11 month old just diagnosed ASD

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BTW Levi turns 1 tomorrow! We are having a party in one of the local parks. He has 60 friends and family coming to wish him Happy Birthday. He is definitely a well loved and lucky little dude.

Happy Birthday to him....one of the things that stuck out also with my Maddy is that she would not touch her birthday cake. All my other kids grabbed handfuls and shoved it in but she didnt want to get messy....same with presents she just looked at them like "What the heck am I supposed to do with this?" .

The thing that upset me originally was that there were people saying that there was no way a child that young could be diagnosed with Autism. I did not address the therapy hours until later. Therapy for Autistic children (at least in the US) is very different now than it was many years ago. They are also using the same types of methods here in France even though just a few years ago they were nearly a decade behind, unfortunately they still do not understand how important early intervention is. My husband and I are hoping to help change that.
For a child that young they would use play based therapy only and they would not push him beyond his limits. Like Ryio (the OP) said, they just throw a number out because that is typical for a child who is diagnosed around 3 or 4 years of age. I was just concerned that if the parents were thinking about refusing the therapy which would have been really bad as they might have trouble getting it again and there is no reason to put it off considering the diagnosis. Yes 40 hours a week is too much for a baby but they will and obviously have tailored this to his age and needs and will increase as he is older and if he needs that. My daughter does not function well without her therapy, it took her from a completely non verbal and non responsive little girl to the little Autistic Princess that she is today. She can communicate a lot of her needs, yes she still has problems and yes she still has therapy and she is not happy when she does not. She is not dealing well right now with having no school or therapy because of summer break. They have some day camp hours for the next two weeks at the therapy center so she will be better. We will just have to keep her occupied next month. I am so glad that I was able to participate in her therapy with her as I learned so much about autism, more about her and how she thinks and even about myself (it was her diagnosis that made the doctors look at me so it was how I, my son and one of my older daughters finally found a name for our "issues").
Im really concerned that there is so much animosity on this site in regards to therapy. There has been so much change and understanding of of ASD's in say, the past ten years, that it amazes me and it amazes me that my daughter learned and changed so dramatically because of this and because of the therapy she received. I still keep in touch with some of her therapists because I feel close to them. We resigned ourselves that our daughter may not speak and would probably not be able to take care of herself, we were ok with that, we accepted that and we started looking into alternative communication. We started learning sign language that she never did pick up btw . Then these wonderful young women and later some young guys came to my house and they knew how to draw Maddy out and how to get her to engage and they taught us and we started changing the way we looked at her future. She would respond to any young woman, like in the library or at the store because she thought they were all therapists, she was ready to play !
I just hope that more people here, especially the ones with very young children just diagnosed, at least try therapy and sometimes the more the better as much as your child needs. When my daughter didnt have therapy she would pull out her hair and bash her head on the floor because she was so frustrated. She still has meltdowns but nothing like that and she does not hurt herself, she and we have learned to calm her and she is far less frustrated now that she has a means of communication and we all have a better understanding of why she gets upset in the first place.
When your child doesnt talk or even really respond to you have to learn them, be a detective, find the reason....sometimes its really hard but Im probably closer to my daughter and understand her body language and feelings more than anyone else in my life. It may be because I also have Autism, or maybe that is part of it and the other part is that I know she needs me so I pay attention and I learn.
Anyway enough of my mush....I think that Levi and his parents are very fortunate and I think he is lucky to have a Mom that is obviously tuned into him and ready to take on any challenge he has and help him overcome or simply find another way around it.

I also just wanted to add that Maddy (and my son who has Asperger's) was recently evaluated to see what types of therapy she needs. She will finally get more physio type therapy as she has problems with coordinating her arms and legs and she also has hyper mobility in her large joints and weak leg muscles so she tends to fall a lot and tires easily.....this does not stop her from being a little monkey and climbing on everything! Anyway, the therapists here were so amazed at the strong desire she has to learn. They are not accustomed to having higher functioning kids and my son is the only Aspie they have ever had there at the center....this just shows the impact of NO early intervention and also kids are obviously not even being diagnosed. I think it was the early intervention that turned her on and made her want to learn, now she craves constant input....she just seems to want more and more. I dont think there are enough hours in the day to give her all that would actually benefit her. We are considering dance or singing lessons though both of which she does all the time

lilome, nothing you write is mush. I find your story and your perspective very powerful.

Like many people, I have an easier time seeing things from the unique perspective of my child and his personality/needs, but that never means it is the only road, especially since AS is a spectrum and each individual on it is unique.

Thank you DW....you know, I love to write. I cant speak nearly as eloquently and fluid as I do when I write. Im no public speaker thats for sure. I wish I was because I have a lot to say and my husband probably gets tired of listening to it sometimes....Im sure hes thankful I have places like this to express myself .

