barking like a dog/animal sound affects

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my son (12) doesn't do so well when under stress.

He either can't express what he wants to say or does animal sound affects.

He had a 3 hour melt down at the middle school and when they tried to calm him down they tried to administer the BASC-2. My son resonded with animal sounds like a barking dog etc.

I am trying to write a letter of understanding to explain why he did the animal sound affects and I can't find anything on google. Can you guys help me?

BTW they think he is ODD instead of Autism, and I have 5 docs that have dx'd him with Autism, or somewhere on the spectrum.

I have no idea why. This is what animal sounds are to me though. I can actually hear what animals are saying, sometimes, by the sound. Just like when you hear laughing, you can tell how much real joy is in the laugh.

Sounds evoke emotions for me. Different reasons I have found a dog barks for, that might apply to this situation. Attention, excitement, loneliness, wanting to interact and defense.

A friend of mine, mew's in different tones to imply: why?, are you okay?, huh?. I understand these questions by her intonation.

I bawk like a chicken when I have been caught being myself, like when I am singing at work, or told a naughty joke, or simply want to do something and yet do not know what.

I have a cat purr and a throaty cat growl as well. I used those to express feelings.

Then there is the long list of random noises.

Sound is communication. It is not confusing, everything he does, he has gotten from somewhere.

Cartoons, friends, simply observances. He is connecting to the world plenty, just not in the usual way.

I have learned that I have neural pathways, just as everyone has them. Yet mine are in different areas.

Let us say, that a pathway runs through a part of the brain, and this pathway is the part I rely on for interaction. Whatever parts touch that path, all the way around, from point A to point B, are the areas that need my direct attention, to proceed to interact.

So if my hello goes past a major emotional process, my emotions have to be highly developed for me, to be able to say hello. Otherwise, I go to say hello and hit a static wall of emotional miss understanding: therefore, I have to skirt a static wall just to greet someone.

After 15 years or so, I have developed most of my neural pathways, to a point of pretty okay interactive processes.

This is true for all humans. I assume. I assume that our world is individually organized for each nationalities, or nations strengths in processing.

Our school systems is set up because it works, for the most part, with regular neural pathways. So all the basic lessons and the play time outside, teacher interactions, and stimulatory exercises, are built to help a normal neural pathway, grow and developed. So that regular neural individual, has a chance to grow up with moderate support in their development.

Where does that leave, everyone, who has different genetics and neural main processing pathways.

Associations are important. If he is communicating with sounds. Get that boy some musical devices, which have word associations, to try to cross connect, his new workings of speak or communication, to something more viable. Remember though, only he can build the connections, and only at the speed for which his makeup will allow. I know this to be true of myself. That is where the overwhelms come in.

Whenever I hit a subject, which I do not understand, or am in a situation which taxes my main processing abilities, I halt. That is the irritation and confusion. In my own time and own way, "some areas with guidance and moderate pushing, if I have requested it" I will have to go back through the process, by day dreaming, and work through the missunderstood bit. Or , I will have to wait years, as I understand all the surrounding processes which need clarification, for me to be able to progress in a rational and smooth manner.

It will take him years, of his own desires towards brain created associations, to discover most of how he will interact.

I hope some of this, helps you paint a clearer picture, within you, that might help you see, that he is simply on a slightly different path or growing up and growing out into conscious reality. Same as everyone, yet not normally catered to.

I sincerely wish you the best of luck, for if you get it, he will pick up on it, and maybe one day, he will get himself too.

My son has been known to hiss (like a snake) when stressed and upset. It is generally a warning to someone to back off. He also sometimes growls. When happy, he sometimes purrs. When not stressed/anxious, he is extremely verbal; when stressed, he can become completely mute.

If your school treats your son as if he has ODD, they will complicate the situation terribly. The behavior that appears ODD in an autistic person stems from very different issues, and responds very differently to the kinds of interventions that (apparently) work with ODD. The ODD interventions are almost exactly wrong for autistic individuals. Also, ODD-appearing traits are part of autism and there should not be an ODD diagnosis in addition to an autistic diagnosis. Schools that jump at the first symptoms they notice instead of looking beyond to the larger picture are being diagnostically lazy, to the detriment of the child, and the entire community - since the interventions they adopt won't work if they're premised on an incorrect assumption about the source of the behavior.

Are you in the U.S.? Has the school done a comprehensive evaluation to come up with this ODD diagnosis? If so, disagree with their report and demand an independent educational evaluation (this is done at school district expense). Make sure the independent evaluator is truly independent of the school district and has copies of your prior evaluations.

Trying to administer a test right after a meltdown is absurd. The meltdown isn't really over as soon as the person regains some measure of control. That could spin someone right back into another meltdown (or, more accurately, a continuation of the meltdown). You might want to send a carefully worded letter of concern to create a paper trail documenting this occurrence.

I've seen it 3rd party coming from teachers that are playing armchair psychologists. In fact that exact "oh it's ODD" thing too, with a child that had a medical file of AUTISM diagnosis literally as thick as a telephone book. Plus an extra "2 ring binder nearly full as his "instruction manual" material that had been built up over the years that the teacher had been given access to (and then lost for a period of months ). It was scary as it was but I didn't realize how much different handling ODD was. No wonder things went so poorly with that teacher and child. What a schmuck. At least the child landed in a much better situation afterward and is doing well now.


