Nonverbal Asperger's?

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That seems pretty dismissive. I consider myself to be severe HFA, yet if I were suddenly to become nonverbal, I think that would be cause for concern, at least for the professionals to examine why this is happening. If you could talk, and now you can't, I think the doctor should be more helpful. Maybe if she continues to ignore your issues, it might be time to find a new doctor. If it is something that is of true concern to you, I think you should demand her help. If you can't speak to her when you see her next month, and she will not check/respond to her email, maybe you should type up what you want to say, print it off, and sit in her office until she addresses the issues with you. No matter what you choose to do, good luck and I hope everything works itself out!

I have an iPod touch now that I use to communicate, so I can speak just fine Hopefully she'll LISTEN.

Yay

Can you, if you type something, read it out loud? I have heard that this helps some people bridge the gap between talking and not talking.

But here's another issue. You know how some people use a wheelchair not because they can't walk, but because if they did walk, it would take up so much energy that they couldn't do anything else? I'm wondering if maybe it might be a good idea for you to keep the AAC around, even when you can speak, so that you can use it to substitute if you need to conserve your (mental) energy.

But do try to wiggle around the non-verbalness, if you can; it's not the most important thing in the world, but speaking is really a very handy skill and good to keep around if you can.

I asked this in your other thread, but this thread is more suited to it as I don't want to go too much OT:

How can you ask her if you're non verbal? Will you write it down?
Also, how can you just "become" non-verbal all of the sudden?

This is interesting. I didn't think a diagnosis of autism could be made without a speech delay in childhood. how old were you when they diagnosed it as autism?

It's funny, because this is kind of what led me to this forum in the first place. I read a lot of the posts before and felt like an aspie in *a lot* of ways, but it wasn't really negatively impacting my life at that point.

I started "losing" speech, too, about a year ago. I do't have the physical consequences that you describe, no real difficulty with speaking, other than some issues with putting a sentence together and not really being able to understand what the other person is even saying to me, making answering a simple question practically impossible at times.

I also start to get confused while in in-depth one-on-one conversation, I have to pay *very* close attention to what the other person is saying ti make sense of it. It's like I have to decode it, and it becomes very hard sometimes...if I don't get it right, I end up saying something unrelated or telling the person something I wasn't supposed to(like a secret or something a mutual friend told me that they probably shouldn't know). I just have a hard time keeping everything straight in my head and being able to understand the person well enough to offer helpful advice or *correct* answers.

It comes and goes, though. Most of the time I just don't want to talk but can do so anyway without making many blunders. It's not depression, but there's really no way to explain it to anyone without sounding antisocial or crazy, lol. For me, it especially seems like depression to others because I'm usually very talkative, animated, even. So I just seem like a hot bipolar mess:(

I just get so focused on certain things..,sound and pictures, I guess, that I have no words. just don't *have* them. And then I get sucked into reading a lot. I can break out of it if I try really hard, but I just end up seeming odd or distracted, or even rude around people, so I usually just try to wait it out.

:/

Last edited by MotownDangerPants on 16 May 2011, 12:51 pm, edited 3 times in total.

That's a common misconception. In reality, a diagnosis of autism can be made without a speech delay. Here's the relevant section of the diagnostic criteria:

So you can see that they require only ONE of those; and only #1 is a speech delay. You can have speech on time but difficulty having conversations (#2); you can have repetitive or odd language (#3), or you can have absolutely nothing odd about your language and simply have a lack of imaginative play (#4). Quite a few people--most people, in fact--who are diagnosed with Asperger's also qualify for a diagnosis of classic autism, at least in childhood. I'm one of them, actually; as a child I met criteria 2 and 3, and partially met criterion 4 (I had imaginative play, but it was repetitive). My first diagnosis was Asperger's.

