Hi Tanya Welcome to the board.
I agree if possible you should check into having your son evaluated for a disability. It could be a speech delay an ASD or anything inbetween to nothing at all.
Have you checked into some signs and symptoms of Autism? http://www.autism-biomed.org/poster.htm
Tanya,
Welcome to the board. No one here is going to be able to tell you whether your child is on the spectrum or not. If you have any type of joint custody of your children or even "parental rights" but not having custody then I would advise you to get him evaluated. Has he ever been evaluated with the school system? Is he in special education? What you described as his behaviors could be a many number of things to include adhd, a learning disability, or even just a NT kid that is flighty at times. Most of my children are hard to get their attention if they are watching tv and they are not all on the spectrum. In fact everything you have described with the bathtub, the tv, and the taking one toy at a time, my oldest with adhd could exibit behavior like that at times. I can't really give you any great opinions without knowing more information about his over all development and behavior. I'm sorry i couldn't help more. Take care,
karrie
I am new to this, so please forgive me if this is repetitive or sounds ignorant to any degree, but I'm trying to figure out some way to get some answers that I have yet been able to find.
I have a 7 yr old son who was born very prematurely due to me having severe hypertension and toxemia during my pregnancy with him. He was born at 25 weeks, weighing only 18 ounces at birth. He went through the next two years being very malnourished due to stomach problems that various doctors and medications failed to resolve. Finally at the age of two, he had what was one of numerous surgeries to correct these problems. Although he had a feeding tube all of this time, he still was unable to keep food down. He finally began eating what would appear to be normal amounts for his age and size about 3-3 1/2 years ago. He will be 8 in October, and his sister, who will be 6 next month, is already two inches taller.
On to his actions, which is what I find the most perplexing....Drew just doesn't seem to understand things the way other children do. At nearly 8 yrs old, he still just seems to act as if he's in a daze, not understanding the simplest of instructions. For example, earlier today, we told the kids to clean up their room. We had them pile all of the toys in one area away from their room so we could vacuum underneath it all. Once this was done, my son would only carry one toy at a time back to the room. After I told him twice to carry more than one thing, and the job would go faster, he then got confused and just stopped and would sit down and play or watch TV. Of course, this infuriates my husband and my daughter.
Drew also seems to ignore people when he watches TV.
Another strange example, I gave them a bath earlier. My daughter came to me when I called them out so they could get dressed. After I got her dressed, I went back to the bathroom to check on Drew, and he was sitting naked in the empty bathtub. I asked him why he was doing that, and he only laughed at me and said he didn't know.
These types of behaviours are disturbing to me, but I just don't know what to do. I don't even know for sure if he has Autism. I really would like to have him tested somehow, but due to the fact that my ex-husband has custody of my kids due to financial reasons, I am unable to convince him to have the testing done.
Can anyone offer any suggestions or tell me of similar experience in these areas?
Your son is doing some of things my son has done in past. Without a diagnoses it is too difficult to tell what is really going on. When my son was going through that stage, the speech therapist told me, that the communication issue was like that of a person who has had a stroke. Not that , that helps any.
With autism, alot of the children are considered concrete thinkers. Lets take the toys (my son does the same thing), You told him to put them back and he was doing it the only way he could, keeping everything organized in his mind. My son also did the bath tub thing. Instead of saying he was ready for his bath, I just found him in there with no clothes on and NO WATER. Just keep talking to him keeping things very simple and plain. I believe he is listening!!!!!!!!! You have got to believe and never give up!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!