How did you find out your child is autistic?

amother

Wed, Dec 08 2010, 2:12 pm

My son is 2 1/2. WHen he was 19 months old I was concerned because he had begun to spend a lot of time on his own, he would play in his room for an hour or more without even looking for me. His vocabulary and skills hadnt grown in 3 months and he seemed to be losing words. He was also doing a lot of stimming - grunting, putting fingers in his eyeballs and diaper, and he was barely making eye contact. Unfortunately the next few months his vocabulary diminished more and and more. he doesnt talk at all now and doesnt understand much either. He's getting 4 hours of therapy a day through E.I. bh.

IloveHashem613

Wed, Dec 08 2010, 11:39 pm

amother wrote:

so is autism detected by regressive activity? and what are the benefits of EI, to bring him back, to keep from regressing more, or to bring the most out of him? does an autistic kid have a chance to be regular again? what does life offer them down the line in terms of working, marriage, etc?

I can answer your questions based on my experience of teaching children with autism for 2 years. Autism is generally detected by a regression of verbal, social, emotional skills. A lot of the signs come out at around 2 1/2 years old but sometimes it takes longer and some lucky kids are diagnosed earlier. The earlier the child is diagnosed and starts intervention, the better the chance of the child living a normal life. It also depends on how severe the autism is. EI is extremely beneficial and can make a huge difference if done well. One of the most succesful therapies is Applied Behavior Analysis aka ABA. ABA is a kind of therapy that works on the concept of positive reinforcement and breaks down each step of learning into small steps and as the child master's each one, they are constantly rewarded. It also analyzes the motivations of behavior and targets what's behind the child's behavior and how to deal with it. In fact it is the only scientifically proven method to help children with autism learn. I have personally witnessed kids with autism go from non-verbal, tantruming, stimming, and in their own world to being able to talk, express themselves, feel emotion and just function mostly like normal children with succesful therapy. Good luck and feel free to pm me. I'm not claiming to be an expert but I do have a lot of knowledge about this based on my teaching experience...

amother

Thu, Dec 09 2010, 12:23 am

Ahhh, the $64,000 question; the question I've been asking since my son was diagnosed, and the super-annoying question everyone else keeps asking me. I'm helpless to answer that. Every case is different. There's no way of knowing at age 2 whether the child will be verbal, a functioning member of society, able to get married, etc. We don't have crystal balls.

What I COULD tell you though is that the younger it is caught, the bigger the chances of stopping the regression. Early Intervention goes up to age 3, then goes CPSE then CSE. The younger the child, the more services you'll get,after that you have to fight and hire a lawyer.

Actually, Early Intervention is cutting services drastically now and it's gotten impossible to get serviced without an official diagnosis.

My advice to any parent who worries about their child regressing is to call up an agency and get an evaluation. It doesn't cost anything and it will tell you everything you need to know.

In my case I innocently had my son evaluated for speech, as I was worried about his vocabulary wasn't growing. I was hit by a bucket of cold water when the initial evaluator, the special educator, firmly suggested that I get a psychologist to evaluate my son. That's when the PDD-NOS diagnosis came out.

The therapists couldn't stress enough to me how lucky we were to have caught it so young. The younger, the better. By the time he was 23 months old he had started speech therapy, followed by OT and then by ABA.

Mothers, if you have a suspicion that something is wrong, check it out! There are so many fabulous frum agencies out there: Challenge, Ais Laasos, Yeled Vyalda, Step by Step, Jumpstart, Shema Kolainu... they gladly send you an evaluator and their service coordinators work the hardest they can to help.

OP if youre asking for a real reason and not for an abstract reason, if you want to get in touch with me, you can at PDDToddler@yahoo.com. Hatzlocha.

flowerpower

Thu, Dec 09 2010, 12:58 am

marina wrote:

Quote:

In fact it is the only scientifically proven method to help children with autism learn

I'm a fan of ABA too, but Greenspan's Floortime also has some good research behind it.

I view ABA as the main dish and floortime is the side dish. Floortime is a great way for the parents to interact with the child.

