approximate prognoses for young ASD children ?

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father
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15 Aug 2012, 4:21 am

hi , two things :-
1- i know about the various discrepancies among ASD children, but is there an approximate measure for prognosis for high functioning young children, or we have not reached this approximation yet ?.
2- if you had similar sprectrum issues as a child , how did you exactly feel , did you know you were different and how did you think of other regularly developing children ? . thnx.



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15 Aug 2012, 8:52 am

i think it ais as good as impossible for any person to answer those questions,

in truth because of the ammount of variables,
but also because it is so dependant on teh world and enviroment around the child, most of all the behavior of the parents.
if a child grows up with loving parents that accept their condition and behavior and actually listens to their child(something far too few parents take the time to) then i dont see why it wouldnt reflect positively.

as for question number two, i felt different, but i thought that that in itself was the norm.
the school i went to actively encouraged all their students to find themselves, this means that much of my weird behavior was accepted out of hand.
i sat in the window sill doing classes, because i liked the sun and the radiator in the winter, there were a few others that started to do this eventually.

so did i actually know i was different?
im not so sure, i was dx'ed at 20-21,
i certainly felt different back then, looking back now i can see just how different, but did i know? i dont think so.


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15 Aug 2012, 10:34 am

If the child can communicate effectively and take care of their own basic needs, then it's extremely likely they will be either independent or semi-independent as adults. By semi-independent, I mean someone who perhaps can't work full-time and receives a disability pension or works in supported employment; or someone who needs intermittent support, such as while moving, when dealing with unusual problems (a broken appliance, a job interview), or during socially intensive situations.

My diagnosis is probably PDD-NOS (I'm diagnosed with multiple ASDs depending on which doctor you ask). I have all of the traits of Asperger's, and some of the additional ones related to classic autism.

My attitudes toward other children as a child:
2 years: Moving objects; interesting but unpredictable.
4 years: Moving objects; not nearly as interesting as books.
6 years: I know they're people, but I find it mostly irrelevant. My special interests are much more fascinating.
9 years: I can talk to these people about my special interests.
10 years: I would like to try having friends, but I keep getting rejected, so I'll stop trying.
15 years: I prefer to talk to adults. They know more interesting things, and people my own age are boring.
19 years and older: I've made my first friend. It's amazing. I can trust these people, and we share common interests. But social interaction exhausts me, so I only interact with friends about 1-4 times a month.

By the time I was eleven, I knew I was a little smarter than most children my age, because I got better grades and never had to study for tests. I knew I was truly different sometime around age fourteen, but I figured I was eccentric and didn't think much of it. Only when I left for college at seventeen was I confronted with just how inadequate my independent living skills were; I pretty much crashed and burned because I hadn't been taught how to take care of myself and deal with my disability as a child. My mom had known I was autistic, but didn't want me "labeled" and didn't have me evaluated--so I grew up with labels like "lazy" and "rebellious" instead. Learning I was autistic was a relief, because it finally answered all those questions I had about myself, told me that my problems were real and had been experienced and solved by others. Not being told was probably one of the worst things that could have happened to me as a child; I think if I had been told and had received proper therapy, I would have been ready to be on my own by age twenty. As it is, I am twenty-nine and still require intermittent support and social security disability--but according to my case manager, I am absolutely capable of finishing my college degree and becoming a rehabilitation engineer. So my parents' denial of my disability only slowed me down; it didn't permanently disadvantage me.


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15 Aug 2012, 11:04 am

Callista wrote:
If the child can communicate effectively and take care of their own basic needs, then it's extremely likely they will be either independent or semi-independent as adults. By semi-independent, I mean someone who perhaps can't work full-time and receives a disability pension or works in supported employment; or someone who needs intermittent support, such as while moving, when dealing with unusual problems (a broken appliance, a job interview), or during socially intensive situations.

That's the best we can do.

I didn't realise I was different as a child until shortly before I was diagnosed aged 7. One day someone mentioned a hypothetical situation in which nobody wanted to be my friend, and I realised I didn't really have any friends anyway. A few months later I was diagnosed and from then on I knew I was different. At times I forgot, at times it was obvious.



father
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16 Aug 2012, 5:00 am

Callista, first of all thanx al lot, second what do you mean diagnosed with multiple ASDs ? . My daughter is 3.8 yrs old and is highly functioning , with intensive intervention for almost 2 years , with very big developments ,with basic needs repretoires, some tacting, continously vocal and with acceptable and increasing good ( non-verbal ) social interaction with kids. she can read and with good academic skills and the rest........ .She , however , needs prompting to do many things , obvioulsy it is hard for her to utter pragmatic sentences , and has pronunciation mistakes . she has short attention spans when doing a certain task and when communicating , with very high attention spans when doing what she likes whether alone or socially ( dancing, singing...etc). callista, what do you make of her ?



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16 Aug 2012, 7:56 am

I still have pragmatic sentence and pronunciation issues and I'm 26. But my intervention happened about three years ago.

Don't be alarmed but she sounds like me and my second diagnosis is ADHD. I can concentrate for hours on something I'm interested in but listening to people/ stuff that isn't on my top interests list...not so much.

When I was growing up I never thought I was that different than other kids. there were a few things. I had no friends and my siblings had many. They told me I dressed funny and kids at school thought it was weird when I was singing, sitting alone by myself during lunch.
I was different than most people in that I wasn't very curious about the environment. I was into very specific things and that's all I cared about. I did awful in school because I was interested in the work. It never occurred to me that what you learn in school helps you later in life.
I didn't think about much things except what movies inspired in me.

I think the earlier help ASD kids get the better the outcome. I have to make sure I even have a future all on my own. When trying to work and just existing in this world alongside people who have no problem with it and they can't tell that there is anything wrong with you, it's hard. No one helps you so you've got to find out other ways to make something of yourself.


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16 Aug 2012, 10:59 am

When I was growing up, I thought that my parents hated me. They were always on my case for taking about my special interests, they told me to make eye-contact, while scolding me at the same time. They also told me to go to my room if I was going to cry, during my meltdowns. I really thought that my parents hated me. I thought they thought I was the R-word, and they were roughing me up to teach me a lesson and let me have it.


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16 Aug 2012, 11:09 am

father wrote:
Callista, first of all thanx al lot, second what do you mean diagnosed with multiple ASDs ? . My daughter is 3.8 yrs old and is highly functioning , with intensive intervention for almost 2 years , with very big developments ,with basic needs repretoires, some tacting, continously vocal and with acceptable and increasing good ( non-verbal ) social interaction with kids. she can read and with good academic skills and the rest........ .She , however , needs prompting to do many things , obvioulsy it is hard for her to utter pragmatic sentences , and has pronunciation mistakes . she has short attention spans when doing a certain task and when communicating , with very high attention spans when doing what she likes whether alone or socially ( dancing, singing...etc). callista, what do you make of her ?

From that description, she sounds like she'll be fine. She'll probably have a harder time than an NT child would in the same situation, but ultimately she'll probably be able to function in society to a reasonable extent.