WORST case scenario - what happens then ?

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There are differences even there. My child has an autism (not diagnosed as AS) diagnosis because of his adaptive issues and the severity of his social delay; but his learning profile is more verbal than non-verbal. We tried all that baby signing stuff, it went horribly. He had trouble pointing at things, gestures, all that stuff. He still has trouble with that. So if your child will not take to signing, there may be non-verbal communication issues, too.

They are all different and you just have to keep plugging away until you find what works.

Yes, my son also doesn't sign or gesture... but he understands them. I would respectfully suggest visuals, signs and speech be used all at the same time. You don't know what will make sense to him, what way his brain will be able to understand or his body will be able to do. My son's main communication is pictures and now typing words, he tries to speak single words but is mostly not understood by non family and most of those words are foods. If we hadn't exposed him to picture cards he wouldn't be communicating like he is now. He never was very good at the full pecs system as a little boy, used to "post" the cards into any available gap in the house, but he did learn quickly what they represented. All that started to pay off when it seemed to fall in to place. I don't believe any amount of work on our, or his, part will get him speaking in a way that will help him be understood by others. He has no lack of motivation to speak, he tries desperately if he has to... doesn't make him any easier to understand. Speech therapy has never improved on where he started with speaking. I don't feel like we've given up on him, we just concentrate efforts where we are seeing progress.
I worry if you don't expose him to pictures for communication that it may hold him back. that is my opinion but also, I believe, the opinion of many the people who have worked with our family over the years.
Your decision to pull him out of preschool, teach him yourself and get some family in to help will surely benefit all of you. That is great!

About PECS and standard speech therapies and behavioral therapies, I am not against them in general, and I think that they can be helpful for communication, but I am against them when they are the end all be all of the autistic child's development plan, when they are viewed by the professionals and the parents as the ultimate path towards a good outcome for the kids. These therapies should be considered secondary to getting a real education, learning real language skills, learning language and all other subjects in ways that are different from the standard. Learning does not require acting typical or socializing or even much communication, verbal or non-verbal. No looking, no pointing, no requesting, no initiating, not much responding, not much self-helping, these were what I had as a kid, but I also had learning materials and people willing to teach me and a talent for storing stuff easily in my head, regardless of whether or not I understood the meaning. Each kid is different, but in my opinion, each kid has higher potential for learning, language development, future independence than the professionals judge them to have based on their sh***y scores on tests that may or may not query their talents, may or may not require too much verbal skills or theory of mind skills for them to understand at their young ages. Most tests measure your ability to think in a certain box, and many autistic kids are not aware of these boxes, simply because their minds work fundamentally differently. Top-down and bottom-up cognition are verry merry berry different. Thinking from visual perceptions and verbal representations are opposite in nature. A kid may have great potential along one path of development and mediocre or low potential along another. In this field, it is easy to blame all lack of development on the autism, the severity of the autism, but nurture as chosen by the parents and professionals plays a huge role as well. Learning five words a year in ABA is not acceptable in general, regardless of how the child behaves or how low his IQ has been measured to be. That indicates that development is not progressing, and the therapy is not working and not going to work. Meanwhile, the clock is ticking.

Here is how I got the idear of communication. I learned it from some pictures in books of two people talking to each other with speech bubbles. One said "hi" and the other said "hello". Or maybe "Thank you" and "You're welcome". Or maybe "how are you?" and "I am fine". I learned about communication in the third person before I did it in the first person. I saw the pictures of what was going on, first without understanding them, then understanding them when I saw two other people enact them, saying "hi" and "hello". I saw multiple eggsamples of people enacting this structured simple communication, then it slowly sank in that people communicated with each other this way from one mind to another, and eventually, I also practiced doing this in the first person. But I did not get the standard approach of "reinforcing" my communication behaviors with smiles, hugs, and M&Ms to have me initiate or respond moar moar moar. I got at least half of the understanding by observing others on paper and real life structured setting, then many structured chances to practice it myself. Theory to practice, not practice practice practice without understanding the theory.

Many of the parents that I have spoken to deeply regret the choices that they made for their kids when their kids were young. Regretting that their kids got little education and much behavioral modification when they were younger than ten, and now their kids are stuck at a kindergarden level of academic skills at high school ages. Professionals will tell you that your kids, eggspecially your low-functioning non-verbal asocial kids have low potential and would not benefit from an education anyway, and the best way of guaranteeing that their predictions come true is to listen to them and follow their standard therapies to the letter in a self-fulfilling prophecy. Remember that these people are also there to $$$$$$$. The way to avoid that is to consider that perhaps they are wrong (they can't possibly be correct in all cases, and perhaps your kid is one of those) and perhaps you were also wrong for listening to them, and don't give up on your kids if you kids are following the path of lack of development that was predicted for them by their low IQ scores or those brilliant clairvoyant opinions.

