How do I know what level of Autism my toddler has?

Post Reply New Topic

Hello,

I'm new here. My daughter was diagnosed with Autism in April. I'm trying to learn everything I could on Autism so I can better help her. My question is how do I know how severe her autism is? Our developmental ped said he thinks shes " mild to moderate" but he needs to see how she progresses with therapies & preschool. Does anyone have any insight on this? She just turned 3 yesterday- She's basically non-verbal but says some words like "bubbles" or " go away." Her behaviors are pretty on point for a toddler her age, she has been recently throwing bigger fits than usual.

Anyways thanks in advance!

Hi and welcome, JRS . The exact label of high/low is not important. In fact the profile of any individual(the expression of notional autism/developmental delay) can change significantly as children develop and mature to adulthood. The stricter and tighter early intervention(note*ie. firm, respectful behavioural guidance) in terms of social behaviour, the better the outcomes in adulthood. How are you managing the tantrums/meltdowns? Good to have you with us. Wishing you all the best...

Welcome to Wrong Planet.

Here is a link to an article that discusses the three levels of Autism.
What Are the 3 Levels of Autism?

One of the members on this site has written a book to help non verbals. It is called "Eikona Bridge" by Jason Lu. He has two children that were non-verbal. And he is also on the spectrum. He describes an unusual method of treatment that is effective. So you might try and read a copy of his book.

Thanks for welcoming me! It’s nice to have other parents to chat with! I will def check out that book. As for her meltdowns they aren’t too bad. She usually is over it within a minute or so. I’m trying to guide her to use her words when she’s frustrated. Just the other day she tried to say “ help” when she needed something ( which made me happy bc she was using it in the right context). She’s starting preschool next week 3 days a week 7 hour days. They have a speech therapist on site who is going to give her sessions twice a week. We are also going to be starting ABA therapy within a month . I’m hoping with all of this going on we should see a boom in her language in the next year. Have you both had any experience with this?

When we live with 95 percent of people that are neurotypical, we develop certain idea on what's normal and what's not. We never pause to think whether we could be wrong. We just trust our intuition.

Unfortunately, when it comes to autism, intuition often is your worst enemy.

Sure, it's great for children to speak. But, Helen Keller, who was deaf, mute and blind, did not need to speak, for her to fully develop. Once you realize that, you can also realize that speech is totally unnecessary for a child's brain to develop. Same with social interaction with peers. I mean, what kind of play dates would you arrange for Helen Keller?

These children have amazing visual memory. Below is an exercise my daughter did in school when she was in first grade, and what she later drew at home. I had no idea the picture she drew at home was from an exercise in school, so when I showed the drawing to the teacher, you can imaging how shocked we were.




Shouldn't we develop these children from what they are good at? What I have learned, in these last 10 plus years, is that our society is wrong, horribly wrong. There is nothing to worry about speech, potty training, social skills of autistic children. Those skills will come automatically, in time. However, if we don't develop our children's brains early on, we can ruin their lives just so easily, and permanently. My children only started to speak by 4.5 years of age. However, while they were still 2 years old, both of them were already reading books. I developed them visually. My son wrote his first Python computer program at age 5.


Again, intuition is your worst enemy. We focus too much on dealing with meltdowns/tantrums when they happen. We try to solve them. Intuitive, right? But our approach is all wrong, horribly wrong. Please read http://www.eikonabridge.com/fun_and_facts.pdf

The autistic world is a different world. We need to let go a lot of our assumptions. For instance, you'd think developing social skills is important. However, often, that good intention from parents is what ends up destroying their children's lives. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. https://wrongplanet.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=380102

Jason,

Thanks for your post. It’s a different perspective than what I’ve been hearing from doctors &/or teachers. Could you show me an example of the pictures you would draw? I’m interested in trying this with my daughter.

Thank you!

In my children's early days, I was the only one drawing pictures. It took me two years to convince my wife to draw pictures for our children. I mean, to me, it was an automatic, reflex-type process. If I wanted to say something to my children, my hands would start to move and a picture would come out. But my wife was neurotypical. And she kept telling me that drawing pictures did not come naturally to most people. After all these years, I have come to realize that what I thought was trivial and automatic, most neurotypical folks actually couldn't do it. Ha ha. So, I have actually given out tutorials to some local families to teach them how to draw stick figures. I mean, in the back of my mind, I still scratch my head as why well-grown adults can't draw pictures that any 6-year-old can draw. That has always been a puzzle to me. Why do adults lose a skill that they had, once upon a time? That's a big mystery of life.

