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Bkdad82
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25 Jan 2018, 12:29 am

Need some advice here. My son is 5 mostly nonverbal. Classic autism. He is in a one to one Aba program. He is having little progress walking. Yes walking is a problem. He walks hand in hand but if we need to make a turn he freaks out and falls for the ground. Unexpectedness is what bothers him. My wife went for a walk with him and had to carry him for 12 blocks. On a separate topic has anyone with a nonverbal child ever tried other therapies than ABA?



ASDMommyASDKid
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25 Jan 2018, 8:40 am

Has your son been checked out by a physical therapist? A neurologist might not be a bad idea, either, b/c neurological issues can have an effect on balance which might be his issue with turning.

I am not a big expert on therapies per se, but how does your son do with non-verbal communications? Does he grok gesturing? Will he use PECS? I know that at 5, you feel the clock is ticking for him, but any communication is better than none, and I do think there is a bigger window for kids with autism for a lot of these milestones due to the fact that it is in part, a developmental delay. Hopefully, there will be others who will post with the more specific information you want.



Bkdad82
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25 Jan 2018, 4:19 pm

ASDMommyASDKid wrote:
Has your son been checked out by a physical therapist? A neurologist might not be a bad idea, either, b/c neurological issues can have an effect on balance which might be his issue with turning.

I am not a big expert on therapies per se, but how does your son do with non-verbal communications? Does he grok gesturing? Will he use PECS? I know that at 5, you feel the clock is ticking for him, but any communication is better than none, and I do think there is a bigger window for kids with autism for a lot of these milestones due to the fact that it is in part, a developmental delay. Hopefully, there will be others who will post with the more specific information you want.


Thanks for the response. His balance is quite good. He can jump off a table with no problem (and does). The reason is a change in routine. The path goes straight so he expects to walk straight, making a turn interrupts that process. The issue is rigidity. He has 5-10 expressive words and he will repeat sounds. His receptive language is much bigger. We are working on using proloquo.



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26 Jan 2018, 3:13 am

having siblings, maybe ?
learning to imitate, share, fight, work together, etc
learn these things without the peer group pressure interfering all the time



ASDMommyASDKid
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26 Jan 2018, 12:39 pm

Bkdad82 wrote:
ASDMommyASDKid wrote:
Has your son been checked out by a physical therapist? A neurologist might not be a bad idea, either, b/c neurological issues can have an effect on balance which might be his issue with turning.

I am not a big expert on therapies per se, but how does your son do with non-verbal communications? Does he grok gesturing? Will he use PECS? I know that at 5, you feel the clock is ticking for him, but any communication is better than none, and I do think there is a bigger window for kids with autism for a lot of these milestones due to the fact that it is in part, a developmental delay. Hopefully, there will be others who will post with the more specific information you want.


Thanks for the response. His balance is quite good. He can jump off a table with no problem (and does). The reason is a change in routine. The path goes straight so he expects to walk straight, making a turn interrupts that process. The issue is rigidity. He has 5-10 expressive words and he will repeat sounds. His receptive language is much bigger. We are working on using proloquo.


That is interesting. You know, I think I would make a little puppet version of himself to practice going off the main path. Make a duplicate of one of your full-body pics of him in typical walking outside attire and attach it to a popsicle stick. Then make a poster board with paths you can have the puppet follow. If there is a typical route he has issues with, try to map it out on the poster board. Then show him going on the path and then diverging and see if he will make his puppet do it, too. If you think it would help, you could put interesting things off the path like flowers or pics of butterflies so he sees it is nice and interesting off the paths sometimes. As you play this game, talk to him about it. He will either understand or build up his receptive language database even further.

Obviously, it doesn't have to be this exact idea --but something that helps him role play it out. Rigidity is one of the hardest things b/c it really does make them anxious to break with what they know or expect. We had a Wacky Wednesday thing I did when my son was about your age, where he knew we would be doing things like taking alternate routes to and from school etc. He liked the Seuss book of that name, and so I felt like I could use it to work on general flexibility. I don't know how much it helped. but he at least accepted Wacky Wednesdays. :)



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26 Jan 2018, 8:24 pm

^^ I like this idea a lot.

In a similar vein, he might do well having a map or GPS to follow while on a walk. My son used to take charge of the directions every time we went somewhere new. Granted, he was much older when we started doing that. The only way to know if your son has the developmental maturity is to try it.

As for treatments, every child is different, but my son got a lot out of the speech and occupational therapies (he started at around age 7, which was when we first got the diagnosis; he is considered very high functioning). Be sure to avoid chelation, biofeedback, and anything that not only doesn't have a proven track record, but is also likely to be upsetting or even medically harmful to your child (not mention expensive). Dietary changes are something that may or may not help: mostly, if your child isn't feeling well because he has unexpressed sensitivities to some foods, it will hinder his progress. But figuring out if there is anything is a process of trial and error; there is no quick answer.

Finally, the success of ABA seems to be dependent on the practitioner and the reasonableness of the goals they have set. Don't just accept their word on the decisions involved. We never used it and you will find mixed feelings on this board about the practice, but it does have the track record, so ... Just, be careful that the right things are being prioritized, so that your child isn't going through this just to act more like a normal child. You want the therapy to help him him cross essential hurdles to the next level of learning, not to teach him to look you in the eye (which is stressful for most with ASD) or avoid stims (which are self-calming), IMHO.


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Mom to an amazing young adult AS son, plus an also amazing non-AS daughter. Most likely part of the "Broader Autism Phenotype" (some traits).