My eventual hope for my son is communication, preferably verbally.

He is a quiet boy, and very like his father in terms of personality. My husband is an "observer", not a doer. He shies away from the lime light but sees all and knows all. I have often heard him recall incidents that happened YEARS earlier, and well after the rest of us have forgotten all about them, and frankly, did not even know he was attending to or observing. I think my son is very similar. Unfortunately, this means that it is very easy to dismiss him as "ret*d" or "not learning", since he does not WANT to expose the extent of his knowledge. I strongly suspect that he will surprise quite a few people, especially me, soon.

In the meantime, I have to keep the good fight going, giving it all I have, to convince people who don't want to be convinced that he is storing information away and will eventually display it. Some day, one day... Who knows when ?

That is why I am SO desperate to get him to communicate. His teachers want me to focus on his fine motor skills and his play skills. I, on the other hand, want him to communicate. Sign to me, if you won't speak, but sign.... AND he was beginning to pick up signs at the rate of one new one a WEEK, then began to regress again, and I had to start afresh. It is frustrating, to the core, and I face sardonic looks from the "experts" for even attempting to convince them any different than they already know / believe - my son is incapable of learning. If PECS will "stick" more than sign language would, then I am willing to try it, too, and combine all 3 modes of communication together.



It is very hard to not get discouraged. Wen I see other 3 yr olds chatting nineteen to the dozen, and my little boy says not one word, it is very, very, very hard to not give up already,

[quote="HisMom"]

It is very hard to not get discouraged. Wen I see other 3 yr olds chatting nineteen to the dozen, and my little boy says not one word, it is very, very, very hard to not give up already,[/]

I know that feeling. It took a long time to turn it around from negative to positive. When my eldest was 7 we were celebrating his younger (nt) brother's 1st birthday. Little brother was the exact image of his big brother, they were like twins. I went through a period of depression around that time, it felt so painful to see the little one passing his big brother in development. I felt sad for the older one and just to see the little one who looked just like him, it was in a way like a tease of what it would look like. After i had treatment for that depression I made the conscious effort to not go there again, I won't! My son is his own person, I won't give up on him, it's not about me. Whenever I feel discouraged or sad I just think about him, if it's this hard for me, it is so so much harder for him. He struggles more than I ever have or will and if he gets up everyday to face the world then I am with him, trying to be as goddamned positive and helpful as I can. I really think that is what I am supposed to do for him. These days I see 13 yr old boys hanging out with each other, they are so different to my son... Him still walking with his mum holding his hand. I feel much less pain because that pain is draining and sucks the energy I need to be the mum my son deserves.

Thank you... I don't deserve this words, but they are good for my self esteem
My son is learning to expand his vocabulary and he is consolidating hi self-help skills (go to the bathroom independently)

Hi, I'm new to the site, here, as is everyone I think, because I have a son who simply doesn't fit the mold we all hoped for -- crawl, walk, read, school, hobbies and interests, college, job, life. He showed signs of being scarily gifted when young -- reading at 3, talking well at 1.5, accelerated in school, musically gifted... but a clear loner with social issues, so an AS diagnosis. When he hit middle school, the world came crashing down. Depressed, dropped out, dropped everything, won't exercise, won't do anything, completely fell off the grid, out of life. Doesn't care about anything or anyone, especially not me. He feels he has no future and so is sitting around waiting to die. Therapies, special schools, all of which have drained my accounts and credit and retirement....

I imagine we are all here for the same reason -- our kids are suffering and we are trying to figure out how to help. For me, how do I deal with the grief? How do I deal with acquaintances on the street who ask, how are you? How do we have a life and go on again?

Sadmom and everyone else, As someone who HAS aspergers and has been on the child side of this whole school situation that we are talking about, I would like to bring my own perspective. I was told by a lot of the "support staff" that I would never do anything with my life. Stuffed into a class for kids with "special needs" one period a day, and generally was not "supported" at all.

What really got me through was my REAL support system, not the clowns running the disability services. I was fortunate enough to have teachers that really did care about me, some of whom I still keep in touch with today. My parents were also a big factor. As someone with Aspergers, we NEED encouragement, and persistence. Do not give up! It will get better, but only if you as the parent take your kids education into your own hands. I can't even count the # of times my parents had "a talk" with the people dealing with IEP, etc. Miraculously, things got better after they talked to those teachers and admins that were trying to treat me like a piece of trash.

I welcome any questions you may have. Feel free to PM me.