P.S. I also have an older non-spectrum son with an LD who's school for some bizarre reason has some of the paperwork with "autism" listed under his diagnosis. He is nowhere near the spectrum. I haven't gotten to the bottom of that yet, if that was some sort of paperwork copy-paste thing or what. It isn't creating a problem as far as I can tell in how they are working with him, things are going fairly well with his school, and the "more official" paperwork is accurate. It's just a little disconcerting for exactly the type of reason above.

Making animal noises sounds normal to me. I do it, my son does it, even my husband sometimes does it.

The problem though, as far as communication, is that one can bark and call it communicating. But if there is no "receiver" to understand the message, there is no communication going on.

Maybe you could ask your son to offer translations for his animal noises, and provide this list to the school, so there could be some kind of communication still taking place when he is upset?

From what I understand from working in a mixed normal and special ed class in ES, the special kids that are there who do this do it to signal that the situation is too much. There's no autistic kid and I'm talking of kids with various kinds of learning disabilities (not meaning the US definition).

I don't know if one of them would do it under serious threatening stress, because we don't put them in such situation. So I just see them doing it when the situation is still light-hearted, but they feel they can't work further, need help, are beginning to get stressed, plain bored and thus don't want to do continue like before and show it by this.

It's no use waiting for them to explain themselves independently in such situations. They can't. Obviously, or else they would probably explain themselves in words and not in this hard-to-understand way.

Often, those kids just go along with their first instinct. Impulsive decisions making and following that idea then, no matter the context. It gets worse when they're under stress, because they make more rash decisions to free themselves from the stress and then such reactions occur.

Though there is a kid in class who sometimes does animal sounds too and who'd would probably be severe(?) ODD if the DSM were used. But it's kind of obvious that in the case of that kid, it's just oppositional behaviour. It's usually accompanied by gross laughter in-between the animal sounds. Trying to do it perfectly timed when a person talks, when a person watches and so on.

I knew you guys would get the ODD versus Autism and the school, and thats why I included it in my post. The reason I want to write this letter so much is that they consider the barking and animal noises to be a sign of refusing to work with them or as I said Oppositional behavior and it's something he can control versus neurological.

So I would like to do my own paper trail and come back with an explanation of why he responded the way he did. But I know it sounds much better if someone like Tony Attwood or Temple Grandin wrote about it somewhere on the net lololol.

I know it can be a trait, as I have read it other places and have parents tell me their child does this too.

BTW Jat, I am actually in the process of hiring a lawyer but have not retained them as yet because I am still gathering the money. It's been a big frustrating mess. But in the mean time, I need to do the paper trail.

So did you ask him why he does that, at some time when he can express what he wants to say? Those sounds, as Alisscious says, are quite rich in meaning and they're easier to come up with than words.

I speculate that he does animal sound effects because they do, to him, express what he wants to say.

When I freak out, the last thing that'll calm me down is people trying to calm me down. One of the horrors of primary school was being made more and more upset by the overwhelming attention of people trying to calm me. I needed to be left alone. And when I did manage to calm down, I'd be easy to set off again and needed to work quietly and be left alone for quite some time.

I spent a fair amount of the third grade hiding in a magazine rack in the classroom and growling at other children who came near.

It sounds to me like your son was actually trying to be quite polite. Barking is a very unthreatening way to say, "Back off! I need space!" Hissing or growling implies "And I'll claw and bite you if you don't!"

Of course, most adults probably read a whole bunch of other stuff ("I refuse to speak to you, you are an animal, I am contemptuous of you!") into that sound, which a real dog or cat or another child familiar with those animals would not 'read in' to the noise.

Well I posted this on some other boards and what it really is sounding like is he was verbally stimming. I have to say it totally makes sense as I could imagine the poor kid was stressed beyoned stressed at that point.

I mean who in the world would administer a test to a child that had a melt down anyway???! !!

And I can just picture him with the noises. He was probably pointing and gesturing too, but they boneheads wouldn't notice anything if it hit them in the head.

Anyway thanks

When I was seven or eight I had an obession with the Lion King movie and lions in general. I taught myself to roar. It was a pretty convincing roar too. It was a stim of sorts. I can't remember roaring at people but I probably did. I had a good teacher in that grade and had few problems with peers so maybe I didn't. Recently I have taught myself to make a meerkat noise. A soft "burr" sound. I needed meerkat sounds for a computer game I am making and taught myself to do so my mimicking the sounds of real meerkats. It's a stim.

My son used to bark when he was in public school and they treated him like a loony tune. However, he's completely sane. I think the animal sounds could be attributed to a wrong public school placement for you son. Middle school is an awful time for most kids. I can only imagine it would be an absolute nightmare for someone with aspergers or autism. Especially, since the school seems to have incorrectly labelled your son as ODD. They are not meeting him half way and treating him like he is solely the problem.

Barking ceased when I started homeschooling my son.

my daughter turns into a cat when she's really stressed. she grooms herself like a cat, hisses etc.......i have female students that do this also, actually......( i teach high school level special ed)

Don't know about other aspies, but as an independent 36 yo aspies with a job and children, I still make animal sounds at times. I think it is because I relate more to animals than to people, and it is easier to make the animal sound that expresses how I'm feeling than to try to put it into words, which is always a struggle. Animal sounds are far more instinctive. I have done this since early childhood. Most people would not guess that I do this, today, because I now (mostly) only do so at home or when alone.

hubby doesn't make animal sounds, but has always gotten along better with animals than people. they ( our dogs) are so very attached to him- seem to understand him totally....he even leaves them messages on the answering machine when he's out for the day.....