Anyway, here is one example. I would make up funny stories on the fly and draw pictures at the same time.


Here is an example I used to tell my son not to ride his tricycle and bump into the glass door:


Here is one my wife drew to tell my son about a change of plan for the next day, regarding when she will go to his preschool to pick him up:


Here is one that I draw back in 1992 for my PhD in theoretical physics, up front at the beginning of the thesis. Trust me, none of the big-shot professors in my committee made any comment about it. They all took it well, ha ha. (Back then I was single, and had never heard about autism.)


By the way, I have been doing some thinking. See, the "method of loci" or "Mind Palace" is visual-memory-based, and it works so well that there are nowadays "memory athletes" and competitions. People also use it to memorize the number pi to more than 70,000 digits. In a sense, the picture-based approach I have used to raise my children is no different from the "Mind Palace" approach. It's about anchoring your message to a mental picture. The visual memory is the most powerful memory that humans can have, and it's almost unlimited. It connects to other memories like sound, touch, motion, smell, etc., and that's the power behind it. It acts as an anchor.

You’re very welcome . I have 3 children(all on the spectrum). My youngest turns 21 this year. I myself was pretty much mute when younger. All are doing exceptionally well. My youngest couldn’t cope in private or mainstream education, so I home educated him for 10 years, which worked beautifully. He was “extreme” in presentation, but now presents as high functioning/Aspie. He is an actor, singer/songwriter/musician, and has gained a place at a London University. He’s currently taking a gap year. PECS was very helpful both at home and in educational settings. I used my own method of Aspie-friendly ABA, in terms of behavioural management and have long worked in supporting children on the spectrum, in schools and at home. I have a lot of respect for eikonabridge’s work and views.

Thank you both for your replies! Jason I purchased your book and I’m hoping to finish it by the end of this week.

There is no need to buy the book, if you just trace all my postings here on WrongPlanet. The book was written in 2014. I look at it more like a historical document. I know most parents only want tips on how to raise their children, but from theoretical point of view, I've made quite a quantum leap into a fuller picture of autism. Most people would look at my classification of autism into pro-picture and pro-video types as some minor items of curiosity. But, I am now able not only to understand the origin of this dichotomy, but also to link autism to epilepsy. I mean, these things are not minor discoveries. So far I've been only looking into the brain mechanisms in the visual cortex, and I've already found a lot. The full brain is too complex for me to understand and model, but the current approach surely opens the floodgate into the understanding of other parts of the brain. And all this, has impact and consequences way beyond just our understanding of autism. See, while the rest of the world sleeps, I keep moving forward. Ha ha. The joy of life, to me, is in our ability to discover and learn.

Coming back to the needs of regular parents, in case you have not already looked at it, here is the handout for one of my recent conference talks.

http://www.eikonabridge.com/pull_not_push_english_handout.pdf

Study may help?

Age of first words predicts cognitive ability and adaptive skills in children with ASD:-


https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4386060/

Your position is well-known here. See my past answer to you in https://wrongplanet.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=373896

As I have always said, your intuition is your worse enemy. You think the shortest path to cognitve and adaptive skills is to make children speak early. So you chase after speech therapy.

Your line of thought, is what I have described as "single-bit machines." Amoeba bacteria and animals use single-bit machine algorithms to learn. We are humans. I just don't understand why in social sciences we still use single-bit machines. The end result is that in social sciences we move at pace of a snail.

This is my past comment about single-bit machines: https://wrongplanet.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=293342
...Sure, socialization is important. But when your children cannot even make eye contact, cannot even talk, has not developed deep-thinking skills, cannot read and cannot draw pictures, and all you do is to dump incomprehensible noise (socialization in this case) to them, day after day, week after week, year after year, that’s not teaching: that’s child abuse. That’s a criminal act. The lives of millions of perfectly fine, smart children get destroyed by our society’s animal-style instincts. Single-bit machines are not science. They are child abuse.

Same goes for speech therapy.

