My daughter is regressing

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Hello.....some of you know me and some might be familiar with the videos I make of my daughter the Autistic Princess videos. You can see from her videos that she is quite high functioning (even if I do not really like that term) she did go from non verbal and severe right before age 3 to speaking in sentences and interacting with us at 4. You can see from the videos that we are able to have little conversations with her and interact well with her.
In August we moved to France from the US. In the US she was getting therapy three days a week for three hours at a time (TEACCH ABA) plus she was in a special Autism program at school. When we moved here it took us months to get her therapy started. For the past two months they have been doing therapy for both her and my Aspie but they refer to it as "observation". Next week they are supposed to tell us what they think our children need (annoyingly slow!). The school for my daughter, Maddy, has been very good and very understanding. However they do speak French and she just learned how to speak English around age 4, she just turned 6 in April. They did find her an aide a few months ago who speaks some English and that alleviated her stress a lot but she is so dependent on her aide that she will not participate in class at all when her aide is not there. Her teacher says she will turn her chair around and stare at the wall and will not respond. She has picked up a few things at school and even a few French words. I have noticed that she is now saying her friends names when she sees them and they say her name but she still ignores them about 75% of the time. She also seems more relaxed at the school....finally, which makes me stress a bit about moving her to the big school next year.
Going to therapy has been very stressful for her because she rides in a taxi (they are specially trained to transport special needs kids) and they always send different people (there are five different people) even though they promised to send the same one all the time. One of the guys they send scare both my daughter and my son, he is a younger guy and he has tatoos. Maddy tends to be less comfortable with men anyway and Luc (my son) thinks that people with tatoos are "crooks" or have been to jail (I have talked to him about this). I can not drive them because of my disease and the medication that I am on. They do seem to be slightly more at ease with the whole thing the past two weeks though so Im reluctant to make any changes to their schedules. They like to do activities during the last month of school here in France but Ive been keeping my kids out because it cuts into their therapy schedule. They also want us to send our kids to school next Wednesday (they do not go to school on Wednesday and my son has his longest therapy session that day). Maddy will freak out and have an anxiety attack and Luc will not sleep and have about three or four meltdowns if we even attempt this. Not only would Luc be gone all day and have to eat strange food (his teacher informed us we are not allowed to send food with him) but he will be off his schedule and miss his therapy day. I know that they need to be pushed out of their comfort zone once in awhile but I know my kids limits and they are already pushed way too far. I dont care if the school gets upset with us. I have to protect my kids a little bit.
Anyway, In the past two months Maddy's speech has seriously regressed to the point where if I ask her how old she is she says "fine" and if I ask her her name she typically does not answer....these are things we started with when she first started to talk. She is very obsessed with Strawberry Shortcake lately and every other word in between babble and nonsense words is Strawberry shortcake or something pertaining to SS. She also will not answer me when I ask her what she wants and I have had to go back to using the old way of asking her "milk yes or milk no?"
All of this is very disturbing to me and its not only her my son has gotten more angry and has had far more meltdowns in the past few months. Maddy was asking me a lot to go back to the "English house" so I know that a lot of this is the move, the loss of her therapists and her old school. I have also been very sick and not able to do as many things with them. In the past month Ive pushed myself and we have been doing things like baking and playing games ect. Still it seems her speech deteriorates a tiny bit more every day....she is also having little absence seizures that stopped over a year ago. She has even gone back to lining toys, books, food. She seems better on the weekends....she seems happier and singing a lot, having little convos with us. Im trying to come up with ideas to keep her more engaged with us. We are going to go to the toy store today and try and find some board games that we can play with her as this was something that she used to enjoy when we lived in the US but all we brought with us is Candyland. We also have decided to reinstate her picture schedule. I have told my husband (he has to handle all of this because I speak very little French) that he needs to speak to the therapists and stress to them at the meeting how much Maddy has regressed and how upset and worried we are. We also are going to take her to see a pediatrician to see if they can test her for the seizures. We tried this before and they said they saw no evidence on the EEG but the doctor told me these little mini seizures typically will no show unless it is happening at the time and that she would probably grow out of them but now they are back. We are also considering trying music therapy and possibly equestrian therapy this summer. We are also going to see if we can set up an ABA in home program for the summer that we will have to pay out of pocket for but hey, you do what you gotta do. I am also getting her a sand box....this she also misses from our old home.
We have gotten some good news. She will get to take her aide with her to the big school next year when she transitions and she gets two other specialized teachers, one for French and the other to do therapy at school with her. They are also sending my son to a specialized school where he will get some help with his LD's which frustrate him. We have found a organization that does social groups for Aspies for my son but it is on the other side of the city which would be an hour drive for us and Luc gets car sick. We were thinking that maybe my husband could try to organize one through this organization for our area or closer to our area. They could meet at parks or something. This organization also does summer camps and summer activities for special needs kids.
Anyway, Im just wondering if anyone has any other ideas or if anyone has dealt with type of regression before. I pretty much understand the reasons behind it but I feel somewhat desperate and helpless right now. Guilty maybe?
I love my daughter no matter what but she does not seem happy to me right now and I know that when I am not happy I retreat into myself too so I suppose this is what she is doing. I just want to help her.

She might be depressed as well.

There have been so many big changes in her life and more are coming ... That would affect things. And ... Many kids do regress around her age. But ... I don't have much more to offer, I don't know the protocol here. Just best wishes for now.