What are your concerns op?

amother

Thu, Dec 09 2010, 12:59 am

OP here

Thanks all for your replies. My son was an abnormally fast milestone achiever till 9 months, but stopped there. He started walking almost a year later, with no new accomplishments that year. He is 30 months now, his speech is lacking and he is a tad more to himself. we are in the midst of the process of applying for services for speech with EI.

amother

Thu, Dec 09 2010, 4:46 am

Floortime is very difficult to do with a child who is completely non verbal, barely makes eye contact, doesnt know how to play appropriately with toys, and has no attention span. It's frustrating for a parent to sit there and try to have a meaningful interaction with their child who keeps running away, won't listen at all, and displays little interest. For floor time to really work you need to do hours of it every day. It's hard to find trained therapists who know it well. With EI cutting services all the time the burden ends up falling too much on the parents. I watched floortime videos on youtube and all the children there were higher functioning than my 2 1/2 year old. ABA really focuses on skills, not just on interaction and playing. As flowerpower said, it's a great addition and tool when the parent wants to do something after therapy hours and doesn't know what to do. But to only do FloorTime with a child who has severe communication, eye contact, and focusing issues? The child doesn't make much progress. Kids high on the spectrum (or is that low?) are very self-directed. allowing them complete reign over their therapy does not teach them to follow directions and complete tasks. ABA works better for them.

Good luck OP, email me if you'd like. It's confidential.

SavtaHelen

Thu, Dec 09 2010, 6:51 am

I am a speech pathologist and work with many children on the autism spectrum. No two cases are alike. No one can predict the outcome of any child's future. Some are very high functioning, others much less.

Jody Piccolt wrote a book called "House Rules" about a boy with Aspergers. It was a fairly good book. I think the most important message there was that autism is a "different brain" and not "brain damage". She also hints at many dietary treatments, but I don't know anything about this.

Look up "Carly Fleishman" on youtube for a fascinating glimpse into an autistic girl's mind and/or read the book "MY LIFE IN PICTURES" by Temple Gardner.

Good Luck

mommy#1

Thu, Dec 09 2010, 7:46 am

amother wrote:

I have done floortime with children who are very low functioning. I'll admit it took a lot of time and patience, but these kids are now doing so much more because of the floortime! Op, feel free to pm me

bashinda

Thu, Dec 09 2010, 12:49 pm

Both my kids got EI (but it sounds like they wouldn't have gotten it now. No EI without a dx even if the evaluation shows you're delayed enough to receive services?? NY is not the same NY it was 7 years ago. shock

My oldest is very very borderline and because of that I'm still not 100% sure she is even on the spectrum and it was very difficult in the neuro-psych because of it. They took a long time deciding as well. She has social issues but in some ways she's very perceptive. I just got the dx this summer and she turned 7 this summer. Before that I knew she had issues and the school suggested we see a neurologist and the neurologist had us do the neuro-psych and there we are. If she has pdd it would explain a lot of her behavior (in her own world, hard time with making friends, still having toileting accidents, sometimes she feels more at home in the world of her making than the real world)

Then one of my boys is more delayed than her. He's 4 and he's still has a lot of problems expressing himself. He started out in an inclusion program and that was not working. B"H, a class opened up last year January and he moved there and now he's in a class for pdd kids and he's progressing slowly but definitely progressing.

amother

Thu, Dec 09 2010, 2:23 pm

I'm the poster that didn't get my kid diagnosed till age 9. We were very concerned about a stigma attached to a diagnosis at a young age, but please! don't let that stop you from getting your kid the most services you can get at the earliest age possible.... so many parents are in denial, and then when the kid is older or an adult it's too late and they can't be taught things as well. you should go on the special needs forum, we used to feel like our kid shouldn't be getting the services because he was so high functioning, but he really needed them! and like I said, we SUFFERED in silence from the outside, inside the house there was not shalom bayis because we were tormented by the behaviors and worried that our kid couldn't do what he had to do, dress himself, eat without a mess, use the bathroom, go into someone's hope or office without pushing buttons on everything, touching the computer (and everything he saw,) and I was frustrated and I yelled at my kid, so then DH yelled at me for yelling and it was all a mess! If the kid needs more help because he's mildly autistic, call a spade a spade, and get the kid (and your whole family ) help from trained professionals.

Little kids make little problems, when they are older the problems get bigger and you can't hide them, better to deal with them now!

allgood

Tue, Dec 28 2010, 4:49 pm

First off if you have requested an ei eval for speech your child will also receive a general eval by a special educator that will cover all the domains- motor, specialed, speech, social, adaptive. hopefully this will give you more of a picture. please do mention your concerns to the evaluator since if not she may not feel comfortable giving you that info.
As to the poster who stated agencies that are good for evaluations I really dont think you can say it. it really depends on who is doing the evaluation.