Was speech therapy any helpful for Helen Keller? Did she need speech to develop, at all? Or, look at the case of Erik Weber, who was by all measures a low-functioning child and a late talker (Erik was non-verbal until age seven, later than my children, see: https://centralsandiego.macaronikid.com/articles/5aced42e8b4b42789f52895a/what-doctors-didnt-know-about-a-boy-diagnosed-with-autism). Yet, he has passed the bar a few years ago, and is now officially an attorney.

As I've told plenty of people here before: you make your decisions. You live with the consequence of your decisions. Be happy with your decisions. Nobody forces you to make the decisions you make. When you have time, please track all those parents that were once so active in this forum, and see where they are today. Are they happy? Or have they just disappeared, altogether? What about all those parents that were so much into using medications on their children? Where are they now? Do they have any positive story to tell? Any success stories? The answer is: zero. Exactly zero. See, while those parents do all those crazy things, my children have just kept plowing forward. And I, I have never stopped telling people how happy my children are. You choose whatever path you choose. BUT, be responsible with your decisions. Otherwise, one day you may have to face questions from your own children. To borrow the words of Greta Thunberg: "How dare you – you have stolen my dreams and my childhood." (My daughter is now sitting next to me, and just finished reading this message. Ha ha.)

Here is another good old thread.

https://wrongplanet.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=357713&start=21

You can see that virtually all parents ask the same questions, and make the same mistakes. And their children just don't develop well.

Whereas other parents worry to death about developing their children's verbal, social, executive function skills, look at what I have done. I spoon fed my daughter until she was 10 years old. However, I taught her to read way early, when she was 2 years old she was reading books and was able to read cursive writing, too.

It's so hard to make parents realize that what they want to do is all wrong. Every single one of them chase after verbal, social, executive function goals. It's like those parents' brains just don't work, at all. I mean, come on. Everyone has a pair of eyes. Look around. Look at all the families that chase all those things, and see how their children develop. It's always one sad story after another. Those parents don't even realize that, what they are doing to their children is precisely why their children don't develop well. They don't realize that they are the number one enemy to their children. They don't realize they are harming their children.

And now, look at my messages in this forum. Can people notice something interesting? Yep, my messages often come with pictures, even video clips. I mean, who else in this forum posts as many hand-made pictures and video clips as I do. Tell me, who else have you found that does the kind of things I do?

Frankly, zero.

The fact is, no one comes even close to me, regarding using their hands to communicate with their children.

And those parents that chase after verbal, social, executive functions, then complain about all the issues they have with their children. Want to know my opinion? Those parents have done exactly zero to help their children.

It's all very simple. Look at the manual output of the parents. Zero manual output? Then what are you complaining about? Your children's underdevelopment is all your own making. You have ruined your children's lives, and you won't even take responsibility for that.

Yep, those parents can continue to whine about the sad state of their children's conditions. I will continue to enjoy the memory I've had developing my children. See, those parents have nothing to show. And here I have a video clip I made from my daughter's drawing when she was in first grade. Very nice memory. (My daughter just pointed out to me that the turtle has a bow tie. So adorable. Ha ha.)



Your hands. Look at your own hands. And then try to understand why my children do well and your children don't do well. Have you ever made an animation video clip like I have done? Huh? What are you complaining about? You have done nothing to help your children. You complain that making animation video is too technical? Then how come all six-year-olds in my daughter's class were able to make animation videos? You are not even capable of acquiring the skills of six-year-olds, and there you are complaining about your children's condition. Give me a break. Who is the one that is intellectually disabled here?

You ask whether I can teach you to do animation? Give me a break. You are an adult. You go out and figure it out on your own. Do you think I was born with the knowledge to make animation video clips? Sheesh... Did I have to ask other people for help? Come on, be a grown up. The fact that you cannot behave like a grown up, is precisely why your children don't develop well.



Let's not even talk about making animation video clips that any six-year-old can make. Just drawing pictures on a piece of paper. Most parents cannot even lift a finger to draw pictures for their children. And these parents surprisingly do have time to go to all kinds of conferences, events, rallies on autism, expressing their rants about how governments should spend more money on autism research. Yeah yeah yeah, it's all about other people raising your kids, while you won't lift one single finger to help your own children. Give me a break.

(Sorry, my writing style uses the "generic you" quite often: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generic_you. It's mostly for dramatic effect. Ha ha.)

You don't yet! You just know who he is right now!