Thanks for your post DW_a_mom and I know that you mainly have experience with Aspies but can you tell me where you got the info about kids regressing at her age?
We took her out yesterday and we got some new board games and we got her a new Strawberry Shortcake doll so she is very happy and chatty today. However, her speech is still not what it was. If you watch the last video we made of her it shows. She uses the word "Ok" a lot it punctuates everything she says. She also will say "Mommy?" and when I try to ask her what she wants she does not respond to me. I try to do things with her but she has her own little thing going on in her head so maybe she just wants to touch base with me sometimes....maybe its a good thing. Ill just keep trying to keep her engaged without putting any more stress on her. Maybe Im just being an over anxious Mom!

Also, just to let everyone know I am very open to suggestions and comments. If you think Im making any errors, it could be that Im overly anxious. I also have Asperger's so I have, in the past, been over protective of my kids because I know how they suffer sometimes. So I promise to not be offended as long as someone is not personally attacking me or something like that. I really would like some input. I know its hard when you dont know everything about me but I am wracking my brain to come up with things I should or maybe should not do.

My boy has regressed and stopped talking altogether over the last year, he's closing in on 5. He talked quite a bit at age 2.5 so I wonder a lot about this.
I'm sure that doesn't help you, but it does seem that it happens, frustrating as anything when you work hard to help your child and its like trying to stop sand slipping between your fingers.

I have been reading a lot about catatonia in Autism. It typically can happen to older children or young adults when they loose all services and the stress of getting out in the world hits them. I also read a story about it happening to a child around my daughters age who lost services and was forced into a school with no autism based assistance or understanding. This can come on suddenly or slowly over months and it does include seizures which worries me as she seems to be having the absence seizures again. We are going to be very proactive about this and let the psychologist and therapist at the center know that this is getting very scary for us. They dont see all that we see because they do not speak English and she speaks mainly in English. I am also going to have my husband talk to her teachers and I can talk to her aide to see if she is not responding to them sometimes as she has been doing with us....mainly this past two weeks.
My daughter was diagnosed as severe a few months before her 3rd birthday (very little eye contact, not responding, lining toys, frequent meltdowns, spinning obsessively, not pointing or looking where you pointed, no waving, ect.) After starting therapy it seemed she changed over night and was speaking in sentences by age 4. I mean she has never been like a typical child her age and has difficulty with communication but she was steadily progressing. Now is definitely regressing, even my 8 year old Aspie notices.
Im sorry about what happened with your son. I have found lots of stories similar to yours under regressive autism and not so much like my daughters story other than the catatonia (she is not catatonic but there are stories where, like I said, it comes on slowly showing loss of skills and communication). I do understand when you say they are slipping through your fingers because thats the way I feel....and I feel desperate. Ill do what I can to help her but Im afraid to be too pushy as she is obviously responding to stress so the more stress we pile on her the more devastating the consequences may be.

Also thank you for your post....it does help me. I think I need support right now and people who understand how I feel.

Is there an alternate communication method available for her? We use PECS to a limited degree.

Sorry this is happening for you, its hard I know.

She does respond to pictures (she is very visual) and picture schedules. I was using Pecs before she started talking well. We also used to use the schedules religiously and strips in the bathroom (how to wash hands ect) and we are going to go back to that now. When we were in the US I had a laminator and we made our own pec's with pictures we found online and some drawings from my now 21 year old daughter. We didnt bring our laminator with us because we knew it wouldnt work here with the electricity. We are looking for one now and we are also going to ask the Autism Center if we can have some Pecs from them for the time being. I wish I would have brought all mine along with us but at the time she didnt use them as much and I did have them packed but they got lost during our packing. Our move was kind of crazy. I had just found out that I have this auto immune disease and was on pain meds and could not lift anything. We had people buying things from us and things got moved around. A lot of things got left in the house for my older kids to go thorough but they could not find some things that I left like my Christmas ornaments and Maddys Pecs. She did fine without her schedule when we first moved here but now she obviously needs them again. Maybe that will help her as she is getting again, very agitated, that she can not ask for what she wants. She cant find the right words and is just scripting or speaking in "nonsense".

The reason that I've mentioned Depression, is because every time I was depressed, I regressed a little but when I wasn't depressed, I grew by leaps and bounds. I hope I didn't say the wrong thing.

No....you didnt say anything wrong. We actually found the reason she is regressing. I posted in another thread. Her aide was told by the therapists that she was not allowed to speak English to Maddy anymore. This was very stressful and confusing to her because her aide was chosen because she could speak English. The therapist did not even consult us on this and I found out when I asked her aide and her teacher if they had noticed any changes in Maddy lately. They were also told not to respond to her unless she used French (she hardly knows any French and just learned to speak English a couple years ago). The aide told me that Maddy was asking for help the other day and she could not help her because she was not asking in French and she said it was very upsetting to her and made her feel very bad. We told both her and the teacher that we do not agree with forcing Maddy this way and it was going to end up with her not speaking at all. We are the parents so we make the decisions! She is much happier today, its amazing what a difference one day of less stress makes. She still has regressed since we moved here due to the lack of therapy and the change in language but hopefully this extreme regression will stop and she will get a bit better. My husband and I have a meeting with the therapists and the center soon and we are going to let them know that we are not at all happy with what they have been doing. We are also looking into outside help that we will have to pay out of pocket for but our kids are worth it. Im not going to allow anyone to harm my child like this and it makes me very angry.
Im sorry I didnt respond to your first post....I have just been very upset.