Right now Im pretty focused on the services here in France. The doctor and the therapists at the center are so intrigued by my kids because all the children at the center are far more severe and, as I said, they have no aspies so they are very excited to have my son. I dont understand why kids are not getting diagnosed here as it is very obvious to the doctors who evaluated my son that he has Asperger's, they did not question it at all. Maybe its that the schools, parents and general doctors are not educated enough to recognize it so they are not ever brought to be evaluated. Kids like my son, who are quiet and do not cause much trouble are overlooked I think. Im not sure where the problem lies but I do know that there are many people here in France that are angry due to the lack of services. Its one of the reasons they have tried to bump it up a bit but still no early intervention. Kids here arent getting diagnosed early enough and then it takes sometimes over a year to get services....it took us nearly that long and we were very pushy and loud about it. There was even a famous actor here who has an autistic son who documented what early intervention did for his son. He could afford to pay for ABA therapists to come into his home. Still they do nothing. I am hoping the more people who make an issue out of this the more they will pay attention. My kids are going to be ok but I worry about the kids who are being born into this country and other countries and even places in the US with Autism. Early intervention works, it may not be huge like with my daughter every time but it still makes a big difference, I think its very important and it makes me angry when I hear about people being denied services and I try to help them by putting them in touch with the right places. Sometimes its like navigating a maze finding help for your child, it should not be this way.

I just realized I called my son quiet ....ok that is not a good word for him but he is well behaved at school. Like me he also has a lot to say.

Hello,

My family was featured on CBC regarding our struggles with our health care system here in Canada.



http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-c ... ected.html

greetings.
I have 3yo son dx with autism at 20 months.... We did ABA, but we didn't have good luck with our therapy, I've read a lot of good stories. We started the biomedical treatment approach and we started to see our lovely boy 'waking up'... it is a LONG journey... but it helps..

I think it's really amazing that you got the dx this early. If I would have known that early I think I would have tried more sign language, I've never had access to any sign language therapy, but I picked up some basic signs on my own and my daughter really took to it. She was very visual, so flashcards were also very good for learning objects (cat, dog, ball, hat etc). But even having a few signs for more abstract things like 'more' and 'all done' were really helpful.

Hello and Welcome to Wrong Planet!

I realize this is an old post, but I just wanted to share our experiences. I have only 1 child---a boy, and I knew something was going on at about 8 mos of age. Alot of his delays were physical, he was not attempting to crawl, did not really play with toys, and at about 1 yr of age, he would just lay on his back and stare at the ceiling and flap his hands. I KNEW something was not right, but since he had words and smiled and seemed lovable to us, I didn't think it was autism. We started him in physical therapy at 1 yr of age for all of the physical delays, and along the way, the therapists started to notice other things like the fact that he was not pointing, he was not showing us things, he was not playing with toys. He was smiling and had language, but there were so many signs of autism at 12 mos of age. I THANK GOD that we started getting him occupational therapy and speech therapy at 17 mos of age.

We did not do 40 hours of therapy with him. There was no way we could have afforded that. But we did a few hours a week and just learned from the therapists and read and did a lot of our own "therapy" at home with him. If you have not read or heard about it, I would suggest "The Floortime Method" by Dr.Greenspan (you can probably google it or order his books online.) You may even be able to ask a therapist about it. It is actually a very natural way of just trying to engage your child that does not seem like work. It is just taking anything that interests them and following their lead to establish connections and engagement with the child. It doesn't matter what it is, the goal is just to get engagement.

I think this is the best therapy for a child that young. You can try some of the other ABA therapy when your child is perhaps 2 or 3. We started our son in the special needs program at the public school at 3 yrs of age, and he has continued to progress. He is now 6 and we still have our struggles, but he is fully verbal, was potty trained at 4 yrs old, and is learning more and more. His reading skills are taking off and he made a 100 on his 1st 2 spelling tests! (Sorry, I have to brag a little since we struggle in so many areas! )

I guess my point is-----consider yourself blessed that you have caught this in your son so early. I would pursue as much therapy that you can (within reason) there is no need to go off the deep end spending thousands of dollars and going bankrupt when you can do a lot on your own!

IGood luck and please keep us posted on his progress!

Hello,

It has been just over a year since my son was diagnosed with ASD at 11 months and I wanted to update the forum on his progress.

We were told by the province of BC that my son was the youngest to be diagnosed with ASD that they could find on record any where in the world. They dragged their feet with his funding and we eventually had to plead to the media in order to get traction. We were featured on CBC and 2 days later his funding came through with the condition that he be rested at 2 years old.

In the last year our son has had 10-12 hours of play based therapy per week, plus I have done a lot of reading about the Hanen approach. I am happy to report that he has made huge improvements!

He was recently rested at 25 months by a team of the top doctors in the province. They concluded that yes, he is on the ASD spectrum.