the playground I don't think my son has the best judgment either. I was able to teach him not to run out into the street all the time but the other day we had a lot of rain and the field across the street from our house flooded. I knew he'd love to play in it so we put rubber boots and swim trunks on him and got some bath toys and waded in up to our knees but he just kept trying to walk into the deeper water (he can't swim and I think the far end of the field was probably about 5ft deep) so I had to hold his hand most of the time. Every time we tried to go back to the house he'd run back to the water and the last time he bolted from me and fell face first in it, I pulled him right back out and he was fine but it scared his Dad half to death ... he was scared and cried for a moment, then turned around and tried to do it again!