I don't know how it works, but I did as a child. I had a speech delay--spoke around or shortly after the age of 2 1/2. I could speak sentences by the age of 3, then a few months later, I totally lost the ability to speak any words. I was only still a toddler, so my memory isn't accurate over everything. I kind of have to go by what my parents say. They told me though, that I just stopped talking entirely, and wouldn't even try. I was in my own little world, and had to be retaught language from scratch. It was literally a slow process, where I had to relearn every syllable again, as though I was a baby. I had speech therapy, and was put into preschool a year early--the therapist's hope was that that would help me learn to speak again. It was like my brain forgot I once knew how to talk. It wasn't something I panicked over, nor was it something I even seemed worried about. If I woke up tomorrow and couldn't talk even though I was trying to, I would panic and go to the emergency room....

I have never heard of this happening to adults. I am not saying it does not happen to adults, particularly when autism is a factor; however, I have never heard of this happening because of autism in adulthood. That is why I think Trouper's doctor should be more concerned. Perhaps it is "just" autism--but even so, if she could talk before, the doctor should be trying to help her hold on to that. But a lot of other things can be going on in a person's brain that have nothing to do with autism that could make people lose skills they have previously had--I have seen this happen before to adults. Because of this as well, I really think this doctor needs to be less dismissive, and find out for sure what the root of this problem is.

I emailed my neuropsych (might take her a week to get back to me!) as she's still answering emails while on leave. We'll see how concerned she is. But I know how it will go. The therapist will say see the neuropsych. The NP will say see neuro. The neuro will say see therapist. No one will deal with it. It happens all the time.

A bit of progress is being made, though. I had... a sort-of conversation on the phone with my mom. She was mostly confused, and I kept changing the subject (as I always do), only when only using isolated words and partial words, it's hard to keep up, I guess. But I DID get some language out today... it's gone now, though. Oh well. I can't even say it was nice. I prefer to type!

As an NT with a child that might have autism or AS(stimming, little speech or use of words, repetitive actions), I find it hard to understand how people that are non-verbal or semi non-verbal can't speak when they seem to know the english language just fine and have no issues typing it out? Me and my GF are new to the world of autism/AS and we trying to learn as much as we can about it. Mainly to help our son out (He's 3 1/2 and has only about 20-30 words he says) we are doing what we can to help him and us understand what he is dealing maybe with (He isn't diagnosed but as i said before a lot of red flags in his behavior and speech).

I understand it's a part of Autism/AS, but could someone explain it to me a little bit?

Not being a scientist or a psychologist, I have no idea how to get into the technicalities of how this works. The autistic brain is wired differently though, and the part that controls speech is not the part that controls the ability to type.....I really wish I had a better understanding of how so I could tell you. I do know that as a toddler, even though I understood what was being said (I definitely knew all my colours before age 1, but did not talk until almost age 3), I was completely non-verbal. Even now, I speak, but I never speak as well as I type/write. The following link might be somewhat enlightening, but will still probably be very confusing. I just attribute it to the very vague: our brains are just wired differently....

http://www.speechpathologyguru.com/lang ... tism-a117/

Not to be a brat, but I don't understand how you DO speak. Does it just... happen? How do you get all the parts of your mouth to work together at the same time?! That's a lot to think about!

There's just some kind of disconnect between my brain and my mouth, I think, so I can't get the words out. (This is causing me to try harder, which is resulting in weird faces coupled with my facial tics... lol). Yeah, nothing happening.

Well, I don't think about speaking, It just happens I think about what I would like to say and i just say it. I don't really look much further into it then that. I understand that if you don't speak a lot you could get confused about moving your mouth and how to formulate the words. But I guess as an NT I just don't think about it.

Look, it's fine. Not everyone can speak all the time, I certainly can't. Thank goodness for AAC but it sucks that there isn't a good one for the primary language I use with my family that isn't just basic text-to-speech. It doesn't mean you're not 'Aspergers' because you might present as Asperger's most of the time and that would still count.

Look, it's fine. Not everyone can speak all the time, I certainly can't. Wish there were a good AAC for my home language actually but this will do. It doesn't mean you're not 'Aspergers' because you might present as Asperger's most of the time and that would still count.